Reward has been shown to improve multiple forms of learning. However, many of these studies do not distinguish whether reward directly benefits learning or if learning is boosted by modulation of top-down factors such as attention and motivation. The work outlined in this dissertation explores the modulatory effects of reward and punishment without directly manipulating top-down factors such as attention or motivation. We achieved this goal by studying the effects of reward and punishment on incidental learning – a branch of procedural learning where learning occurs without intention and through repetition. Our results reveal that reward is able to bolster incidental learning during the performance and learning of an associative task, even when awareness of how to achieve the reward is minimized (Experiments 1 and 2). However, a similar benefit was not observed in an analogous set of experiments examining the effect of punishment on incidental learning (Experiments 3 and 4). A direct comparison between the effect of reward and punishment on incidental learning revealed a significant advantage for rewarded combinations over punishment. However, this advantage was only observed when high cognitive (associative) demands were emphasized (Experiment 6), as opposed to high motor demands (Experiment 5). Finally, we explored the role of dopamine in the effect of reward on incidental learning. Because dopamine neuron dynamics have been implicated in both reward processing and in various forms of learning, we hypothesized that patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), who experience an accelerated rate of death of dopamine neurons, would experience impaired learning from rewards compared to healthy older adults. Experiment 7 revealed a significant impairment in reward-related incidental learning for patients with Parkinson's disease relative to comparisons. The amount of levodopa medication taken by PD patients predicted the effect of reward, demonstrating a potential link between dopamine levels and the effect of reward on incidental learning. Together, this dissertation demonstrates that 1) reward improves incidental learning, 2) reward may be an exceptional form of feedback, as opposed to punishments, and 3) dopamine levels may potentially drive the effect of reward on incidental learning

Ethical breaches committed by professionals are an important problem, both within the professions and for society as a whole. In this study, I examined breaches committed in one of the oldest and most-regulated professions, law, across three states. Using a sample of 377 actual disciplinary cases, I quantitatively evaluated the breaches and the punishments assessed to determine if justice is being applied proportionally and consistently. This study showed several potential disconnects between how decision-makers say they will punish, and how they actually punish. Punishment theory states that punishments should be applied in accordance with the blameworthiness of the offense and offender. I identified the factors in these cases that should correspond to blameworthiness, and found that some of the theorized factors (such as target and intentionality) did not matter in determining punishment. The study showed that neither prior good acts nor prior discipline mattered for punishment. It also showed that an offender’s noncooperation with his or her own investigation may be one of the most important factors in determining punishment, which raises questions of justice. Additionally, my study shows that impaired professionals who commit ethical breaches may be treated differently than unimpaired professionals. While mental impairment or any kind of substance abuse ought to be mitigating factors, only professionals with alcohol problems were treated more leniently. Textual analysis revealed that decision-makers used a significantly more passive tone when dealing with alcohol-impaired offenders.

In this thesis we analyse the economic effects of a policy proposal in Sweden, which implies a removal of the sentence reduction for 18- to 20-year-old offenders. We use a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to systematically assess its effects. Our results indicate that the policy proposal is most likely beneficial to society, a conclusion which is strengthened by our sensitivity analysis. Our CBA builds upon Becker’s (1968) economic model of crime, and the extensive literature it has inspired which explores the effects of harsher punishment on crime. In order to assess how a harsher sentencing regime affects society, we use crime-punishment elasticities and costs of crime based on previous studies and own estimations. Our main contribution to the existing literature is twofold. First, we provide an economic dimension to a current political issue. Second, we employ a CBA to a research area in Sweden in which the method has been used sparingly. Knowing how an increase in punishment affects crime rates is of great importance for policy making. Hence, we encourage further analysis in this area, especially in Sweden.

This research conducts a conceptual and qualitative investigation into the practices, rationales and functions of imprisonment in NSW. A specific system of imprisonment, in this case the prisons operated by the NSW Department of Corrective services, is explored in order to examine the practices, processes and justifications for incarceration. The various purposes, theories, rhetorics, practices and contradictions of the prison system in NSW and the ways in which the people who are responsible for the administration of this system make sense of its operations and its incoherencies, are central to this analysis. This research utilises a hybrid methodology involving aspects of content analysis and grounded theory. At the centre of this research are eight interviews with senior NSW Corrective Services staff. This analysis is supplemented by interview with ex-prisoners, and other people familiar with, but not working for Corrective Services. In addition a documentary analysis of both Corrective Services documents, and external literature examining NSW prison is carried out. The findings of these analyses are then explored with reference to both their internal coherency, as well as their relationship to a range of theoretical frameworks. The thesis connects abstract and philosophical questions of punishment and penalty with the logistics of running the prison system in NSW. This research found a diversity of practices, understandings and justifications of imprisonment which connected to particular cultural, social philosophical and structural trends. These included victimary discourses, the rhetoric of progress, the influence of managerialism, the faith in ???objective??? professionals, the increasing emphasis on empiricism, the conflicts between coercive practices and individual responsibility, the construction of prisoners as dangerous, and an ongoing struggle for purpose. Imprisonment in NSW was found to be characterised by discrepancies between the intentions of its administrators and pragmatics of its practice, conflicts between internal explanations of its purpose, as well as contradictions between internal Corrective Services accounts and external expectations about the roles, functions and practices of imprisonment. Theoretical perspectives explaining why these characterise imprisonment in NSW were developed. These perspective include the ???ought/is??? confusion of penal administrators, the inhumanity of humane containment, the myth of technocratic amorality, and the sedimentation of purpose.

This thesis consists of 6 papers, all of them using experimental methods. The experimental approach appeals to me, since a good design may allow a clear cut identification of the effects under study. In spite of all its advantages, however, the typical experimental study performed in the laboratory also has drawbacks due to its stylized setting and often restricted subject pool. I believe that enlarging the value of laboratory experiments by understanding more about the link from the lab to “real life” is important. I attempt to do this in my research by combining lab and field studies in order to allow comparison of the results, by using non-standard samples, or by staging experimental studies outside of the lab in a more natural setting. The papers included in this thesis range from natural field experiments, where the participants did not know that they were participating in a study (Dreber, von Essen and Ranehill, 2009), across mixtures of field and lab studies (Cárdenas, Dreber, von Essen and Ranehill, 2010), framed field experiments (Johannesson, Östling and Ranehill 2010), and to pure lab experiments (von Essen and Ranehill, 2011; and Dreber, von Essen and Ranehill, 2011). / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan i Stockholm, 2011

Bestiality was one of the most severely-punished crimes in 17th and 18th century Sweden. More individuals have been executed for bestiality in Sweden than for witchcraft. The sentence for bestiality was decapitation and being burnt at the stake. Even the animals with which the sodomist had had intercourse were slaughtered and burned publicly at the place of execution. An even greater number of people were sentenced to corporal punishment and forced labour in iron collars for attempting to commit bestiality. Despite the severe penalty the number of trials increased dramatically during the first half of the 18th century, culminating sometime mid-century. Bestiality, together with infanticide, stood out as the most serious of contemporary Swedish social problems. The numerous trials and executions for bestiality seem to have had few if any parallels in contemporary Europe! The purpose of this dissertation is to reconstruct, with the aid of trial records, the various cultural and symbolic significations which acts of bestiality conjured up for the society of the day, as well as to provide an explanation for the increase in the number of trials and its geographic distribution. The first section of this research assignment is inspired by the research traditions which fall under the headings of historical anthropolgy and history of mentalities. The second section is of a more traditional social- historical nature. The conflict and interaction between an elite culture in the service of authority and a folk culture with its roots in traditional customs and ways of thinking comprise a unifying and comprehensive theme in the present dissertation. The source material is composed of judgements and hearing reports from a total of 1,510 trials conducted during the period 1635- 1754, equivalent to the greater percentage of all the trials concerning bestiality dealt with by the district courts in Sweden at that time. By the middle of the 18th century the population living within the area under investigation was something more than one and one-half million souls. The present study shows that the bestiality trials in 17th and 18th century Sweden can be explained neither as the result of a one-sided campaign on behalf of the authorities, nor as a way in which local communities tried to get rid of inconvenient and marginalized individuals. Instead, the numerous denunciations and confessions must be seen as the result of an interaction between the desire of the authorities to exercise control and to legitimize its power, and a popular problemization of the act of bestiality itself. Three areas for problematizing have been pointed out, all of whom contributed to an increased willingness to accuse and confess: the merging of sin and crime within a framework of a justice system featuring public punishment and atonement rituals; transgression of the border between man and beast and conceptions of that which is physically impure; and a traditional job delegation between the sexes and between boys and men which led to different roles in relation to the animals. In a European perspective, the latter was perhaps the most specific to Sweden. / digitalisering@umu

The purpose of this study was to gain more knowledge of which discourses dominate the courts’ decisions concerning sentences for young sexual offenders. The issues touched upon were which circumstances the courts find important and which discourses reflect those circumstances when deciding on sentences for young sexual offenders as well as how children that commit crimes are constructed by the court. The study looked at cases of sexual offence where the offender was between 15 and 17 years old, and was based on judgements established at the Stockholm district courts in 2007 and 2008. The method used was content analysis, both manifesto and latent. By using content analysis the information was structured into a manageable basis for the following discourse analysis, which was implemented according to the theory for this study described in King and Piper’s (1995) book How the Law Thinks About Children. Discourse analysis gave an insight into which discourses are most prominent in verdicts against young sexual offenders. The results show that the social services’ recommendations are not given much importance in the courts’ decisions of suitable sentences for young sexual offenders. A majority of the youths were sentenced to criminal punishment such as a youth community order service and a youth detention order. Factors of particular importance in the verdicts are the specifics of the crime, whether or not the offenders understood or should have understood that they were committing a crime, responsibility, age, consent, suitable sentences as well as the credibility and reliability of given statements. The young defendants were constructed by the courts as criminals with regard to the criminal act and the youths’ responsibility for the action. The offenders’ personal and social situation was not given particular importance.

Having soberly reflected upon the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the author observed that though international law and treaties restrict pre-emptive war, they do allow for war in self-defense. Consequently, some powerful nations have used this as a justification for launching pre-emptive strikes. The threats posed by the powerful nations using self-defense as a justification for pre-emptive strikes and the inability of weaker nations to do the same, greatly account for the unprecedented explosion of global terrorism. The author thinks that confronting terrorism therefore requires a pro-pacifist ethical framework whose principles have to be applied with international law to narrow the legitimacy of self-defense wars. Hence, he proposes "Moral Consistency" as a required condition for launching pre-emptive strikes with two main aims - to reduce violent conflicts and to draw a substantial distinction between reason and justification, and between crime and criminal justice.

<p>Memories are not veridical representations of the environment. Rather, an individual's goals can influence how the surrounding environment is represented in long-term memory. The present dissertation aims to delineate the influence of reward and punishment motivation on human declarative memory encoding and its underlying neural circuitry. Chapter 1 provides a theoretical framework for investigating motivation's influence on declarative memory. This chapter will review the animal and human literatures on declarative memory encoding, reward and punishment motivation, and motivation's influence on learning and memory. Chapter 2 presents a study examining the behavioral effects of reward and punishment motivation on declarative memory encoding. Chapter 3 presents a study examining the neural circuitry underlying punishment-motivated declarative encoding using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and compares these findings to previous studies of reward-motivated declarative encoding. Chapter 4 presents a study examining the influence of reward and punishment motivation on neural sensitivity to and declarative memory for unexpected events encountered during goal pursuit using fMRI. Finally, Chapter 5 synthesizes these results and proposes a model of how and why motivational valence has distinct influences on declarative memory encoding. Results indicated that behaviorally, reward motivation resulted in more enriched representations of the environment compared to punishment motivation. Neurally, these motivational states engaged distinct neuromodulatory systems and medial temporal lobe (MTL) targets during encoding. Specifically, results indicated that reward motivation supports interactions between the ventral tegmental area and the hippocampus, whereas, punishment motivation supports interactions between the amygdala and parahippocampal cortex. Together, these findings suggest that reward and punishment engage distinct systems of encoding and result in the storage of qualitatively different representations of the environment into long-term memory.</p> / Dissertation

Having soberly reflected upon the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the author observed that though international law and treaties restrict pre-emptive war, they do allow for war in self-defense. Consequently, some powerful nations have used this as a justification for launching pre-emptive strikes. The threats posed by the powerful nations using self-defense as a justification for pre-emptive strikes and the inability of weaker nations to do the same, greatly account for the unprecedented explosion of global terrorism. The author thinks that confronting terrorism therefore requires a pro-pacifist ethical framework whose principles have to be applied with international law to narrow the legitimacy of self-defense wars. Hence, he proposes "Moral Consistency" as a required condition for launching pre-emptive strikes with two main aims - to reduce violent conflicts and to draw a substantial distinction between reason and justification, and between crime and criminal justice.