The Study on Affective Decision-Making of Criminals in China

摘要

In orderto explore and analyze the affective decision-making of criminals, 49 criminals (divided into two groups: 19 economic criminals and 30 violent criminals) were chosen from a Henan province using the method of random sampling and 20 persons in the society were chosen as a control group. We compared the selected times of the 49 criminals and 20 controls when they completed the Iowa gambling task (IGT), which is an effective way of assessing the affective decision-making. On the choice of the card A/K/L/S, the criminals’ selected times on the card L were significantly less than the controls, on the card S were significantly more than the controls; On the choice of the advantageous card and the disadvantageous card, the control group selected the advantageous card significantly more than the criminals, the criminals selected the disadvantageous card significantly more than the control group; For the control group, the selected times on the advantageous card is significantly more than the disadvantageous card; for the violent criminals, the selected times on the disadvantageous card is significantly more than the advantageous card; On the choice of Low frequency punishment cards/High frequency punishment cards, all three groups’ reaction times on the Low frequency punishment cards were significantly more than the High frequency punishment cards. The results of this study provide novel behavioral evidence of criminals in affective decision using the IGT, the criminals had some difficulty in affective decision-making, seeing the long term interests is difficulty for them; On the other hand, they were easier to choose the low frequency punishment cards similarly with the control group, which confirmed that the criminals had the normal sensitivity to punishment.