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. 2022 Oct 10:13:937876.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.937876. eCollection 2022.

The commission of crime from the perspective of decision-making differences

Jiaxi Peng  1 , Jiaxi Zhang  2 , Weizhuo Yuan  1 , Xuan Zhou  1 , Jianquan Tian  3 , Peng Fang  4
Affiliations

The commission of crime from the perspective of decision-making differences

Jiaxi Peng et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

A criminal act can be regarded as an irrational decision-making process. Therefore, understanding differences in the criminal decision-making process would shed light on criminal behavior. We utilized dual processing theory to propose that offenders' differences in decision-making may cause them to adopt non-adaptive behaviors, such as high reference point setting, abnormal reward-punishment sensitivity, delayed discounting rate, and decision-making style. Our study compares differences in these indicators between offenders (n = 518) and non-offenders (n = 636) in a diverse sample of Chinese adults. The results showed that compared with non-offenders, offenders had higher relative deprivation, reward sensitivity, and delayed discounting rates but lower punishment sensitivity and vigilance in decision-making. A logistic regression analysis also shows that the above factors were significant predictive indicators for the commission of crimes.

Keywords: crime; criminal decision-making; decision-making differences; decision-making styles; relative deprivation.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
The value function [adopted from Tversky and Kahneman (1992)].
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