Emotions in Criminal Decision Making

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Emotions in Criminal Decision Making
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Chapter 22
Emotions i n Offe nde r

Decision Ma k i ng
Jean-L ouis van Gelder
Although it has been contended that emotions have been incorporated into all the
major theoretical perspectives in criminology (Benson and Livelsberger 2012), it is
probably more accurate to argue that with some notable exceptions (Braithwaite 1989;
Agnew 1992), emotional processes have failed to occupy a central position in crimi-
nological thought (Bouffard, Exum, and Paternoster 2000; Giordano, Schroeder, and
Cernkovich 2007; Nagin 2007). As De Haan and Loader (2002) observe, many estab-
lished modes of criminological thought pay little attention to or ignore entirely the
impact of emotions on their subject matter.
Importantly, research and theorizing that has given a more prominent role to emo-
tions has largely remained confined to narrative and interpretative studies or has treated
them as enduring individual dispositions (Lofland 1969; Katz 1988, 1991; Braithwaite
1989; Agnew 1992; Shover 1996; Lopez and Emmer 2000; Athens 2005; Wikström 2006;
Giordano et al. 2007). Very little attention has been given to the actual decision-making
processes of offenders. This inattention to the choice process has diverted attention from
issues that are fundamental to understanding crime as a phenomenon and also created a
fundamental disconnect with criminal law and, therefore, important questions of public
policy (Nagin 2007, p. 261).
As will be argued in more detail later, crime research examining emotions that did
take a decision-making approach (Grasmick and Bursik 1990; Grasmick, Bursik, and
Arneklev 1993; Nagin and Paternoster 1993; Piquero and Tibbetts 1996) has tended to
examine emotions as predictions of future feeling states rather than of emotions actually
experienced at the time of decision. Hence, these studies still modeled the decision pro-
cess as a largely cognitive enterprise and did not fully acknowledge the role of emotions
on offender decision making.
To begin, the next section provides some general observations and definitions regard-
ing emotions drawing from criminology’s sister disciplines in the social sciences. Then,
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Emotions in Offender Decision Making 467
criminological decision-making research that has addressed the role of emotions is

discussed.
I. What Are Emotions?
Whereas the question as to what exactly are emotions is still the subject of lively debate
among theorists (Keltner and Lerner 2010), many of their properties attract little dis-
agreement among experts. Emotions are one type or manifestation of what is referred
as “affect,” which is a general term denoting the subjective experience of feelings, such
as emotions, but also refers to moods and other visceral drive states, such as pain, drug
craving, and sexual arousal (Loewenstein 1996). Often, these different feeling states are
indiscriminately referred to as emotions in the criminological literature, but this is inac-
curate. Moods and emotions are closely related but nonetheless distinct feeling states
(Beedie, Terry and Lane 2005). Moods are low-intensity, diffuse (i.e., unfocused), and
relatively enduring affective states without a clear antecedent cause and therefore have
little cognitive content (e.g., feeling good or feeling bad) (Forgas 1995, p. 41). Emotions,
on the other hand, are more intense than moods, more focused, short-lived, and usu-
ally do have a definite cause (e.g., being angry at, or fearful of, something) (Forgas 1995,
p. 41).1 Most definitions of emotion stress that they orient people to responding to events
in their environment (Keltner and Lerner 2010). Frijda and Mesquita (1994, p. 51), for
example, argue that emotions are principally modes of relating to the environment—
that is, states of readiness for engaging or not engaging in interaction with that
environment.
In the criminological literature, what is sometimes erroneously referred to as emo-
tions in fact refers to a more enduring propensity to experience certain types of feelings,
such as the tendency to experience negative feelings including anxiety and anger. This
is the case, for example, in general strain theory (Agnew 1992), according to which the
occurrence of negative life events and circumstances and the loss of positive stimuli are
assumed to generate negative feelings, such as anger and frustration, that create a pres-
sure for “corrective action,” which can take the form of criminal conduct (Agnew 1992,
2001). As Nagin (2007, p. 261) observes, the idea of emotions as a social force or external
agent that drives the individual toward or away from crime embedded in this type of
theory lacks a sense of people making choices—what is sometimes referred to human
agency. This chapter focuses on emotions as momentary and short-lived feelings with
a clear antecedent cause, and their influence on the actual choice process, and not on
individual dispositions or enduring feeling states. The next section discusses a class of
emotions that have been dealt with in criminological research, and it is argued that these
emotions in particular have properties that make them well suited for incorporation in
rational choice frameworks. Later, it is argued that this does not apply to other types of
emotions for which these frameworks are ill-equipped.

468 Oxford Handbook of Offender Decision Making
A. Shame and Guilt as Predictions of Future Feelings

One class of emotions that has attracted the attention of criminal decision making
researchers is formed by those emotions that share a moral character, such as shame
and guilt.2 These emotions have historically also been pivotal in concepts of crime, jus-
tice, and culpability (Karstedt 2011). Moral emotions “function as an emotional moral
barometer by providing immediate and salient feedback on our social and moral
acceptability. That is, when we sin, transgress, or err, aversive feelings of shame, guilt, or
embarrassment are likely to ensue” (Tangney, Stuewig, and Mashek 2007, p. 347). Shame
and guilt are also referred to as self-conscious emotions in the sense that they involve
self-reflection and evaluation (Lewis 2008).
The fact that guilt and shame have a negative hedonic value or, in psychological par-
lance, are negatively valenced means that people are motivated to avoid experiencing
them and therefore have an intrinsic incentive to abide by social norms and to do the
right thing while avoiding doing wrong (van Winden and Ash 2012). When values or
norms are violated, they produce a sense of psychological discomfort, and the more
serious the perceived violation, the more painful is this emotional experience (Tangney,
Mashek, and Stuewig 2007). For example, whereas a speeding ticket might result in mild
embarrassment, a drunk-driving arrest could activate intensely uncomfortable feelings
of shame (van Winden and Ash 2012, p. 198).
In criminological decision- making research, self- conscious and moral emotions
such as shame and guilt have tended to be modeled as anticipated costs to be taken into
account by the decision maker (Grasmick and Bursik 1990; Grasmick, Bursik, and Kinsey
1991; Bachman, Paternoster, and Ward, 1992; Grasmick, Bursik, and Arneklev 1993; Nagin
and Paternoster 1993; Paternoster and Simpson 1993, 1996; Piquero and Tibbetts 1996;
Bouffard, Exum, and Paternoster 2000; Kamerdze, Loughran, and Paternoster 2013;
Tibbetts 2013). These studies have generally attempted to fit emotions within rational
choice and deterrence frameworks. For example, Grasmick et al. (1993, pp. 43–44) argue
that the threat of shame and embarrassment function similarly to the threat of legal sanc-
tions by reducing the expected utility of a contemplated behavior and by varying along
the dimensions of subjective certainty and subjective severity. The desire to avoid feeling
the pangs of their conscience is assumed to steer people away from committing crime.
The difference with formal sanctions is that instead of the state, is that in the case of moral
emotions the source of the threat of punishment is the self (Grasmick and Bursik 1990).
In these studies, shame and guilt are not experienced as feelings at the moment of
decision making but are in fact cognitions about future feeling states; they are predictions
of aversive feeling states that may emerge after a decision has been made (Frijda 1988;
Loewenstein et al. 2001; Bouffard 2002; Loewenstein and Lerner 2003). Loewenstein
et al. (2001) and Loewenstein and Lerner (2003) refer to these types of emotions as antic-
ipated emotions, to be distinguished from emotions that are actually experienced at the
time of decision, such as the fear of negative consequences following criminal conduct
or the anger felt toward a wrongdoer. From a theoretical perspective, this distinction is
relevant because even though anticipated emotions can be and have been incorporated

in rational choice-based models, the decision process remains modeled as the implic-
itly cognitive task of predicting future emotions and weighing them in terms of their
expected utility (Loewenstein et al. 2001).
B. The Immediate Emotions Fear and Anger

Like shame and guilt, fear and anger have a negative hedonic value and are nega-
tively valenced. Different from shame and guilt, however, anger and fear are immedi-
ate rather than anticipated in nature. That is, in the decision-making context, fear and
anger constitute immediate visceral reactions to an event, situation, individual, or
prospect of sanction rather than feelings expected to be experienced sometime in the
future (Loewenstein et al. 2001; Loewenstein and Lerner 2003). Specifically, immedi-
ate emotions “reflect the combined effects of emotions that arise from contemplating
the consequences of the decision itself—what we call anticipatory influences—as well
as emotions that arise from factors unrelated to the decision, which we call incidental
influences” (Loewenstein and Lerner 2003, p. 620). For example, fear can be experienced
in response to anticipated decision outcomes, such as the threat of punishment, but also
toward an attacker.
The difference between anticipated affect and immediate affect is not only pivotal for
our understanding of criminal decision making but also exposes an important limita-
tion of the dominant models of criminal decision making, which are based on the idea
of a reasoning or rational decision maker who weighs costs against benefits to arrive at
a decision. Because the influence of emotions may go unnoticed to the decision maker,
their influence on the criminal decision process is not necessarily consciously mediated.
This makes them impossible to model as costs in ways similar to anticipated shame,
regret, or guilt (van Gelder 2013). In other words, as far as the dominant models of crim-
inal choice have addressed the role of emotions in crime causation, they have done so to
a limited extent only. The next section further elaborates on differences between proper-
ties of the commonly used moral emotions and emotions such as fear and anger draw-
ing from psychological appraisal perspectives on emotion.
II. Making Sense of Emotions in the

Context of Criminal Decision Making:
Drawing from Appraisal Theory
According to appraisal theorists, emotions are responses to the environment geared

to help individuals respond to the challenges facing them (Smith and Ellsworth 1985;
Frijda 1986, 1988; Ellsworth and Scherer 2003). The experience of an emotion is inti-
mately related to the subjective appraisal of the circumstances in which it is experienced

(Smith and Ellsworth 1985). Emotions are furthermore adaptive in the sense that they
set in motion psychological and physiological processes to ready the body for action,
such as dealing with threat (Tooby and Cosmides 2008).
Emotion appraisals, at the most general level, involve evaluative judgments of whether
an event is good or bad and whether people’s current actions and environment corre-
spond to their personal goals and expectations (Keltner and Lerner 2010). Dimensional
approaches to appraisal argue that combinations of a limited set of core dimensions of
appraisal—for example, the degree to which an individual is certain about what is going
to happen, the extent to which an individual has control over the environment, and the
degree to which others, the individual, or the situation are responsible for the events—
give rise to specific emotions (Smith and Ellsworth 1985). For example, anger and guilt
can be meaningfully distinguished with reference to these dimensions. In the face of a
negative event, blaming others produces anger, whereas blaming oneself produces guilt
(Keltner and Lerner 2010). Conversely, if the offense or frustration is viewed as caused
by someone powerful who may commit further offenses in the future, then fear may be
the emotional response (Frijda 1988, p. 350).
An appraisal generates an action tendency, which is a state of readiness to execute a
given kind of action (Frijda 1986, p. 70). As mentioned previously, a perceived offense or
frustration, for example, for which someone else is viewed as the cause and that could
have been avoided, can trigger anger. The intensity of the anger inter alia will depend
on the intentionality of the frustration, the proximity of the stimulus, and the stakes
involved (van Winden and Ash 2012, p. 195).
According to appraisal theorists, the links between specific emotions and specific
appraisals and choice propensities are relatively systematic (Frijda 1988; Loewenstein
and Lerner 2003). In support of this assumption, Lerner and Keltner (2001) found that
fearful and angry individuals (both dispositional and experimentally induced) differed
in their risk assessments and risky choice behavior. Fearful individuals made more pes-
simistic risk assessments and risk-averse choices in comparison to angry individuals.
This finding can be explained by the fact that anger is associated with appraisals of cer-
tainty and control, whereas fear is associated with appraisals of uncertainty and a lack of
control (see also Smith and Ellsworth 1985; Lerner and Keltner 2000).
Appraisal frameworks, and their supportive empirical evidence, if taken seriously,
have important repercussions for theorizing about the influence of emotions on crimi-
nal decision making because they show that rather than viewing them as irregular dis-
ruptions of sound decision making, emotions may serve adaptive functions and exert
an influence on behavior that is systematic and therefore, to a certain extent, predict-
able. Note that the idea of emotions exerting a systematic influence on behavior runs
counter to several fundamental assumptions underlying rational choice theory, which
assumes that people are capable of making adequate probability and utility calculations,
and while acknowledging that people can make mistakes in their calculations, these are
assumed to be unsystematic (Gilovich and Griffin 2002). Next, empirical research on
the effects of anger and fear on criminal decision making are discussed separately.

A. Anger
Anger is associated with a sense that the self or someone one cares about is offended or
injured or that interests or goals are threatened or frustrated (Lazarus 1991; Lerner and
Tiedens 2006). As mentioned previously, in terms of appraisal processes, anger is char-
acterized by a sense of certainty over what has happened and a notion of control over
the situation (Smith and Ellsworth 1985). In response to the anger-eliciting stimulus, the
angry decision maker may be motivated to “set things straight” and to punish or retali-
ate in some way against the perceived cause(s) of his or her anger.
At high levels of intensity, anger may “take over” people’s thoughts and guide their
actions to the point of leading them to act directly contrary to their self-interest
(Loewenstein 1996). Therefore, despite its adaptive function, if not regulated and prop-
erly expressed, anger runs the risk of incurring long-term costs (Lemerise and Dodge
2008). Concerning the interrelation between emotion and self-control, Baumeister and
Heatherton (1996) note that an
emotion increases the salience of whatever produces the emotion and so attention
will tend to focus on whatever has prompted the emotion. Most commonly, some-
thing in the immediate situation is the cause and so emotion tends to have the effect
of concentrating in the here and now, thereby thwarting transcendence and making
self-regulation more difficult. (p. 5)
Loewenstein and Lerner (2003) add that
the strength of immediate emotions is that they provide such amorphous, but often
important, inputs into decision making. The pitfall of immediate emotions is that
they often crowd out considerations of expected emotions altogether and cause peo-
ple to make decisions that ignore or underweight important future consequences.
Both types of emotions, therefore, are essential to decision making, but the wrong
mix in the wrong situation can be destructive. (p. 621)
At lower levels of intensity, people seem able to overcome the influence of immediate
emotions when they deem those emotions to be irrelevant to a decision at hand, but at
higher levels of intensity, emotions can progressively assume control of behavior.
Furthermore, intense anger may “spill over” and be directed at other things besides
the anger-eliciting stimulus. Subsequent decisions that are unrelated to the source of
one’s anger may still influence attributions of blame, lead to the perception of ambiguous
behavior as hostile, and to discounting the role of uncontrollable factors (Loewenstein
and Lerner, 2003). Incidental moods and emotions can therefore influence normatively
unrelated judgments and decisions. Anger as a consequence of a conflict at work, for
example, may facilitate road rage later on the way home.
Several criminological studies have examined the role of anger in a decision-making
context (Broidy 2001; Capowich, Marerolle, and Piquero 2001; Exum 2002; Mazerolle,

Piquero, and Capowich 2003; Carmichael and Piquero 2004; Shalvi, van Gelder, and
van der Schalk 2013; van Gelder, Reynald, and Elffers 2013). In one study, Exum (2002)
experimentally examined the effect of anger (provoked by a false accusation by the
experimenter) and alcohol intoxication on violent decision making using a “bar fight”
scenario. It was found that participants who had been assigned to consume alcohol
reported higher probability scores for other male-referent aggression in the anger-
provoking condition compared to nonprovoked controls, although not for themselves.
Furthermore, there was no independent effect of anger (or alcohol) on intentions to
aggress. Perceived costs and benefits of violent decision making also remained unaf-
fected under different levels of anger (Exum 2002).
Carmichael and Piquero (2004), also using a bar fight scenario and linking perceived
anger (as opposed to actually induced anger such as in the study by Exum [2002]) to
rational considerations, such as perceived formal and informal sanctions, did find a
direct effect of perceived anger on intentions to aggress. In addition, they found that
perceived anger was related to perceived thrill (of engaging in an assault) but not to
either formal or informal sanctions. Finally, they found that the effect of informal and
formal sanctions varied under different levels of perceived anger. Individuals perceiving
little anger were more likely to be deterred than those perceiving high anger.
Schweitzer and Gibson (2008) and Shalvi et al. (2013) found that when people think
that they are treated unfairly, they become angry at the person responsible for it and
feel justified taking revenge on him or her. In the study by Shalvi et al., it was found
that when people believe they are treated unfairly, they experience more anger and are
also more prone to dishonestly disadvantage the person who evoked their anger in com-
parison to non-angered individuals. In their experiment, each participant wrote a short
essay and subsequently evaluated an essay written by a student from another univer-
sity (in reality, a computer) who simultaneously evaluated the participant’s essay. In the
experimental condition, the evaluation by the other student was overly harsh and criti-
cal. After the experiment, the (real) subjects engaged in a simple task that allowed them
to anonymously determine their own as well as the other’s monetary outcomes allegedly
as part of the experiment. It was found that anger led to dishonestly disadvantaging the
other (Shalvi et al. 2013).
Van Gelder, Reynald, and Elffers (2013) examined both moral emotions and anger in
two experimental studies addressing the question of whether and to what extent feelings
of anger influence the impact of moral emotions on decisions to offend. In the first study,
anger operationalized as a consequence of being treated unfairly was shown to make
people more prone to dishonestly disadvantage those who had treated them unfairly.
Although moral emotions were negatively related to intentions to offend, this effect
was muted and lost its deterrent potential under conditions of anger. In addition, the
results of the second study revealed that immediate shame (i.e., experimentally induced
shame), which was generated by means of a writing task in which subjects were asked
to write about an event or situation that had led them to experience intense feelings of
shame and that was therefore normatively unrelated to the situation and the decision
outcomes, was also negatively associated with criminal choice. Therefore, immediate

shame that is felt at the time of decision, and that is normatively unrelated to the deci-
sion at hand, was shown to influence criminal decisions negatively.
B. Fear
Karstedt (2002) notes that both popular wisdom and criminological theory have “estab-
lished fear of sanctions as a cornerstone and powerful mechanism of the criminal jus-
tice system, the thing that makes it work” (p. 301). Indeed, fear was the foundational
premise of the original deterrence model proposed by utilitarian philosophers Beccaria
and Bentham. For example, in Essay on Crimes and Punishments, Beccaria (1764/1819)
writes that “the laws are obeyed through fear of punishment” (p. 122). In a similar vein,
Bentham (1830) writes, “It is the fear of punishment, in so far as it is known, which pre-
vents the commission of crime” (p. 516). Over time, however, the idea of deterrence hav-
ing an emotional basis was somewhat lost. The following passage from Loewenstein
(2000) is worth quoting in extenso in this context:
When Jeremy Bentham … first proposed the construct of utility, emotions figured
prominently in his theory. Because Bentham viewed utility as the net sum of positive
over negative emotions, he devoted a substantial part of his treatise on utility to a dis-
cussion of the determinants and nature of emotions. When neoclassical economists
later constructed their new approach to economics upon the foundation of util-
ity, however, they rapidly became disillusioned with utility’s psychological under-
pinnings and sought to expunge the utility construct of its emotional content. This
process culminated in the development of ordinal utility and the theory of revealed
preference which construed utility as an index of preference rather than of happi-
ness. (p. 426)
In criminology, the essence of the deterrence model laid out by Beccaria and Bentham
remained largely intact until economist Becker (1968) in his seminal article integrated
utility ideas into the criminal decision-making process (Piquero et al. 2011, p. 337).
According to Becker, the decision to offend is based on the same principles of cost–
benefit analysis people use when selecting legal behaviors. In other words, the choice for
crime is a purely rational one according to this view.
Becker’s ideas resonated with crime researchers, and in the mid-1980s criminolo-
gists began to understand deterrence theory as a theory about the perception of sanc-
tion threats (Paternoster 2010). That is, most decision-making studies in criminology
have operationalized deterrence as a function of the perceived probability of sanction
and the perceived severity of sanction, possibly complemented with the perceived celer-
ity of that sanction’s imposition (Zimring and Hawkins 1973; Klepper and Nagin 1989;
Bachman et al. 1992; Nagin and Paternoster 1993, 1994; Paternoster and Simpson 1996;
Nagin and Pogarsky 2001).
Although the role of fear of sanction may be implicitly present in empirical studies
on perceptual deterrence, little systematic research has attempted to directly measure

it.3 Most research essentially equates fear of punishment with perceived risk of sanc-
tion. However, as is argued in detail in c hapter 9 of this volume, perceptions of sanction
severity and probability incur in part different mental processes than does fear of pun-
ishment, and cognitions of sanction severity and probability are different from people’s
emotional reaction toward sanctions (van Gelder and de Vries 2012, 2014).
In support of the idea that fear of sanction as an emotional experience is different
from the perceived risk of sanction as a cognitive process, van Gelder and de Vries (2012)
examined both the negative feelings of fear, worry, and anxiety and the perceived risk
of sanction, operationalized in line with deterrence theory as the product of the per-
ceived probability of sanction and its perceived severity, as predictors of criminal choice
alongside personality traits using a scenario design. They found that both negative affect
and perceived risk of sanction predicted criminal choice, with the former being a stron-
ger predictor than the latter. The difference between the emotional response to sanction
(i.e., fear of punishment) and the cognitive response to it (i.e., perceived risk of sanc-
tion) was further demonstrated in a subsequent article (van Gelder and de Vries 2014) in
which the authors used a priming task to show that having participants rely on their
thinking strengthened the relation between perceived risk and criminal choice, whereas
having them rely on their feelings strengthened the relation between negative affect and
criminal choice. In other words, fear of crime and perceived sanction appear to belong
to different mental modes of information processing—a “cool” cognitive mode versus a
“hot” affective mode.4
III. Conclusion
This chapter provided an overview of research and theorizing on the role of emotions
on offender decision making. It was argued that the treatment of emotions in the crimi-
nological literature on offender decision making has been limited, and research that has
addressed emotions has tended to focus on a specific type of emotion (i.e., anticipated
moral emotions) rather than emotions actually experienced at the time of decision.
The relative neglect of emotions in crime research has meant that dominant models of
criminal decision making tend to draw from the rational choice paradigm and consider
emotions to be largely irrelevant to the decision process or as unsystemic influences
subverting sound decision making only. This is somewhat ironic given the fact that the
architects of the rational choice paradigm in criminology argued that their perspective
was based on psychological research: “[A]‌considerable body of recent psychological
research on information processing and decision making has passed largely unnoticed
by criminologists” (Clarke and Cornish 1985, p. 158; see also Cornish and Clarke 1986).
Yet this work has received only sparse updating since. Consequently, insights from
approximately three decades of research in the very same tradition that forms its basis
have gone relatively unnoticed in criminal decision-making research (Van Gelder et
al. 2013). This research has shown that emotions, and also other feeling states such as

moods and visceral factors, play a fundamental role in human decision processes, along-
side rational and cognitive considerations that commonly feature in theories of criminal
decision making (van Gelder et al. 2013). In these three decades, research in all fields of
psychology has led to a robust science of emotion that appears to represent a paradigm
shift in thinking about human nature (Keltner and Lerner 2010, p. 317). This science may
also prove vital to our understanding of crime. It is hoped that crime researchers will see
the potential of this still largely open field in their discipline.
Notes
1. For a more extensive discussion of the differences between moods, emotions, and visceral
drive states such as sexual arousal and drug craving, see van Gelder et al. (2013) and van
Gelder (2013).
2. A more extensive treatment of moral emotions is provided by in chapter 12 of this volume.
3. For an overview of work on perceptual deterrence, see chapter 7 in this volume.
4. For a discussion of dual process, see chapter 9 of this volume.
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Emotions in Criminal Decision Making

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Jean-Louis Van Gelder

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Emotions in Offender Decision Making 467

criminological decision-​making research that has addressed the role of emotions is

I. What Are Emotions?

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A. Shame and Guilt as Predictions of Future Feelings

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B. The Immediate Emotions Fear and Anger

II. Making Sense of Emotions in the

According to appraisal theorists, emotions are responses to the environment geared

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470 Oxford Handbook of Offender Decision Making

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Loewenstein and Lerner (2003) add that

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criminological decision-making research that has addressed the role of emotions is

A. Shame and Guilt as Predictions of Future Feelings

B. The Immediate Emotions Fear and Anger