Explanation of Expressive Crimes in terms of Evolutionary Psychology and Rational Choice Theory

The simplicity and efficiency of rational choice theories is one of the most crucial issues in criminology but they are not successful in explaining expressive crimes. The dominant point of view, believes that this failure is due to irrational nature of expressive crimes; so the defenders of this theory try to present an interactional and multiple method to cover the weaknesses of rational choice theory. Their attitude is to make a strong base for rational choice theory. This paper is supposed to show the reasons that make the rational choice theory weak in explanation of expressive crimes. Then it tries to reveal the possibility of understanding expressive crimes in the context of rational choice theory. This research is based on descriptive method and criminology literature, it has been counted as fundamental secondary research. This papers shows that the economic human as a scientific sample is not coincident with criminal decision making process. The cognitive mechanism of human being cannot evaluate costs and benefits of behavior before committing a crime. In the opposite aspect, adaptive rationality can explain the psychological mechanisms that are related to expressive crimes and its role in criminal decision making.