University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2010 Oct;17(5):630-6. doi: 10.3758/PBR.17.5.630.
Criminal activity often involves considerable risks. It is therefore not surprising that criminals have been speculated to differ from noncriminals in risk attitude. Yet, few data exist to support this assumption. Moreover, the psychological underpinnings of differences in risk attitude are currently little understood. We presented prisoners and controls with sets of risky decision tasks and modeled their responses using cumulative prospect theory (CPT). The two groups showed several differences. Prisoners were more risk seeking than nonprisoners in lotteries involving losses, but they were less risk seeking in lotteries involving high-probability gains. Best-fitting CPT parameters indicated a reduced sensitivity to outcomes, for both gains and losses, and a stronger loss aversion among prisoners. In addition, prisoners showed a diminished sensitivity to the probability of gains. Our results contribute to a better understanding of prisoners' risk attitudes and the underlying mechanisms that distinguish prisoners from nonprisoners and may thus help improve interventions designed to prevent crime.
犯罪活动通常涉及相当大的风险。因此，犯罪者的风险态度与非犯罪者不同，这并不奇怪。然而，目前几乎没有数据支持这一假设。此外，风险态度差异的心理基础目前还知之甚少。我们向囚犯和对照组展示了一系列风险决策任务，并使用累积前景理论（CPT）对他们的反应进行了建模。这两组人表现出了一些差异。与涉及损失的彩票相比，囚犯比非囚犯更倾向于冒险，但与涉及高概率收益的彩票相比，囚犯则不太倾向于冒险。最佳拟合的 CPT 参数表明，囚犯对收益和损失的结果敏感度降低，对损失的厌恶感更强。此外，囚犯对收益概率的敏感度也降低了。我们的研究结果有助于更好地理解囚犯的风险态度以及将囚犯与非囚犯区分开来的潜在机制，从而有助于改进旨在预防犯罪的干预措施。
