Legal consequences, including incarceration and contact with the criminal justice system, dramatically impact the lives of many individuals and their families. Though approximately 95% of convictions in state courts are resolved by defendants’ guilty pleas, and the majority of guilty pleas are reached via plea bargaining, there have been relatively few empirical studies assessing the impact of impulsive and risky decision-making strategies in plea-bargaining arrangements. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the degree to which the magnitude of potential legal consequences and the type of legal consequence (prison time vs. sex-offender registration and notification requirements) affect discounting of hypothetical legal consequences as a function of changes in (a) the probability of receiving the consequence or (b) the delay to receiving the consequence in a sample of 486 undergraduates. Overall, participants were more impulsive when plea bargains involved sex-offender registration and notification consequences compared to only prison time. For both prison time and sex-offender registration, participants were less impulsive when they were facing larger potential sentences (e.g., 1-year sentence vs. 25-year sentence). Additionally, participants discounted legal outcomes at different rates based on the probability of conviction, with no differences in discounting observed across consequence type (i.e., prison time and sex-offender registration) or magnitude (e.g., 1-year sentence vs. 25-year sentence).

中文翻译：

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法律结果的延迟和概率贴现

法律后果，包括监禁和接触刑事司法系统，极大地影响了许多个人及其家人的生活。尽管州法院大约 95% 的定罪是通过被告的认罪来解决的，并且大多数认罪是通过辩诉交易达成的，但评估冲动和冒险决策策略在辩诉中的影响的实证研究相对较少。谈判安排。当前研究的目的是评估潜在法律后果的严重程度和法律后果的类型（监禁时间与监禁时间）。性犯罪者登记和通知要求）影响假设法律后果的折扣，因为在 486 名本科生的样本中（a）收到后果的概率或（b）收到后果的延迟。总体而言，当辩诉交易涉及性犯罪者登记和通知后果时，参与者比仅在监狱时间更容易冲动。对于监禁时间和性犯罪者登记，参与者在面临更大的潜在刑期（例如，1 年徒刑与 25 年徒刑）时不那么冲动。此外，参与者根据定罪概率以不同的比率对法律结果进行贴现，在不同后果类型（即监狱时间和性犯罪者登记）或严重程度（例如，