Immoral criminals? An experimental study of social preferences among prisoners

Published in

NHH Discussion Paper No. 15, 2011.

Abstract

This paper studies the pro-social preferences of criminals by comparing the behavior of a group of prisoners in a lab experiment with the behavior of a benchmark group recruited from the general population. We find a striking similarity in the importance the two groups attach to pro-social preferences in both in strategic and non-strategic situations. This result also holds when the two groups interact. Data from a large internet experiment, matched with official criminal records, suggest that our main finding from the lab experiment is not influenced by the additional scrutiny experienced by participants in prison.

By Sigbjørn Birkeland, Alexander Cappelen, Erik Sørensen, and Bertil Tungodden
Published Mar. 23, 2015 11:20 AM - Last modified May 30, 2016 10:00 AM