Words and deeds in the study of stealing

Two studies were carried out to compare verbal and behavioural measures of stealing and to investigate the effects of costs and benefits on stealing. In the first, 25 youths were interviewed and given opportunities to steal. The 10 who stole were not significantly more likely to say that they would steal in a hypothetical situation. In the second study, the behavioural experiments of Farrington and Knight (1979) on stealing from a “lost” letter...