INCENTIVES FOR COLLECTIVE DEVIANCE: GROUP SIZE AND CHANGES IN PERCEIVED RISK, COST, AND REWARD*

• Date: 01 August 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12111
• Published date: 01 August 2016
• Author: KYLE J. THOMAS,JEAN MARIE MCGLOIN

INCENTIVES FOR COLLECTIVE DEVIANCE: GROUP

SIZE AND CHANGES IN PERCEIVED RISK, COST,

AND REWARD∗

JEAN MARIE MCGLOIN1and KYLE J. THOMAS2

1Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland

2Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri—St.

Louis

KEYWORDS: peers, decision-making, perceptions

Research has demonstrated that the presence of others shifts decision-making about

risky/deviant behavior. One reason for this shift could be changes in the anticipated ex-

perience of formal sanctions, informal costs, and rewards. To investigate this possibil-

ity, this study conducted two randomized controlled trials with hypothetical vignettes,

in which a range of how many other people were also involved in the criminal act de-

fined the treatment conditions. Across two samples of university students (Ns=396

and 263), the results revealed that as the size of the involved group increased, the an-

ticipated experience of sanction risk and several informal social costs associated with

engaging in the act decreased, and the anticipated experience of two rewards increased.

Additional analyses suggest that, with one exception in each data set, these changes are

not only tied to the solo/group distinction.

Research has highlighted that individuals often make “riskier” decisions when in a

group as opposed to when they are alone (e.g., Chein et al., 2011; Diener et al., 1976;

Gardner and Steinberg, 2005). Early explanations of collective action suggested this was

the result of individuals giving themselves over to a collective consciousness and essen-

tially losing their capacities for individual reason (Freud, 1960; Le Bon, 1960 [1895]). Such

views are generally untenable, however, as research has demonstrated that people employ

considerable cognitive processes when engaged in collective behavior, even when it takes

the form of crime and deviance (Berk, 1974; Hochstetler, 2001; Short and Strodtbeck,

1965; Vider, 2004). Accordingly, several explanations have specified rational choice mod-

els to explain collective behavior (Blumer, 1939; Festinger et al., 1952; Granovetter, 1978;

Oliver, Marwell, and Teixeira, 1985; Olson, 1965). Under such frameworks, the primary

focus is on evaluating why and how people come to decide that partaking in collective ac-

tion maximizes their utility, even under circumstances when the behavior is inconsistent

with individual preferences and long-term goals.

Understanding the decision to engage in collective action is particularly important for

scholars interested in deviance as such behavior often occurs in groups (Reiss, 1988;

Warr, 2002). Indeed, Apel (2013) recently argued that understanding how peers act as a

∗Direct correspondence to Jean Marie McGloin, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice,

University of Maryland, 2220L LeFrak Hall, College Park, MD 20707 (e-mail: jmcgloin@umd.edu).

C2016 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12111

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 54 Number 3 459–486 2016 459

460 MCGLOIN & THOMAS

situational contingency that has an (immediate) effect on the decision calculus for deviant

and risky action is crucial for scholarly advancement. In attempting to make intellectual

gains on this point, integrating the larger literature on collective action and decision-

making can offer some useful guidance on how a group affects one’s rational calculus

regarding the decision to take part in behaviors such as riots, looting, and perhaps even

more common forms of group deviance.

Recently, McGloin and Rowan (2015) argued that Granovetter’s (1978) threshold

model provides a useful framework for understanding collective deviance in part be-

cause it focuses on the situational dynamics that shape decision-making in group settings

(Matsueda, 2006). There is an inherent assumption in Granovetter’s (1978) model that

collective behavior offers incentives that grow stronger as the number of people who par-

ticipate in the behavior increases. For instance, Granovetter (1978) relied on rioting as his

primary illustrative example and noted that any individual’s probability of arrest should

decrease as more people take part in the act. To be fair, the extent to which subjective

perceptions regarding sanction risks shift, along with other likely anticipated costs and

rewards (i.e., the key elements in decision-making), is unknown as this has not been ex-

plicitly modeled in the criminological literature.

Recent experimental studies have made important gains on this front by focusing ex-

plicitly on how decisions regarding risky behavior are affected by group settings, but they

have been nonetheless limited in three important ways. First, these studies have concen-

trated on whether the preference for risk/reward changes (i.e., the weight one attaches to

risk/reward when making decisions; Gardner and Steinberg, 2005; O’Brien et al., 2011)

rather than whether the anticipated value of risk and reward changes (i.e., whether the

perceived value of risk/reward shifts). Second, this work has not accounted for informal

costs despite the essential role they play in decisions to engage in deviant behavior and

the fact that seminal work in social psychology has highlighted that perceptions of in-

formal costs (e.g., a sense of responsibility for one’s actions) are malleable under group

conditions (Darley and Latane, 1968). Finally, this research typically has focused on the

solo/small group binary distinction as opposed to a larger continuum of group size. Not

investigating whether perceived risks, costs, and rewards change across a wide range of

group size may limit important theoretical insight, especially when one acknowledges that

some of the most damaging forms of collective deviance—both financially and socially—

often involve large crowds (e.g., riots and mob violence).

The current study addresses these issues by investigating the extent to which in-

dividuals’ anticipated experiences of the rewards, informal social costs, and sanction

risks associated with deviance change as a consequence of differences in the number of

other people involved in a deviant act. Specifically, this study involves two experiments

during which researchers asked respondents to consider a hypothetical opportunity

to engage in collective crime. In each experiment, various treatment conditions were

defined by different numbers of other people involved in the act, which were randomly

assigned across individuals. For all conditions, subjects were asked to report on the

perceived risks, costs, and benefits associated with personally joining in the behavior

in that specific situation. Because these two data sets involve different crime scenarios

and samples, they offer an important commentary on the robustness of any emergent

findings that suggest the presence of others changes expected incentives for offending

behavior.