Deterrence: A laboratory experiment

Due to limitations inherent in official statistics and surveys the authors conducted a partial test of the deterrence doctrine within the carefully controlled environment of a laboratory experiment. Participants in the experiment were male volunteers enrolled in college classes. The primary variables studied were certainty, severity, and celerity of punishment, and the situations of general deterrence (threatened punishment) and specific deterrence (actual punishment). It was found that certainty and severity of punishment had substantial effects in situations of actual punishment, but that celerity did not. For general deterrence, only certainty of punishment was effective. In addition, specific deterrence was not significantly more effective than general deterrence.