The religious conversion and race of a prisoner: Mock parole board members' decisions, perceptions, and emotions

摘要

Parole boardmembers (PBMs) decidewhether torelease inmates on parole.Decisionsmay be affected by in-group bias or stereotypes regarding religion and race. Two experiments investigated whether religious conversions/secular lifestyle changes and race affect mock PBMs' release decisions, emotions, and perceptions. Mock PBMs read a case file of an inmate who was eligible for parole and decided whether to grant parole. Study 1 manipulated whether the inmate had converted to Christianity or Islam, had a secular lifestyle change, or had no lifestyle change. Study 2 also varied race (African American or Caucasian). Race was not a significant factor, possibly because the manipulation was not strong enough to influence participants or because participants did not want to appear racist.Conversions to IslamandChristianity impacted the parole decision, and effects were mediated by believability of the conversion. Secular lifestyle changes affected release decisions andweremediated by perceptions of the inmate and beliefs about his likelihood of recidivism. Such inmates were the most likely to be released and were perceived most positively; their conversionswere the most believable. Inmates whomade no changes were perceived least positively, indicating that any lifestyle change is better than none. Importantly, no bias towards either religion (Islam, Christianity) was found. Furthermore, conversion type affected how scared PBMs were of the inmate, but this fear did not impact release decisions.