Progressive Initiatives (NEPI), designed and implemented STYL. NEPI facilitators were themselves ex-combatants or ex-criminals who graduated from a prior NEPI therapy.

Among “noncognitive skills,” STYL focused foremost on self control. This includes more short term abilities to regulate one’s emotions and be resistant to impulse, as well as more sustained abilities to be planful, persevering, and patient. Self control skills are central components of many programs, from preschool to rehabilitation therapy.<sup>4</sup> The curriculum focused on helping men foster skills of planning, goal-setting, reflective and deliberate decision-making, and controlling their emotions and impulses.

The therapy also tried to encourage nonviolent, noncriminal preferences by fostering a change in the men’s self image. A premise of STYL was that the men self-identified as outcasts and did not hold themselves to the standards of mainstream society. The therapy tried to persuade the men that they could change who they were and how they were perceived. NEPI facilitators modeled this image change. They walked the men through basic steps, such as changing their appearance or engaging in normal social interactions. Therapy also required men to practice going to supermarkets, banks, and other “normal” places.

Literature in both psychology and economics supports the idea that self image and associated values influence behavior, and that both can change. This literature treats values as direct utility benefits or penalties from acting in accordance with or against a set of preferences (Bénabou and Tirole, 2004; Almlund et al., 2011). Akerlof and Kranton (2000) and Jolls et al. (1998) both argue that these preferences or values are tied to a person’s self image, or perceived social category, and that to some extent people can change their social category and with it values that reward and penalize certain behaviors.

There are striking parallels between STYL and socialization into militaries, street culture, gangs and armed groups. Such groups use similar techniques (appearance change, practice, modeling) to shape young men’s self-image and behavior (Vigil, 2003; Wood, 2008; Maruna and Roy, 2007). NEPI designed STYL to reverse this process.

We surveyed the men beforehand, a few weeks after the interventions, and a year later. Most had no fixed address, phone, or even name, and they moved frequently. Despite this mobility, we re-interviewed 93%. We rely on self-reported data since (like most poor and fragile states) there are no administrative data or arrest records. We did not necessarily trust self-reports, and so we validated behaviors such as drug use and stealing in a subsample.

We approached roughly 1500 high-risk men, and 999 agreed to enter the study. Of those assigned to therapy, nearly all attended at least a day, and two thirds completed it. The higher risk men were the most likely to finish.

> 4e.g. Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990; Borghans et al., 2008. As an example of an intervention, the famous Perry Preschool Program emphasized the ability of young children to plan tasks, execute their plans, and review their work in social groups (Almlund et al., 2011).

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