College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Texas A&M University, Bryan, Texas; Prairie View A&M University College of Arts and Sciences, Prairie View, TX, USA.
College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Texas A&M University, Bryan, Texas; Prairie View A&M University College of Arts and Sciences, Prairie View, TX, USA.
Int J Law Psychiatry. 2023 May-Jun;88:101893. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2023.101893. Epub 2023 May 18.
Parole boards are often required to make many release recommendations after reviewing a substantial amount of information in a short timeframe. While making release decisions, parole board members might be motivated to sacrifice accuracy and, instead, use heuristics, such as their emotions. Emotions might increase the reliance on risk or threat related information, such as an inmate's mental illness status. The current study applies the appraisal tendency framework of emotion to assess the impact of emotion on parole decisions involving juvenile mental health diagnoses. Using a 3(emotion: anger, compassion, and control) x 4(mental illness: conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, depression, and control) factorial design, this study examined the extent to which mock parole board members' emotions impacted evaluations of inmates with juvenile mental illness diagnoses and subsequent release decisions. Results indicated that there was no effect of emotion on parole decisions. However, the inmates' mental illnesses did play a role in parole release decisions. Specifically, parole candidates with depression were released on parole at higher rates compared to conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and the control condition. Policy implications are discussed.
假释委员会在审查大量信息后通常需要提出许多释放建议。在做出释放决定时，假释委员会成员可能会出于牺牲准确性的动机，而使用启发式方法，例如情绪。情绪可能会增加对风险或威胁相关信息的依赖，例如囚犯的精神疾病状况。本研究应用情绪的评价倾向框架来评估情绪对涉及青少年心理健康诊断的假释决策的影响。本研究采用 3（情绪：愤怒、同情和控制）x 4（精神疾病：品行障碍、对立违抗性障碍、抑郁和对照）的因子设计，考察了模拟假释委员会成员的情绪对评估患有青少年精神疾病诊断的囚犯以及随后的释放决策的影响程度。结果表明，情绪对假释决策没有影响。然而，囚犯的精神疾病确实在假释释放决策中发挥了作用。具体而言，患有抑郁症的假释候选人被假释的比例高于品行障碍、对立违抗性障碍和对照条件。讨论了政策影响。
