Rehabilitation and social behavior: Experiments in prison
通过对105名囚犯的经济游戏实验和行政数据，发现囚犯在监禁期间对外部群体的亲社会性下降，但一项简单的反思干预能显著提升其亲社会行为，有助于康复和重返社会。
Despite the economic and social significance of crime reduction and criminals' rehabilitation, research evaluating the effects of incarceration on behavior is surprisingly scarce. We conduct an experiment with 105 prison inmates and complement it with administrative data in order to explore several aspects of their social behavior. We first perform a comprehensive analysis of behavior in three economic games, finding evidence of discrimination against a sample from outside prison. In addition, our regression analysis reveals that inmates generally become less pro-social towards this out-group the longer they remain incarcerated. Finally, we introduce and evaluate a priming intervention that asks inmates to reflect on their time spent in prison. This intervention has a very sizeable and significant impact, increasing pro-sociality towards the out-group. Hence, a simple, low-cost intervention of this sort can have desirable effects in promoting rehabilitation and integration into social and economic life after release.