Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Simply Criminal: Predicting Burglars’ Occupancy Decisions with a Simple Heuristic

Simply Criminal: Predicting Burglars’ Occupancy Decisions with a Simple Heuristic Rationalchoice theories of criminal decision making assume that offenders weight andintegrate multiple cues when making decisions (i.e., are compensatory). Wetested this assumption by comparing how well a compensatory strategy calledFranklin’s Rule captured burglars’ decision policies regardingresidence occupancy compared to a non-compensatory strategy (i.e., MatchingHeuristic). Forty burglars each decided on the occupancy of 20 randomly selectedphotographs of residences (for which actual occupancy was known when the photowas taken). Participants also provided open-ended reports on the cues thatinfluenced their decisions in each case, and then rated the importance of eightcues (e.g., deadbolt visible) over all decisions. Burglars predicted occupancybeyond chance levels. The Matching Heuristic was a significantly betterpredictor of burglars’ decisions than Franklin’s Rule, and cue usein the Matching Heuristic better corresponded to the cue ecological validitiesin the environment than cue use in Franklin’s Rule. The most important cuein burglars’ models was also the most ecologically valid or predictive ofactual occupancy (i.e., vehicle present). The majority of burglars correctlyidentified the most important cue in their models, and the open-ended techniqueshowed greater correspondence between self-reported and captured cue use thanthe rating over decision technique. Our findings support a limited rationalityperspective to understanding criminal decision making, and have implications forcrime prevention. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Law and Human Behavior American Psychological Association

Simply Criminal: Predicting Burglars’ Occupancy Decisions with a Simple Heuristic

Download PDF
11 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/american-psychological-association/simply-criminal-predicting-burglars-occupancy-decisions-with-a-simple-WIxO0dEjXs

References (48)

Publisher
American Psychological Association
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 American Psychological Association
ISSN
0147-7307
eISSN
1573-661X
DOI
10.1007/s10979-010-9238-0
pmid
20556493
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Rationalchoice theories of criminal decision making assume that offenders weight andintegrate multiple cues when making decisions (i.e., are compensatory). Wetested this assumption by comparing how well a compensatory strategy calledFranklin’s Rule captured burglars’ decision policies regardingresidence occupancy compared to a non-compensatory strategy (i.e., MatchingHeuristic). Forty burglars each decided on the occupancy of 20 randomly selectedphotographs of residences (for which actual occupancy was known when the photowas taken). Participants also provided open-ended reports on the cues thatinfluenced their decisions in each case, and then rated the importance of eightcues (e.g., deadbolt visible) over all decisions. Burglars predicted occupancybeyond chance levels. The Matching Heuristic was a significantly betterpredictor of burglars’ decisions than Franklin’s Rule, and cue usein the Matching Heuristic better corresponded to the cue ecological validitiesin the environment than cue use in Franklin’s Rule. The most important cuein burglars’ models was also the most ecologically valid or predictive ofactual occupancy (i.e., vehicle present). The majority of burglars correctlyidentified the most important cue in their models, and the open-ended techniqueshowed greater correspondence between self-reported and captured cue use thanthe rating over decision technique. Our findings support a limited rationalityperspective to understanding criminal decision making, and have implications forcrime prevention.

Journal

Law and Human Behavior – American Psychological Association

Published: Aug 17, 2011

There are no references for this article.