Male Prisoners’ Altruistic Inclination And Attentional Bias To The Benevolent Information

This research aims to explore the prisoners’ altruistic inclination, probe for the characteristics of their attentional bias in relation to benevolent information and the mechanism of such bias from the perspective of cognitive processing of social information. The findings are supposed to offer some insights into the groundwork and methodology of preventing and rectifying the prisoners’ further involvement in crimes. The first experiment creates altruism situation to test the participants’ inclination to altruism by demanding their speculation on the possibility of altruistic behavior. The second experiment employs the paradigm of Emotional Stroop Task to examine the participants’ differentiated response latencies in the face of varying types of words, to verify or deny the existence of the prisoners’ attentional bias in favor of benevolent information. The third experiment follows the cue-target task paradigm to explore the mechanism of the prisoners’ prior attention to benevolent information as evidenced in the second experiment. Further efforts will be made to find out if the prisoners’ attentional bias in relation to benevolent information is caused by attentional alertness or by the difficulty in attention dismissal.The principal findings go as follows. First, the prisoners’ marks in altruistic inclination are significantly lower than those of the general public, implying less altruistic inclination of this group. Second, for the prisoners, the response latencies involving self-interest word colors are significantly longer than those regarding altruistic word colors, while the response latencies involving neutral word colors are not significantly different from those regarding altruistic and self-interest words. This implies their attentional bias towards self-interest information. On the other hand, for the general public, the response latencies involving altruistic word colors are significantly longer than those regarding self-interest word colors, while the response latencies involving neutral word colors are not significantly different from those regarding altruistic and self-interest words. This implies their attentional bias towards altruistic information. Third, on effective cues, the prisoners demonstrate significantly shorter response latencies for self-interest words than for altruistic words and neutral words. However, no significant deviation exists between their response latencies for altruistic and neutral words. On ineffective cues, no significant deviation exists between the prisoners’ response latencies for altruistic and self-interest words or neutral words. However, no significant deviation exists between their response latencies for self-interest and neutral words. Fourth, on effective cues, the general public demonstrates significantly shorter response latencies for altruistic words than for self-interest words and neutral words. However, no significant deviation exists between their response latencies for self-interest and neutral words. On ineffective cues, no significant deviation exists between the prisoners’ response latencies for altruistic and self-interest words or neutral words. However, no significant deviation exists between their response latencies for self-interest and neutral words.The following conclusions can be drawn on the three experiments. First, the prisoners’ altruistic inclination is significantly different from the general public, as evidenced by their significantly lower marks in altruistic inclination, which indicates their less than average altruistic inclination. Second, the prisoners are found to pay prior attention to self-interest information, as represented by the priorities they attach to processing self-interest information. The general public, in contrast, pay prior attention to benevolent information, as represented by the priorities they attach to processing benevolent information. Finally, the prisoners’ attentional bias in relation to self-interest information is caused by attention alertness rather than the difficulty in attention dismissal. Meanwhile, attentional alertness regarding benevolent information is confirmed among the general public.