With over 600,000 Americans released from jails and prisons each year, it is increasingly important to understand the challenges that ex-offenders face when they attempt to reintegrate into society. Prior recidivism data indicate that over 80% of this population were rearrested within a decade of release, suggesting that the current social and economic environment is not conducive to successful reentry. The current research employs a simulation paradigm to explore how affective forecasting might predict hiring decisions for applicants with a criminal history. Using an online sample of adults (N = 322), an experimental hiring paradigm examined mock employment decisions for Black versus White applicants with or without a criminal history by measuring the degree to which applicant characteristics determined mock employer emotional forecasts and how those forecasts subsequently mediated simulated hiring outcomes. As expected, mock employers forecasted more intense negative emotion and less intense positive emotion when considering applicants who had a criminal history, and those forecasts predicted less favorable mock hiring outcomes for ex-offender applicants. Additionally, consistent with affective forecasting research, results showed that participants over-estimated the intensity of their negative emotion by forecasting more intense negative feelings than they experienced upon learning about the simulated hiring outcome. These findings suggest that evaluators generate emotional expectations about hiring applicants with a criminal history, which in turn account for their employment recommendations. Further, when evaluators utilize negative emotional predictions in a hiring decision they are likely relying on inaccurate information.

每年有60万美国人从监狱和监狱中释放出来，了解前罪犯试图重新融入社会时所面临的挑战变得越来越重要。先前的累犯数据表明，超过80％的人口在释放后的十年内被重新逮捕，这表明当前的社会和经济环境不利于成功的重返社会。当前的研究采用模拟范式来探索情感预测如何预测具有犯罪历史的求职者的聘用决定。使用在线成人样本（N = 322），实验性招聘范式通过测量申请人特征确定模拟雇主情感预测的程度以及这些预测随后如何介导模拟招聘结果，检查了有或没有犯罪历史的黑人与白人申请人的模拟就业决定。不出所料，模拟雇主在考虑有犯罪记录的申请人时会产生更大的消极情绪，而正面情绪则会下降，而这些预测预测对前犯罪者的模拟雇用结果会较差。此外，与情感预测研究一致，结果表明，参与者通过预测比他们在学习模拟招聘结果时所体验到的更加强烈的负面情绪，高估了他们负面情绪的强度。这些发现表明，评估人员对雇用有犯罪记录的申请人产生了情感上的期望，这反过来又说明了他们的就业建议。此外，当评估人员在招聘决策中利用负面的情绪预测时，他们很可能依赖于不准确的信息。