Citizens’ Perceptions on the Role of Court Sentencing in Crime Control: A Survey of Mthatha High Court Juridical Area in South Africa

For over a century, the role of court sentencing on crime deterrence has generated significant debate. In this study, we explored the citizens’ perceptions on the role of court sentencing in South Africa’s Mthatha area. The findings are looked in the context of the broad theories of punishment namely: retributive theory, deterrence theory, preventive theory, reformative theory and compensation theory. A total of purposefully sampled 90 respondents were invited to participate in this study through closed-ended questionnaires. The univariate perception results of the study reveal that reformation of the offender, protection of the offender from being harmed by the victim in retaliation, and ensuring that the victims get justice are the most significant roles of court sentencing. Collectively, the reality that severe sentence scares potential criminals not to commit crime stands out and is the most correlated role of court sentencing. Court sentencing was also viewed to be having two pronged preventive effect on criminal activities. First, the criminal is incapacitated from engaging in criminal activities during the time of imprisonment; and second, the offender is removed from the environmental factors that led to offending. As part of the conclusion, the study recommends sentencing policies that mainly support reformation of offenders.

Facemask Wearing and Social Distancing: A Test of Risk Compensation Theory

Studies suggest facemask wearing and social distancing are convenient ways to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. However, people might feel an unwarranted sense of safety when engaging in these COVID-prevention behaviors, as predicted by risk compensation theory. Our field research evaluated whether risk compensation influences facemask wearing and social distancing. The evidence-based theory of risk homeostasis presumes individuals will take more risks when they feel more protected. Therefore, someone wearing a facemask should feel safer and subsequently stand closer to others. Research students tested this theory by observing facemask wearing and social distancing in various locations. These students recorded three different observations in a Qualtrics survey: 1) an individual’s gender, 2) mask-wearing behavior (wearing a facemask, wearing a facemask incorrectly, or not wearing a facemask), and 3) the estimated distance between the individual and the nearest person within a six-foot radius. Our field observations of 2,068 individuals revealed that people wearing a facemask maintained greater social/interpersonal distances than did people not wearing a facemask or wearing a facemask incorrectly. This finding supports response generalization or a positive spillover effect rather than risk compensation.

Choosing Plan B Over Plan A: Risk Compensation Theory and Contraceptive Choice in India

Can women's contraceptive method choice be better understood through risk compensation theory? This theory implies that people act with greater care when the perceived risk of an activity is higher and with less care when it is lower. We examine how increased over-the-counter access to emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs) accompanied by marketing campaigns in India affected women's contraceptive method choices and incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Although ECPs substantially reduce the risk of pregnancy, they are less effective than other contraceptive methods and do not reduce the risk of STIs. We test whether an exogenous policy change that increased access to ECPs leads people to substitute away from other methods of contraception, such as condoms, thereby increasing the risk of both unintended pregnancy and STIs. We find evidence for risk compensation in terms of reduced use of condoms but not for increases in rates of STIs.

How to Make COVID-19 Contact Tracing Apps work: Insights from Behavioral Economics (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Due to network effects, Contact Tracing Apps (CTAs) are only effective if many people download them. However, the response to CTAs has been tepid. For example, in France less than 2 million people (roughly 3% of the population) downloaded the CTA. Consequently, CTAs need to be fundamentally rethought to increase their effectiveness. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to show that CTAs can still play a key role in containing the pandemic, provided that they take into account insights from behavioral sciences. Moreover, we study whether emphasizing the virtues of CTA to induce people to download them makes app users engage in more risky behaviors (risk compensation theory) and whether feedback on a user’s behavior affects future behaviors. METHODS We perform a double-blind online experiment (n=1500) divided in two phases. In Phase I respondents are randomly assigned to one of three different groups: Pros of the app, Pros and Cons of the app and Control I. Respondents in the Pros group were shown information on the advantages of CTAs. Participants in the Pros and Cons group were shown information on both the advantages and the problems that characterize CTAs. Last, respondents in the Control I group were not given any information on CTAs. All participants are then asked how worried they are about the pandemic, how likely they are to download the app, and on how they intend to behave (e.g. attend small and large gathering, wear a mask, etc.). A week later we carried out Phase II. Participants in Phase II were randomly assigned to different in-app notifications in which they were informed on how much risk they were taking compared to the average user. We then ask participants their intentions for future behaviors to investigate whether these notifications were effective in making respondents more prudent. RESULTS All 1500 participants completed phase I of the experiment, whereas 1303 (86.9%) completed also phase 2. The main findings are: i) informing people on the pros of the app make them less worried about the pandemic (p=.004), ii) informing people about both the pros and the cons of the app makes them more likely to download the app (p=.07); iii) carefully devised in-app notification induce people to state that they will: attend less large gatherings (p= .05) and less small gatherings (p= .001), see less people at risk (p=.004), that they stay more at home (p=.006) and wear more often the mask (p=.09). We do not find support for the risk-compensation theory. CONCLUSIONS we suggest that CTAs should be re-framed as Behavioral Feedback Apps (BFAs). The main function of BFAs would be providing users with information on how to minimize the risk of contracting COVID-19, e.g. to provide information on how crowded a store is likely to be at a given time of the day. Moreover, the BFA could have a rating system that allows users to flag stores that do not respect safety norms, such as mandating customers to wear a mask or not respecting social distancing. These functions can inform the behavior of app users, thus playing a key role in containing the spread of the virus even if a small percentage of people download the BFA. While effective contact tracing is impossible when only 3% of the population downloads the app, less risk taking by small portions of the population can produce large benefits. BFAs can be programmed so that users can also activate a tracing function akin to the one currently carried out by CTAs. Making contact tracing an ancillary, opt-in function might facilitate a wider acceptance of BFAs.

On the Effect of Inferiority on Love in Of Human Bondage Based on Inferiority Compensation Theory

Of Human Bondage, one of W. S. Maugham’s great works, is supposed to be created on the basis of the real life of the author. It centers on the psychological growth of the hero, Philip, from a crippled boy to a mentally matured man. Following Alfred Adler’s theory of inferiority compensation, through a close look into Philip’s experiences with different women in his life, this paper tries to probe into the effect that the initial inferiority in Philip could produce on his view of love and also on his mentality and aims to explore the compensation Philip seeks to get for what he is deprived of in his early age.

Features of increasing interest in tradition in modern societies and compensation theory

The phenomenon of «tradition» in the realities of modern society requires an important rethinking and differentiation between its objective existence as a certain component of social reality, as well as tradition as a fact of consciousness of society, as an ideologeme. In science, «tradition» is interpreted not as an unchanging and frozen pattern, but as a constantly transforming, reconstructed and, paradoxically, sometimes trying to keep up with the times phenomenon. What is important, reconstruction can take place spontaneously, and therefore subjects, as a rule, recreate such behavior patterns that were learned in the process of socialization.