“The research literature now reflects a broad consensus that offenders are deterred to a greater extent by the certainty of punishment than by the severity of punishment.” – Aaron Chalfin, Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania and a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center
On why we are more sensitive to likelihood than severity of punishment:
“People are myopic.
Most of us discount unlikely events that might happen in the distant future relative to certain events that will occur in the near future. If I drive home from the bar while intoxicated, I won’t have to sleep in my car tonight, a welcome benefit that I will experience in the present.
And while it’s risky to drive drunk, the odds are good that I won’t cause an accident or be caught by a police officer during my short drive home. Of course, if I am caught, I’ll be arrested and adjudicated, an experience that, for many people, would be life altering. But that probably won’t happen – the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that there are between 500 and 2,000 DUI violations committed for every one DUI violator arrested – and, even if it does, my penalty won’t be meted out for many months.
For people who commit crimes, many of whom are young and male, and some of whom have already found themselves involved in a high-risk lifestyle, a tendency to discount the future is probably even more ingrained than it is for the average person.
Punishment must grapple with this seemingly fundamental pillar of human nature.”
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Criminal justice is not an area of expertise for me. Still, data indicating that the likelihood of enforcement is a stronger deterrent of bad behavior than the severity of the punishment itself struck me as relevant in a more generalized way to how we should use feedback.
In leadership and organizational development we often talk about the power of regular feedback on past behavior to drive learning to drive future behavior. Still, it may not be as simple as just increasing feedback frequency.
First, in order to catch people getting something right (in a way that gets the desired outcomes) or doing something wrong (in a way that doesn’t gets the desired outcomes), we have to actually have (or create) enough bandwidth to notice. Most of us are much too busy dealing with our own problems to notice what our colleagues and teams are doing.
Then, what you do with that bandwidth also matters. If people feel you are watching them ONLY to catch their mistakes, many of them will feel nervous, leading them to make MORE mistakes.
How do figure out how often and what kind of positive feedback works for your people?
Consistent evidence that someone has been paying attention to your past behavior seems to deter future bad behavior. A high likelihood that you will indeed experience the high social cost of getting caught seems to be what we are most likely to think about when we are about to do something that we know might be wrong. Evidence that a few bad actors have received heavy punishment is not as effective.
We are in fact social beings. We care about what other people think about us, and we know that what others think about us can have an outsized impact on our long-term success and in some cases even on our prospects for survival.
We pay attention to whether or not others are paying attention. This is one of the ways that we assess whether or not our behavior and we ourselves matter.
Maybe in the end, it is the evidence of consistent attention (care) that is the biggest driver of behavioral change…
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CIAO
Context ・ Intention ・ Action ・ Outcome
From the Niskanen Center:
© Dana Cogan, 2026, all rights reserved.