TOWARD A BIFURCATED THEORY OF EMOTIONAL DETERRENCE

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12153
Date01 February 2018
Published date01 February 2018
TOWARD A BIFURCATED THEORY OF EMOTIONAL
DETERRENCE
JUSTIN T. PICKETT,1SEAN PATRICK ROCHE,2
and GREG POGARSKY1
1School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, SUNY
2School of Criminal Justice, Texas State University
KEYWORDS: rational choice, decision-making, fear, sanction perceptions, individual
differences
Since Hobbes (1957 [1651] and Beccaria (1963 [1764]), scholars have theorized that
the emotion of fear is critical for deterrence. Nevertheless, contemporary deterrence re-
searchers have mostly overlooked the distinction between perceived sanction risk and
fear of apprehension. Whereas perceived risk is a cognitive judgment, fear involves vis-
ceral feelings of anxiety or dread. Equally important, a theory explicating the influence
of deterrence on both criminal propensity and situational offending has remained elu-
sive. We develop a theoretical model in which perceived risk and fear are distinguished
at both the general and situational levels. We test this theoretical model with data from a
set of survey-based experiments conducted in 2016 with a nationwide sample of adults
(N =965). We find that perceived risk and fear are empirically distinct and that per-
ceived risk is positively related to fear at both the general and situational levels. Certain
background and situational factors have indirect effects through perceived risk on fear.
In turn, perceived risk has indirect effects through fear on both criminal propensity and
situational intentions to offend. Fear’s inclusion increases explanatory power for both
criminal propensity and situational offending intentions. Fear is a stronger predictor
than either self-control or prior offending of situational intentions to offend.
Of all passions, that which inclineth men least to break the laws, is fear. Nay, except-
ing some generous natures, it is the only thing, when there is appearance of profit or
pleasure by breaking the laws, that makes men keep them.
—Thomas Hobbes (1957 [1651]: 195).
Founded on the Enlightenment philosophies of Beccaria (1963 [1764]) and Bentham
(1988 [1789]), the deterrence tradition developed as an economic approach to explaining
crime causation (Cook, 1980). Deterrence researchers quantified various properties of
Additional supporting information can be found in the listing for this article in the Wiley Online
Library at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/crim.2018.56.issue-1/issuetoc.
This research was supported by funding from the University at Albany Faculty Research Awards
Program (FRAP)-Category B and from the Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Center at the
University at Albany, SUNY.
Direct correspondence to Justin T. Pickett, School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany,
SUNY, 135 Western Avenue, Albany, NY 12222 (e-mail: jpickett@albany.edu).
C2017 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12153
CRIMINOLOGY Volume 56 Number 1 27–58 2018 27
28 PICKETT, ROCHE, & POGARSKY
sanctioning regimes—the probability (certainty), speed (celerity), and amount (severity)
of formal punishment—as likely predictors of criminal offending (Becker, 1968; Gibbs,
1975). Beginning with Waldo and Chiricos (1972), attention increasingly turned to the
subjective properties of sanction regimes (Nagin, 1998; Paternoster, 1987). In subsequent
studies, researchers assessed people’s cognitive judgments about the probability, speed,
and amount of punishment (Lochner, 2007; Loughran et al., 2016; Matsueda, Kreager,
and Huizinga, 2006). They found a modest deterrent effect of the perceived probability
but not the speed or amount of formal punishment (Apel, 2013; Pickett and Roche, 2016;
Pratt et al., 2006). As Paternoster (2010: 819) observed, “A puzzling question is why de-
terrent effects reported in the literature are not stronger.” Others have concluded that
because “the body of evidence pointing to deterrence theory’s weak effects is large and
consistent,” there is warrant to “simply declare it to be a weak explanation of criminal
behavior and leave it at that” (Pratt and Turanovic, 2016: 17).
One possibility is that the strength of deterrence theory has been underestimated in
the empirical literature because researchers have overlooked fear. Fear is “an inhibitory
emotion” that should strongly impede criminogenic tendencies (Topalli and Wright, 2014:
52). For centuries, scholars have emphasized that the emotion (or passion) of fear is es-
sential for deterrence (Beccaria, 1963 [1764]; Hobbes, 1957 [1651]). Gibbs (1975) defined
deterrence as crime control through the inoculation of fear and posited that perceived
sanction risk is a cause of fear. Cusson (1993: 55) asserted that “fear is obviously at the
heart of deterrence” but explained that it “is not a calculated risk.” Whereas perceived
risk is a cognitive judgment, fear entails feelings of anxiety or dread (Farrall, Jackson, and
Gray, 2009; Warr, 2000).
The fear elicited by the thought of apprehension should be a powerful and most
proximate deterrence variable influencing criminal decision-making. As Camerer,
Loewenstein, and Prelec (2005: 484) explained, “cognition by itself cannot produce ac-
tion; to influence behavior, the cognitive system must operate via the affective system.”
Therefore, although the dominant view is that “deterrence is essentially a perceptual
phenomenon” (Raaijmakers et al., 2017: 6), deterrence ultimately may be emotional
(Jacobs and Cherbonneau, 2017). At the same time, it is improbable that a given level
of perceived sanction risk will inspire the same amount of fear in all people in all situ-
ations (Cusson, 1993; Jacobs, 2010). Instead, individuals are likely to differ in the ten-
dency to feel anxiety about apprehension, net of sanction perceptions (Loewenstein
et al., 2001). Individual differences in affective responsiveness to sanction risk may help
to explain variation in deterrability (or risk sensitivity), which has been undertheorized
and rarely analyzed in deterrence scholarship (Jacobs, 2010; Jacobs and Cherbonneau,
2017).
In this study, we develop a bifurcated theoretical model of deterrence, which dis-
tinguishes perceived sanction risk from fear of apprehension at both the general and
situational levels, and elaborates the role of fear in two important stages of criminal
decision-making: 1) general openness to crime and 2) the weighing of specific criminal
opportunities. To do so, we integrate insights from three areas of scholarship: 1) fear
of crime (Ferraro, 1995; Jackson, 2011; Warr, 1987), 2) the role of emotions in criminal
decision-making (van Gelder and de Vries, 2012, 2014; van Gelder et al., 2017), and 3) the
relationship between generalized criminal propensity and situational offending (Cullen
and Pratt, 2016; Piquero and Tibbetts, 1996; Piquero et al., 2011). We argue that because
prior perceptual deterrence studies have not accounted for the role played by fear of
FEAR AND DETERRENCE 29
apprehension, the current understanding of crime decisions is incomplete.1The results
from an experiment conducted with a large nationwide sample of Americans (N=965)
support our theoretical expectations.
FEAR VERSUS RISK, EMOTION VERSUS COGNITION
Findings from neuropsychological studies reveal that fear is neither an inevitable nor
an invariable response to risk, and individuals differ substantially in their susceptibility
to fearfulness (Loewenstein et al., 2001; Raine, 2013). These insights have important im-
plications for deterrence. Although there is a wealth of evidence about perceptions of
sanction risk (Anwar and Loughran, 2011; Lochner, 2007; Pickett and Bushway, 2015;
Thomas, Loughran, and Piquero, 2013), previous research has not explored fear of appre-
hension. Deterrence researchers have touched on the theoretical importance of fear or
worry—noting, for example, that “the key question is to what extent compliance with the
law is influenced by fear of punishment?” (Wikstr ¨
om, Tseloni, and Karlis, 2011: 403, em-
phasis added). Unfortunately, analyses have been limited to cognitive measures of sanc-
tion risk (e.g., “how great a risk [do] you think there is of being caught”) (Wikstr ¨
om,
Tseloni, and Karlis, 2011: 408). In a few studies, the deterrent effects of general negative
state affect have been investigated but not fear of apprehension (van Gelder and de Vries,
2012, 2014); these studies are discussed in the next section.
Given the dearth of research on fear of apprehension, we turn to the rich literature on
fear of crime for insights on the measurement of fear, its relation to cognitive judgments
about risk, and its influence on behavior (Farrall, Jackson, and Gray, 2009; Hale, 1996;
Warr, 2009). Before proceeding, we should clarify why research on fear of crime is useful
for understanding fear of apprehension in criminal decision-making. As Warr (2000: 454)
explained, “there is no evidence that fear of crime is qualitatively different from other
forms of fear. What differentiates one from another is merely the object or stimulus of
fear.”
The earliest research on fear of crime suffered from “theoretical casualness and empir-
ical chaos” (Hale, 1996: 94). Most notably, there was “a failure to recognize elementary
distinctions between perception, cognition, and emotion” (Warr, 2000: 453). This charac-
terization also applies to the deterrence literature, where researchers who have used cog-
nitive measures of sanction risk have sometimes concluded that their findings illuminate
how individuals respond when “they fear the consequences” of getting caught (Wikstr ¨
om,
Tseloni, and Karlis, 2011: 417). In contrast, fear is an emotional “reaction to the perceived
environment” (Warr, 2000: 453), and thus, it is theoretically distinct from cognitive judg-
ments, like perceptions of likelihood or severity of consequences (Ferraro, 1995; Ferraro
and LaGrange, 1987).
In developing our theoretical model, we focused on the relationship between per-
ceived certainty and fear of apprehension. Researchers have found a deterrent effect of
1. Deterrence researchers have investigated the effect of exogenous emotional shocks on criminal
decision-making, with mixed results (Kamerdze et al., 2014; Loewenstein, Nagin, and Paternos-
ter, 1997). Such incidental affect—that is, feelings triggered by something other than the target
object—is theoretically and empirically distinct from fear of apprehension, which is integral af-
fect, or feelings that are intrinsically linked to the specific target object (i.e., criminal sanctions;
Blanchette and Richards, 2010).

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