Perceived risk, not actual risk, drives compliance and stops deterring harm.

Evidence

Deterrence depends on perceived risk rather than actual risk. Those who abide by the law overestimate the risk of getting caught, whereas those who engage in unlawful activities, most of whom get away with it, perceive the risk of punishment as low. The views of the lawbreakers are more in line with the actual probabilities (Claster, 1967). Longitudinal studies confirm that perceived risk decreases with criminal engagement. People who are planning to commit crimes do not act on wholly rational calculation, weighing costs and benefits as do utility maximizers (Cook, 1980). They are swayed more by anticipated pay-offs of crimes than by the likelihood of legal penalties. For example, in the financial sector, insider trading is acknowledged to be pervasive, but few culprits are caught and punished. In his thoughtful book The Limits of Criminal Sanction, Herbert Packer (1968) concludes that legal sanctions are a cumbersome and very costly way to regulate human behavior. With the low risk of penalty, a society cannot depend on legal sanctions alone to deter criminal behavior. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1379

Categorization

• XREF: Corroborates the vault’s model that ordinary people’s harmful policy support is not a rational cost-benefit calculus but shaped by perceived and moralized frames; links to authoritarianism research on subjective threat perception.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1379