Patience and Crime

• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Date: 01 July 2021
• Author: Michael Cherbonneau,Bruce A. Jacobs
• DOI: 10.1177/0022427820974427
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Patience and Crime

Bruce A. Jacobs

1

and Michael Cherbonneau

2

Abstract

Objectives: We identify the distinction between patience and self-control to

improve specification of time preferences in offender decision-making.

Methods: Data were drawn from in-depth qualitative interviews with 35

active auto thieves with high criminal propensity and focus on target

selection. Results: Patience oscillates upward and downward, showing state

instability among those with low trait self-control. Conclusions: Discussion

focuses on the conceptual processes that mediate patience’s variation in

offender decision-making, but especially among high-propensity offenders.

The larger criminological significance of patience is discussed.

Keywords

offender decision-making, self-control, time preferences, target selection,

qualitative research methods

1

School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas,

Richardson, TX, USA

2

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of North Florida, Jacksonville,

FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Bruce A. Jacobs, School of Economic, Political & Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas,

800 West Campbell Road, GR31, Richardson, TX 75080, USA.

Email: bruce.jacobs@utdallas.edu

Journal of Research in Crime and

Delinquency

2021, Vol. 58(4) 383-419

ªThe Author(s) 2020

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022427820974427

journals.sagepub.com/home/jrc

Introduction

Imagine you’re selling a car on Craigslist. The market price for the car is

$15,000, but you’re antsy to sell it. You don’t like the car any more, the

insurance premiums are too high, and you want cash right now. You could

sell the car for $10,000 today to a buyer with cash in hand. But you recog-

nize that foregoing $5,000 is not wise and decide to wait for what the market

should pay you. You eventually sell the car for $15,000. During the waiting

period, your desire to sell was high. That desire pressed on you from the

moment you listed it. You just didn’t act on it. You had self-control but little

patience.

Or, imagine you have a friend who drinks three beers a day and smokes

marijuana every weekend. S/he coasted through school, doesn’t really have

any long-term goals, and has a dead-end job. S/he lives day-to-day and

saves nothing for retirement. S/he likes to ride motorcycles, hang glide,

and eat fast food. S/he never settled down or got married because s/he likes

his/her time for him/herself. In short, s/he is present-oriented, simplistic,

physical, self-centered, and risk-seeking. Oddly, s/he has forbearance for

annoyances that pester just abou t everyone else: Being stuck in tra ffic,

waiting on hold for customer service, standing in line at the DMV, and

so on. S/he has lots of patience but little self-control.

Patience and self-control are different constructs. Whereas self-control is

thedegreetowhichapersonis“vulnerable to the temptations of the

moment” (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990:87) and “the tendency to consider

the negative consequences of an act” (Gottfredson and Hirschi 2019:43; see

also, Hirschi 2004:542), patience is defined as “the capacity to accept or

tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset”

(“Patience” n.d.). Self-control is an act, a capacity, or an eroding resource

(Burt 2020), but patience is a phenomenological orientation that is not

necessarily revealed in behavior.

1

Patience implies self-control but does

not require it (Schnitiker and Emmons 2007). Persons high in trait self-

control can be quite impatient (e.g., the Type-A overachiever)

2

, while per-

sons low in trait self-control can display interminable patience (e.g., the

laid-back idler/slacker). Although patience does appear to be an embedded

feature of self-control in many cases (Peterson and Seligman 2004), this

embeddedness is more a tendency than anything else, and there are signif-

icant exceptions (which we shall explore in the next section).

The present paper argues for a more nuanced recognition of patience’s

role in crime’s expression and contends that its operation is both under-

specified and suggestive of larger conceptual processes that advance

384 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 58(4)

understanding of oscillating time preferences in offender decision-making,

and among persons high in criminal propensity. This more nuanced role, we

believe, offers new insights into decision-making research and additional

avenues for future inquiry—which we address at the paper’s conclusion.

Patience Contrasted with Self-control and Its

Constituent Elements

Research suggests that self-control is a trans-situational, domain-general

construct that is more stable than not (Casey et al. 2011)—although analysts

have vigorously debated about the stability thesis (Baumeister et al. 1998;

Burt et al. 2014; Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990; Hay and Forrest 2006).

Patience, by contrast, varies dramat ically from circumstance to circu m-

stance and can be quite mercurial (Schnitker 2012). Th us, patience can

be domain-dependent—with the same persons able to exercise it in one

area of challenges (e.g., finding the perfect outfit for an important social

event) but not another (e.g., waiting in line in traffic). Or, patience can be

target-dependent—with the same persons able to exercise it for one person

(e.g., an exacting boss) but not another (e.g., an irreverent teenager).

Finally, patience can be state-dependent—with rested persons more able

to withstand delay than the fatigued.

Although trait-based self-control does allow within-person variation,

that variation refers more to change within persons over time than change

within persons across situations at or near one given time (see, e.g., Hay and

Forrest 2006; Higgins et al. 2009; Ray et al. 2013). And even that research

concludes that trait is more important than state (see, for example, Crescioni

et al. 2011) and that within-person stability is more common than change

(see Forrest et al. 2019:4; Turner and Piquero 2002; but see Burt, Sweeten,

and Simmons 2014).

The distinction between patience and self-control can also be examined

vis-`a-vis self-control’s constituent sub-traits. As a domain-general con-

struct, self-control subsumes a constellation of attributes: impulsivity, tem-

per (i.e., frustration intolerance), preference for sim plicity, risk-seeking,

self-centeredness, and physicality (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990; Grasmick

et al. 1993). Although one might presume that patience is simply the

obverse of impulsivity—impulsivity being defined as the “inability to delay

gratification,” “spur of the moment” acts (Steinberg 2010:218), and rapid

action “without deliberation or consideration” (Pickering and Gray

1999:278)—this is not necessarily true. Time orientation and impulsivity

are separate theoretical constructs (Mamayek, Paternoster, and Loughran

Jacobs and Cherbonneau 385