Do Incarceration and Release Change How People Treat Those With a Criminal History? Longitudinal Behavioural and Neural Evidence.
Abstract
Social decision-making is central to successful reintegration following incarceration, yet whether imprisonment changes how people treat individuals with versus without a criminal history remains unclear. In this preregistered longitudinal study, newly detained (incoming, n = 34) and newly released (outgoing, n = 13) individuals completed a social decision task with EEG at three sessions over eight months, choosing whether to direct prosocial or antisocial actions toward characters described as having an incarceration history (here termed incarceration-history targets) or not (community targets). Frontal midline theta (FMθ) was recorded as an index of choice-related conflict. Prison-climate and quality-of-life measures were also collected. Across groups, participants identified more strongly with (formerly) incarcerated individuals, yet directed more antisocial intentions toward incarceration-history targets and more prosocial intentions toward community targets. Incoming participants showed a reduction in prosocial community intentions after four months that rebounded by eight months. Incoming participants showed higher FMθ than outgoing participants early in incarceration, with a progressive reduction over time in all groups, consistent with reduced decision conflict. Exploratory analyses linked social intentions to prison-environment and well-being factors. Because the target types differed in criminal history and, inevitably, in how positively they were described, these effects are best understood as responses to stigma linked with incarceration-history rather than to group membership. These findings suggest that incarceration and release involve distinct adaptations in social decision-making toward (ex-)prisoners, with dissociable behavioural and neural markers.
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BibTeX
@misc{rambaud2026incarceration,
title = {{Do Incarceration and Release Change How People Treat Those With a Criminal History? Longitudinal Behavioural and Neural Evidence.}},
author = {Victoria RAMBAUD and Ilke Veeckman and Louis Favril and Tom Vander Beken and Emilie Caspar},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/4mhpd_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/4mhpd_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Do Incarceration and Release Change How People Treat Those With a Criminal History? Longitudinal Behavioural and Neural Evidence.
AU - Victoria RAMBAUD
AU - Ilke Veeckman
AU - Louis Favril
AU - Tom Vander Beken
AU - Emilie Caspar
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/04
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/4mhpd_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/4mhpd_v1/
AB - Social decision-making is central to successful reintegration following incarceration, yet whether imprisonment changes how people treat individuals with versus without a criminal history remains unclear. In this preregistered longitudinal study, newly detained (incoming, n = 34) and newly released (outgoing, n = 13) individuals completed a social decision task with EEG at three sessions over eight months, choosing whether to direct prosocial or antisocial actions toward characters described as having an incarceration history (here termed incarceration-history targets) or not (community targets). Frontal midline theta (FMθ) was recorded as an index of choice-related conflict. Prison-climate and quality-of-life measures were also collected. Across groups, participants identified more strongly with (formerly) incarcerated individuals, yet directed more antisocial intentions toward incarceration-history targets and more prosocial intentions toward community targets. Incoming participants showed a reduction in prosocial community intentions after four months that rebounded by eight months. Incoming participants showed higher FMθ than outgoing participants early in incarceration, with a progressive reduction over time in all groups, consistent with reduced decision conflict. Exploratory analyses linked social intentions to prison-environment and well-being factors. Because the target types differed in criminal history and, inevitably, in how positively they were described, these effects are best understood as responses to stigma linked with incarceration-history rather than to group membership. These findings suggest that incarceration and release involve distinct adaptations in social decision-making toward (ex-)prisoners, with dissociable behavioural and neural markers.
ER -