The Decision to Commit Crime: Rational or Irrational?

Rational choice theory has received a fair amount of attention from criminal justice scholars and societal policy makers looking for an alternative to traditional deterministic theories of criminal behavior and is a core feature of several major criminological theories. In an effort to provide a more comprehensive perspective on criminal decision making the current paper highlights the role of emotion in the choice process and reviews factors that increase the likelihood of antisocial outcomes. The result is a theory of decision making where hedonistic and moral emotions guide moral decision making and irrelevant emotions are enhanced and relevant emotions dampened by cognitive and situational factors that, in the end, serve as the foundation for criminal choice.