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Defendant's Attractiveness as a Factor in the Outcome of Criminal Trials: An Observational Study1
Abstract
Observers rated the physical attractiveness of 74 defendants in criminal court, covering a broad range of offenses. Seventy-three usable cases were obtained. For 67 defendants (excluding those who had drawn “flat sentences” of 99–199 years), attractiveness was predictive of both minimum and maximum sentences (p <.001)-the more attractive the defendant, the less severe the sentence imposed. No significant relationship was found between attractiveness and conviction/acquittal, although seriousness of the crime was found to correlate negatively with attractiveness (p <.01)).
Race of the defendant showed a systematic relationship to punishment, with nonwhites drawing consistently more severe sentences than whites; a multiple regression analysis using attractiveness, race, and seriousness of crime as predictors of punishment yielded results which implied that this finding was largely due to a confounding of race and seriousness of the crime.
... The What is Beautiful is Good stereotype has been found to be quite pervasive, as it has been demonstrated across various age groups and situations (Bryne, London, and Reeves 1968). Given this, researchers have been interested in the impact of this phenomenon on decision-making in the legal system, suggesting that there is a potential Attractiveness Leniency Bias (e.g., Abel and Waters 2005;Stewart 1980;1985). This bias posits that physically attractive individuals will be treated more leniently in guilt and sentencing decisions by jurors. ...
... However, Ahola, Christianson, and Hellstrom (2009) did not find an effect for attractiveness for male and female defendants in cases of child molestation. Also, results from field studies have not supported an Attractiveness Leniency Bias on verdicts, in that the defendant's physical attractiveness had no impact on conviction rates for a broad range of cases (Stewart 1980;1985). Thus, there are some experimental studies to support the impact of attractiveness on guilt determinations, although these findings are not universal, nor have they been replicated in field studies. ...
... In regard to sentencing decisions, some studies have found that attractive defendants have been assigned lesser sentences in rape and sexual assault cases compared to less attractive defendants (e.g., Erian et al. 1998;Jacobson 1981;Jacobson and Popovich 1983). Field studies examining court-room data have supported the link between higher levels of attractiveness and decreased sentence lengths ascribed by judges (Stewart 1980;1985). Other studies have not shown a relationship between attractiveness and sentencing length for certain types of crimes, such as negligent homicide (e.g., Jacobson and Berger 1974) and swindling (e.g., Shechory-Bitton and Zvi 2015; Sigall and Ostrove 1975). ...
In recent years, instances of educator sexual assault against students have flooded the media. In particular, female teachers who abused students have seized the public’s attention as they are often portrayed as attractive and a sexual fantasy. This portrayal can then impact the way society perceives these sexual assaults. Importantly, however, it is not known whether this perception influences the prosecution and sentencing of these cases. The current study examined the impact of gender and attractiveness of a teacher, as well as gender of the student victim, on juror decision-making in a teacher/student sexual assault case. Using a 2 (Teacher Gender) X 2 (Student Gender) X 3 (Attractiveness Level: Attractive/Unattractive/No Photo) experimental design, we examined jurors’ decisions regarding guilt, sentencing, and perceptions of the teacher and student. Results suggest that the gender of the teacher may impact juror decision-making; however, the level of attractiveness of the teacher and gender of the student had minimal effects. The study contributes to our understanding of how educators who commit sexual acts against students are perceived and treated in the court system.
... On the one hand, attractive defendants may receive more favorable judgments (i.e. lesser severity; Johnson & King, 2017), a pattern that holds true even with real judges (Stewart, 1980(Stewart, , 1985. On the other hand, additional studies have not consistently found an effect of attractiveness on judgment severity (Bell et al., 2021;Devine & Caughlin, 2014;Shechory-Bitton & Zvi, 2015). ...
... This research was designed to investigate the factors that may influence the susceptibility of intuitive guilt judgments to facial attractiveness. While the influence of biases derived from facial attractiveness on guilt judgments has been extensively documented (Johnson & King, 2017;Stewart, 1980Stewart, , 1985, the current state of the field suggests the need for a better understanding of the factors involved in the occurrence and direction of these effects. ...
This experiment explored the influence of facial attractiveness and trustworthiness on guilty judgments. We recruited 128 participants, randomly assigned to high and low time pressure conditions to act as judges in a simulated blind-date swindle case. Participants judged nine male faces from the Chicago Face Database with three attractiveness levels (unattractive, neutral and attractive), featuring a 2 × 3 mixed factorial design, with consistent standardized average levels of face trustworthiness. We also assessed participants’ self-reported processing styles (rational vs. experiential) using the Rational Experiential Inventory. Notably, participants predominantly judged unattractive faces as innocent, indicating an ugly leniency effect. Our results suggest the primacy of perceived face trustworthiness over attractiveness in guilt judgments for cases where the accused’s physical appearance might facilitate the crime’s success. This highlights the importance of examining the contribution of perceived trustworthiness to guilt judgment biases, and adds to growing evidence exploring extrajudicial factors in criminal verdicts.
... In real courtrooms, there is evidence that both attractiveness and baby-facedness can increase the likelihood of success for individuals involved in small claims court litigation cases (Zebrowitz & McDonald, 1991). Moreover, observational studies suggest that attractiveness can influence the severity of sentencing in real criminal cases (Stewart, 1980(Stewart, , 1985. ...
... Of course, as in full "mock jury" studies, these were hypothetical judgments regarding hypothetical crimes. Nonetheless, the findings may have important implications as observational studies suggest that facial appearance can influence the outcome of real criminal cases (e.g., Stewart, 1980Stewart, , 1985Wilson & Rule, 2015). ...
People have a tendency to make rapid judgments about the personality of others based on their facial appearance, a tendency which could have adaptive value if it helps facilitate the avoidance of individuals disposed to exploit and/or harm the perceiver. These rapid judgments, accurate or not, have the potential to influence how individuals are treated in many areas of life, including within the criminal justice system. Previous research investigating effects of appearance on judicial proceedings has suggested that a masculine facial appearance might activate criminal stereotypes, and therefore increase the likelihood of being judged guilty of a crime. To examine how masculinity might interact with other appearance dimensions, we investigated how facial morphological masculinity and perceived agreeableness influence perceptions of criminal guilt. In an online study, 369 participants (167 men, 200 women, 2 did not say) aged 18 to 82, read 12 short fictional vignettes each describing a crime (assault, burglary, or rape) with each accompanied by the face of a man “charged” with the crime. Faces were manipulated using morphing techniques to increase or decrease levels of (a) morphological masculinity and (b) perceived agreeableness (i.e., 2 × 2 manipulations for each target face). Participants were asked to indicate in each case whether they thought the “accused” was guilty or not. Overall, facial appearance had a significant effect on the probability of being judged guilty. For each crime type, manipulations of perceived agreeableness had large effects on the probability of being judged guilty, whereas manipulations of morphological masculinity did not.
... In the early laboratory work on mock jurors in criminal cases, researchers found an "attraction-leniency effect" on legal decision making by showing that attractive criminal suspects were less likely to be convicted and were given less severe punishments than their unattractive counterparts (Efran, 1974;Leventhal and Krate, 1977). This "attraction-leniency effect" was later observed in the actual court trials in which physical attractiveness ratings showed significant negative correlations with the severity of the sentences imposed by professional judges (Stewart, 1980(Stewart, , 1985. However, the effect of facial attractiveness on legal judgments can be tempered by the nature of the crimes (Sigall and Ostrove, 1975;Smith and Hed, 1979;Goodman-Delahunty and Sporer, 2010). ...
... Second, we merely observed a significant interactive effect of facial attractiveness during conviction judgments in Experiment 1. Other studies have demonstrated a facial effect during sentencing decisions (Stewart, 1980(Stewart, , 1985Umukoro and Egwuonu, 2014), and previous evidence has also suggested that not only the conviction but also the sentencing could be affected by facial attractiveness (Efran, 1974). Thus far, we are not able to draw any clear conclusions regarding the question of whether facial attractiveness would take effect in a certain judicial stage or during the whole judicial process. ...
The present study aimed to examine the effects of male defendants’ facial appearance (attractiveness and trustworthiness) on judicial decisions in two different swindles. We selected the following four categories of faces by manipulating facial attractiveness and trustworthiness simultaneously: the attractive and trustworthy face; the attractive but untrustworthy face; the unattractive but trustworthy face; and the unattractive and untrustworthy face. A total of six hundred and sixty-three participants across two studies were asked to make conviction-related judgments and penalty-related decisions for the defendants after they were randomly assigned to one of the four categories of faces. In Experiment 1, we used a blind-date swindle and found a “beauty penalty” for physically attractive defendants among females. Specifically, female participants were more likely to issue a guilty verdict to better-looking male defendants. Additionally, this “beauty-penalty effect” was merely observed in the untrustworthy condition. In Experiment 2, we used a telecommunication swindle, and the results showed that facial trustworthiness significantly predicted punishment magnitude and sentence decisions. Moreover, an exploratory analysis revealed that the disgust evoked by the faces partially mediated the relationship between facial trustworthiness and the assignment of criminal penalties. Taken together, these findings indicated that facial attractiveness and trustworthiness played different roles in judicial decisions. Importantly, the effect of facial attractiveness on judicial decisions differed as the detailed criminal circumstances of the offenses changed.
... An analogy might be helpful here. There have been many studies showing that the physical attractiveness of defendants influences criminal jurors' and judges' assessments of guilt in court (DeSantis & Kayson, 1997;Downs & Lyons, 1991;Kramer et al., 2023;Stewart, 1980). Does this mean that the jurors make their evaluations of guilt based, at least partly, on explicit considerations regarding the defendant's attractiveness? ...
In recent papers, Peter Carruthers and others have argued that the feeling of uncertainty is not metacognitive (i.e., it is not elicited by second-order cognitive appraisals) but is elicited solely by first-order likelihood estimates—a probability account of the feeling of uncertainty. In this paper, I make a case for why a probability account is sufficient to explain neither the feeling of uncertainty nor the feeling of certainty in self-reflecting humans. I argue first that humans’ feelings of (un)certainty vary in ways that their probability estimates on the matter do not, and second that probability accounts elide the essentially epistemic nature of epistemic feelings.
... Attractive people are generally perceived as more successful, intelligent, and trustworthy (Dion, Berscheid, and Walster 1972). This perception can lead to a "beauty premium", where attractive individuals receive more favorable treatment in various aspects of life, including job hiring, financial transactions, and legal proceedings (Laustsen 2014, Berggren, Jordahl, and Poutvaara 2010, Chiu and Babcock 2002, Jin et al. 2017, Stewart 1980. However, there is also evidence of a "beauty penalty", where attractive individuals may be perceived as less trustworthy or competent (Wilson and Eckel 2006). ...
... A person who is judged as trustworthy due to their appearance 'has it easy' in many domains. To individuals with "trustworthy" looks (as opposed to those with "untrustworthy" looks), people are more willing to loan money (Duarte et al., 2012), to pay more money for the same service (Ert et al., 2016), to give a second chance after a misconduct (Gomulya et al., 2017), and sentence leniently in court (Porter et al., 2010;Stewart, 1980Stewart, , 1985Wilson & Rule, 2015) (for review, see Todorov et al., 2015). To understand these effects and ultimately rectify these biases, it is important to understand what visual facial "cues" contribute to perceived trustworthiness. ...
Trustworthy-looking faces are also perceived as more attractive, but are there other meaningful cues that contribute to perceived trustworthiness? Using data-driven models, we identify these cues after removing attractiveness cues. In Experiment 1, we show that both judgments of trustworthiness and attractiveness of faces manipulated by a model of perceived trustworthiness change in the same direction. To control for the effect of attractiveness, we build two new models of perceived trustworthiness: a subtraction model, which forces the perceived attractiveness and trustworthiness to be negatively correlated (Experiment 2), and an orthogonal model, which reduces their correlation (Experiment 3). In both experiments, faces manipulated to appear more trustworthy were indeed perceived to be more trustworthy, but not more attractive. Importantly, in both experiments, these faces were also perceived as more approachable and with more positive expressions, as indicated by both judgments and machine learning algorithms. The current studies show that the visual cues used for trustworthiness and attractiveness judgments can be separated, and that apparent approachability and facial emotion are driving trustworthiness judgments and possibly general valence evaluation.
... Attractive people are generally perceived as more successful, intelligent, and trustworthy (Dion, Berscheid, and Walster 1972). This perception can lead to a "beauty premium", where attractive individuals receive more favorable treatment in various aspects of life, including job hiring, financial transactions, and legal proceedings (Laustsen 2014, Berggren, Jordahl, and Poutvaara 2010, Chiu and Babcock 2002, Jin et al. 2017, Stewart 1980. However, there is also evidence of a "beauty penalty", where attractive individuals may be perceived as less trustworthy or competent (Wilson and Eckel 2006). ...
... Forming impressions is a behavior that plays a significant role in our social life because the impressions formed by others regarding one's physical appearance have been linked to real world outcomes (for a review, see Frevert & Walker, 2014). For instance, attractive individuals are more likely to be hired (Dion et al., 1972;Hosoda et al., 2003;Stone et al., 1992), earn more money (Frieze et al., 1991), are treated in a better way in criminal and civil legal proceedings (Ahola et al., 2009;Stewart, 1980;Wiley, 1995), and are viewed as better students (Ritts et al., 1992). Given these real-world consequences of social impressions, people are generally motivated to make good impressions by changing both their verbal and nonverbal behaviors and physical appearance (e.g., body orientation, posture, vocal cue; DePaulo, 1992;Ellis et al., 2002;Schneider, 1981). ...
People often try to improve their social impressions by performing “good” postures, particularly when others are evaluating them. We aimed to investigate whether such postural management to modulate social impressions are indeed effective, and in the case that they are effective, which impressions are modulated and how quickly these impressions are formed. In total, 207 participants in two different experiments (72 participants in Experiment 1; 135 in Experiment 2) reported their impressions from photographs where other people performed “good” or “bad” postures in three viewing angles (back, front, and side). Participants were presented with a total of 96 pictures without time limitation in Experiment 1; then, for Experiment 2, they were presented with the same pictures, but with time limitations (100, 500, or 1000 ms). In both experiments, participants were asked to report their impressions for each photograph related to the person’s attractiveness, trustworthiness, or dominance. Results showed that the people with “good” postures were generally rated as more attractive and trustworthy. More importantly, it was found that impressions formed after a 100 ms exposure had high correlations with impressions formed in the absence of time constraints, suggesting that the sight of a managed posture for 100 ms is sufficient for people to form social impressions. The findings suggest that people quickly make attractiveness and trustworthiness impressions based on managed postures.
... Prior research suggests that there are some physical features that influence juror decisionmaking that were not considered in the current research design, such as attractiveness (D. J. Devine et al., 2001;Johnson & King, 2017;MacCoun, 1990;Sigall & Ostrove, 1975;Stewart, 1980) and baby-faced appearance (Berry & McArthur, 1986;Montepare & Zebrowitz, 1998;Zebrowitz & McDonald, 1991). Although the manipulations were pilot tested individually, the images were not pilot tested after editing the tattoo images onto the necks. ...
Stereotypes and prejudice have been shown to bias information processing and decision-making. There are physical traits that are stereotypically associated with criminals (i.e. tattoos, dark skin-tone, facial untrustworthiness) and have been shown to influence juror decision-making. The current research aimed to investigate the effects of tattoos, facial trustworthiness and skin tone on juror case judgments and criminal appearance ratings, while also investigating and accounting for prejudice and motivation to respond without prejudice. Participants (n = 426) were asked to act as mock jurors in a hypothetical assault case by making case judgments and responding to appearance and attitude measures. Criminal appearance ratings indirectly mediated the relationship between physical traits and verdict decisions. Additionally, a significant interaction emerged between skin tone and racial prejudice on criminal appearance ratings, suggesting that the effects of physical traits may depend on individual attitudes. Implications and future directions are discussed.
... Research on the so-called halo effect has found that attractive people are consistently judged higher on other positive qualities (Ka plan, 1978;Nisbett & Wilson, 1977;Thorndike, 1920). This has been shown to result in preferential treatment in domains such as court trials (Stewart, 1980) and in increased compliance (Debevec, Madden, & Kernan, 1986). Fourth, people like those they have seen (i.e., familiarity creates liking). ...
It is through the influence process that people generate and manage change. As such, it is important to understand fully the workings of the influence processes that produce compliance with requests for change. Fortunately, a vast body of scientific evidence exists on how, when, and why people comply with influence attempts. From this formidable body of work, one can extract six universal principles of influence that generate compliance in the widest range of circumstances. Reciprocation states that people are more willing to comply with requests (for favors, services, information, concessions, etc.) from those who have provided such things first. Commitment/Consistency states that people are more willing to be moved in a particular direction if they see it as consistent with an existing commitment. Authority states that people are more willing to follow the directions or recommendations of a communicator to whom they attribute relevant expertise. Social Proof states that people are more willing to take a recommended action if they see evidence that many others, especially similar others, are taking it. Scarcity states that people find objects and opportunities more attractive to the degree that they are scarce, rare, or dwindling in availability. Finally, Liking states that people prefer to say yes to those they like, such as those who are similar to them and who have complimented them.
... For example, perceptions of facial trustworthiness and competence are associated with election outcomes (Chen, Jing, & Lee, 2014;Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005), baby-facedness shows a relationship with adjudications in small claims court (Zebrowitz & McDonald, 1991), and Afrocentric appearance has been linked with criminal sentencing (Blair, Judd, & Chapleau, 2004;Eberhardt, Davies, Purdie-Vaughns, & Johnson, 2006). General (rather than specifically facial) attractiveness has also been shown to influence hiring probability and wages (Pfeifer, 2012) as well as criminal sentencing (Downs & Lyons, 1991;Stewart, 1980Stewart, , 1985. ...
Our first impressions of others, whether accurate or unfounded, have real-world consequences in terms of how we judge and treat those people. Previous research has suggested that criminal sentencing is influenced by the perceived facial trustworthiness of defendants in murder trials. In real cases, those who appeared less trustworthy were more likely to receive death rather than life sentences. Here, we carried out several attempts to replicate this finding, utilizing the original set of stimuli (Study 1), multiple images of each identity (Study 2), and a larger sample of identities (Study 3). In all cases, we found little support for the association between facial trustworthiness and sentencing. Furthermore, there was clear evidence that the specific image chosen to depict each identity had a significant influence on subsequent judgments. Taken together, our findings suggest that perceptions of facial trustworthiness have no real-world influence on sentencing outcomes in serious criminal cases.
... Attractive women have been shown to enjoy status advantages across domains. Compared with less attractive women, they experience greater popularity among peers, favorable performance evaluations in school and at work, a higher likelihood of being hired, and improved marital stability (Hosoda, Stone-Romero, and Coats 2003;Jaeger 2011;Mulford et al. 1998;Stewart 1980). Attractive women are even thought to be morally superior; outward beauty is unconsciously assumed to signify inward virtue, honesty, and kindness (Tsukiura and Cabeza 2011). ...
We examine how men's shared understandings of women's physical attractiveness are influenced by concerns about risk in the context of a generalized AIDS epidemic. Using 180 conversational journals—descriptions of informal conversations about sex occurring in Malawi between 1999 and 2011—we show that men deploy discourses of risk to question and undermine the status advantages enjoyed by attractive women. Men simultaneously portray attractive women as irresistibly appealing and as destructive to men. Men engage in two types of collective responses: First, men work to discipline themselves and each other, reframing attractiveness as illusory and unworthy of pursuit; and second, men endeavor to discipline attractive women themselves, portraying them as evil temptresses that must be suppressed and reasserting their masculine dominance through harassment and violence. These findings reveal how men's classifications of women as sexual objects operate as forms of symbolic violence, legitimating and naturalizing their gendered domination over women.
... Attractive individuals are attributed many positive stereotypes 3 , including competence 4 and intelligence 5 . Furthermore, attractive individuals receive more lenient criminal sentences 6 , and an increased vote share in elections 7 , when compared to unattractive individuals. Facial attractiveness is signalled by the characteristics of the face being examined, including averageness, symmetry, and a sexually dimorphic appearance [8][9][10] . ...
The cheerleader effect occurs when the same individual appears to be more attractive when seen in a group, compared to alone. As observers over-attend to visual information presented in the left visual field, we investigated whether the spatial arrangement of the faces in a group would influence the magnitude of the cheerleader effect. In Experiment 1, target faces were presented twice in the centre of the display: once alone, and once in a group. Group images featured two distractor faces, which were presented in either the left or the right visual field, or on either side of the target. The location of the distractor faces did not modulate the size of the cheerleader effect, which was observed in each group configuration. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the location of the target faces, which were presented at the far left, far right, or centre of the group. Faces were again significantly more attractive in each group configuration, and the spatial location of the target face did not influence the size of the cheerleader effect. Together, our results show that the cheerleader effect is a robust phenomenon, which is not influenced by the spatial arrangement of the faces in the group.
This volume provides a unique perspective on an emerging area of scholarship and legislative concern: the law, policy, and regulation of human-robot interaction (HRI). The increasing intelligence and human-likeness of social robots points to a challenging future for determining appropriate laws, policies, and regulations related to the design and use of AI robots. Japan, China, South Korea, and the US, along with the European Union, Australia and other countries are beginning to determine how to regulate AI-enabled robots, which concerns not only the law, but also issues of public policy and dilemmas of applied ethics affected by our personal interactions with social robots. The volume's interdisciplinary approach dissects both the specificities of multiple jurisdictions and the moral and legal challenges posed by human-like robots. As robots become more like us, so too will HRI raise issues triggered by human interactions with other people.
While much has been said about what ought to be done about the statues and monuments of racist, colonial, and oppressive figures, a significantly undertheorised aspect of the debate is the aesthetics of commemorations. I believe that this philosophical oversight is rather unfortunate. I contend that taking the aesthetic value of commemorations seriously can help us (a) better understand how and the extent to which objectionable commemorations are objectionable, (b) properly formulate responses to aesthetic defences of objectionable commemorations, and c) help us explore aesthetic solutions—for example, artistic interventions as counterspeech—to objectionable commemorations. Here, I propose that the aesthetic value of objectionable commemorations can amplify the force of the objectionable messages conveyed, and the moral disvalue of objectionable commemorations can hinder our appreciation of their aesthetic value. These two considerations shall help us answer the practical question of what to do about objectionable commemorations of apparently good aesthetic value. Both, I shall argue, give us further reason to remove, replace, recontextualise, or even vandalise objectionable commemorations. Sometimes we need to save the art from its own immorality to best respect its aesthetic value.
Despite centuries of scientific (and sometimes pseudoscientific) interest in identifying criminals, research has not examined the perception and punishment of female criminals. Building on research describing how men’s facial appearance relates to juridic outcomes, we therefore investigated criminality inferences, their underlying cues, and hypothetical sentencing judgments from photos of female criminals. Participants categorized violent and nonviolent criminals significantly better than chance (Study 1) and aggression perceptions explained that detection (Study 2). Moreover, women who looked more aggressive received more severe hypothetical (Study 3a) and actual (Study 3b) sentences. Women’s facial appearance may therefore play an unintended and incidental role in perceptions of their criminality, illustrating how kernels of truth in social perception promote biases resulting from overgeneralization effects.
Celem niniejszego artykułu jest przedstawienie wpływu efektu aureoli na oceny czynów przestępczych, a także osób podejrzanych o ich popełnienie, oskarżonych, skazanych i ofiar, wydawane przez społeczeństwo oraz przedstawicieli instytucji odpowiedzialnych za reakcję na nie. Omówienie powyższej problematyki rozpoczęto od przybliżenia genezy, sposobu działania i właściwości prowadzących do wystąpienia omawianego błędu poznawczego w świetle aktualnej wiedzy psychologicznej. Następnie dokonano analizy badań dotyczących potencjalnych zniekształceń poznawczych w ocenie czynów przestępczych oraz karaniu. Część teoretyczna została zakończona opisem sugerowanych wytłumaczeń dla korzystania z czynników pozaprawnych w tym zakresie. Artykuł został ponadto wzbogacony o przeprowadzone studia przypadków trzech wybranych spraw kryminalnych, w stosunku do których można podejrzewać o wystąpieniu efektu aureoli. Stanowią je sprawy Camerona Coyle’a Herrina, Debry Jean Lafave oraz Magdaleny Renaty Kralki. The purpose of this article is to present the impact of the halo effect on the assessment of criminal acts, as well as suspects, defendants, convicts and victims, made by society and representatives of institutions responsible for responding to them. The discussion of the aforementioned issue began with outlining the origin, mechanisms of action and features leading to the emergence of the discussed cognitive error in the light of recent psychological knowledge. Thereafter, an analysis of research on potential cognitive misconceptions in the assessment of criminal acts and sentencing was carried out. The theoretical part was concluded with a description of proposed explanations of the use of non-legal factors in submitted scope. The article was also enriched by the case studies conducted on three selected criminal cases regarding to which it may be suspected that the halo effect occurred. These are the cases of Cameron Coyle Herrin, Debra Jean Lafave and Magdalena Renata Kralka.
This paper offers the first philosophical analysis of a form of artificial intelligence (AI) which the author calls facial profiling technology (FPT). FPT is a type of facial analysis technology designed to predict criminal behavior based solely on facial structure. Marketed for use by law enforcement, face classifiers generated by the program can supposedly identify murderers, thieves, pedophiles, and terrorists prior to the commission of crimes. At the time of this writing, an FPT company has a contract with the United States federal government. After recounting how FPT resurrects the same moral problems associated with the pseudoscience of physiognomy, the author of this manuscript develops and defends the ‘Liberal Argument Against Facial Discrimination’ (LAAFD), which concludes that government use of FPT poses a significant risk of violating the classical liberal value of equality before the law by committing unjust discrimination against groups of people whose faces happen to match FPT classifiers. A key move in the argument suggests how a future scenario that results in widespread discrimination based solely on facial structure could be as unjustified and harmful, mutatis mutandis, as similar discrimination based solely on racial background. In the final section, the author of this paper develops prima facie policy proposals designed to protect classical liberal values if FPT is to be utilized by governments in liberal democratic societies.
Digital beauty filters are pervasive in social media platforms. Despite their popularity and relevance in the selfies culture, there is little research on their characteristics and potential biases. In this article, we study the existence of racial biases on the set of aesthetic canons embedded in social media beauty filters, which we refer to as the Beautyverse. First, we provide a historic contextualization of racial biases in beauty practices, followed by an extensive empirical study of racial biases in beauty filters through state-of-the-art face processing algorithms. We show that beauty filters embed Eurocentric or white canons of beauty, not only by brightening the skin color, but also by modifying facial features.
Many court observers have argued that judges are capable of avoiding the use of extraneous factors in decision-making. This study examines the influence of seemingly irrelevant heuristics on real-world courtroom proceedings. Drawing on theories from neighboring disciplines, I hypothesize that physically attractive attorneys have greater success in US federal court. Using a generalizable causal inference strategy and a dataset of over 1,000 cases and 3,000 votes, I find support for my expectations using multiple measures of attractiveness. These findings raise serious normative concerns about equality and underscore the need to adjust traditional models of judicial behavior to account for inherent biases.
This handbook reviews theory and research on the accuracy of personality judgments. The various chapters explain the major theoretical models that guide research in this area, describe various methodological approaches to evaluating accuracy, and review recent empirical findings. Topics considered include moderators of accuracy including judge, target, trait, and information. Chapters also summarize recent work on self-other asymmetry, the accuracy of self-knowledge, meta-perceptions and meta-accuracy. The various pieces of information used in making personality judgments, including nonverbal cues, contextual and environmental information, normative information, and group stereotypes are identified and their roles in accurate judgment are described. Examples of some of the domains to which accuracy research can be applied including interpersonal relationships, clinical practice, the workplace, and accuracy training are included. And finally, possible future directions for the study and application of accurate personality judgments are provided.
Facial first impressions influence jurors in both laboratory experiments and real courtrooms. Often, more attractive defendants are perceived as less guilty and receive more lenient sentences. However, the type of crime under consideration, as well as the ecological validity of the stimuli presented, may determine the nature of this bias. Here, extending previous work, we considered three crime types (robbery, sexual assault, murder) and utilised short video clips of male defendants, accompanied by real-world crime descriptions. Crucially, we varied attractiveness by presenting a large set of identities, in comparison with the typical use of one ‘high’ and one ‘low’ attractiveness face. Using null hypothesis significance testing, we found no evidence that either attractiveness or crime type influenced guilt perceptions. Taking a Bayesian perspective, our results provided some evidence that more attractive defendants were rated as less guilty for murder but more guilty for sexual assault, with no bias observed for robbery. Importantly, however, none of these effects had high certainty and all were small in size. By comparing the extremes of attractiveness, we again found inconclusive evidence of any attractiveness effects, with small differences in all cases. The implications for this departure from previous findings are discussed in terms of ecological validity and the need to consider attractiveness as a continuous rather than binary measure.
There are many articles that show a discrepancy between the various motives for the construction of XAI (Explanatory Artificial Intelligence), which is not surprising, since this area began to be actively centralized and actively developed only 6 years ago. But the strange thing is that the motives not only do not converge but may contradict each other. This indicates that there are fundamental errors in the very construction of different XAI concepts. These errors create not only contradictions between different visions of XAI, but also common to many concepts of error. The main one is the absence or incorrect answer to the question “For whom exactly should AI be explained?”. Turning to human psychology and social processes that are accompanied by the exchange of explanations, we will try to consider what benefits the explanation brings to people and groups. Correcting fundamental errors in the construction of XAI concepts, we show that neural networks are no less explanatory AI than linear models and decision trees. Moreover, we will show what the neural network approach can do so that the explanation will not need to be exchanged for the quality of AI algorithms, and that they can even improve them.KeywordsExplainable artificial intelligenceBiomorphic artificial intelligenceBlack-box modelsMental models
Research has found that attractiveness has a positive “halo effect”, where people tend to attribute socially desirable personality traits to physically attractive individuals. Several studies have documented this “attractiveness halo effect”, with most research using western samples. This study sought to examine the “attractiveness halo effect” across 45 countries in 11 world regions. Data was collected through the Psychological Science Accelerator and participants were asked to rate 120 faces on one of several traits. Results showed that attractiveness correlated positively with most of the socially desirable personality traits. More specifically, across all 11 world regions, male and female faces rated as more attractive were rated as more confident, emotionally stable, intelligent, responsible, sociable, and trustworthy. These findings, thus, provide evidence that the “attractiveness halo effect” can be found cross-culturally.
With the advent of automated decision-making, governments have increasingly begun to rely on artificially intelligent algorithms to inform policy decisions across a range of domains of government interest and influence. The practice has not gone unnoticed among philosophers, worried about “algocracy” (rule by algorithm), and its ethical and political impacts. One of the chief issues of ethical and political significance raised by algocratic governance, so the argument goes, is the lack of transparency of algorithms.
One of the best-known examples of philosophical analyses of algocracy is John Danaher’s “The threat of algocracy” (2016), arguing that government by algorithm undermines political legitimacy. In this paper, I will treat Danaher’s argument as a springboard for raising additional questions about the connections between algocracy, comprehensibility, and legitimacy, especially in light of empirical results about what we can expect the voters and policymakers to know.
The paper has the following structure: in Sect. 2, I introduce the basics of Danaher’s argument regarding algocracy. In Sect. 3 I argue that the algocratic threat to legitimacy has troubling implications for social justice. In Sect. 4, I argue that, nevertheless, there seem to be good reasons for governments to rely on algorithmic decision support systems. Lastly, I try to resolve the apparent tension between the findings of the two preceding Sections.
Given the wealth of literature on appearance manipulation generally, it is, perhaps, surprising that cosmetic usage receives so little empirical attention, and perhaps reflects a patriarchal approach to “appropriate” research areas. Incorporating a postfeminist approach, the current study aims to address, in part, this lacuna by providing a contemporary synopsis of the various and diverse motivations for cosmetic usage. Online, written responses to a semi-structured questionnaire were collected. In response to six broad questions, for example, “Why do you currently use cosmetics?”, respondents were encouraged to write, in as much detail as they liked, on their motivations for using cosmetics. Thematic analysis, using deductive and inductive approaches, revealed four main themes: “Multiple selves”—Conformity, Impression Management, and Judgment; Enhancement and Confidence; Fun, Creativity and Well-being; and Signification and Identity. Whilst some of these themes had been anticipated and, indeed, sign-posted in prior literature, the weight of interest in particular areas was unexpected (e.g., in terms of Fun, Creativity, and Well-being), whilst other areas did not receive the expected attention (e.g., in mate attraction). Additionally, and worthy of future research, entirely new areas also emerged (e.g., cosmetics for fun and creativity).
The desire to optimise one’s appearance is probably as old as mankind itself. In order to apply the artistic flourish of such a precise chemical tool as BoNT on the infinite variation of human anatomy some basic influences, both biological and fashion, are presented. Important contributors to aging are introduced.
Plastic surgery is growing in popularity. Despite this, there has been little exploration to date regarding the psychosocial consequences of seeking plastic surgery. Our study investigated how women seeking plastic surgery are perceived by others. We presented a random sample of 985 adults (men = 54%, Mage = 35.84 years, SDage = 10.59) recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk with a series of experimental stimuli consisting of a photographed woman (attractive versus unattractive) and a vignette describing an activity she plans to engage in (plastic surgery versus control activity). Participants rated stimuli on perceived warmth, competence, morality, and humanness. We ran linear mixed-effect models to assess all study hypotheses. There was a negative plastic surgery effect; that is, women seeking plastic surgery were perceived less favorably than those planning to complete control activities across all outcome variables (warmth, competence, morality, and humanness). These relationships were moderated by physical attractiveness; while attractive women planning to undergo plastic surgery were perceived less favorably than attractive women planning to engage in control activities, perceptions of unattractive individuals remained unchanged by plastic surgery status. We theorized that empathy toward unattractive women seeking plastic surgery mitigated the negative plastic surgery effect for these women. In sum, our results suggest that perceptions of attractive women are worsened when these women decide to seek cosmetic surgery. Perceptions of warmth and competence have implications for an individual’s self-esteem and interpersonal relationships, while perceptions of morality and humanness can impact an individual’s ability to fulfil their psychological needs. As such, we concluded that attractive women seeking plastic surgery are potentially subject to experience negative psychosocial outcomes. Future research ought to examine whether perceptions and outcomes differ for women seeking reconstructive plastic surgery (versus cosmetic plastic surgery) and whether they differ across different types of surgeries (i.e. face versus body).
There is ample evidence that attractive individuals, across diverse domains, are judged more favourably. But most research has focused on single/one-shot decisions, where decision-makers receive no feedback following their decisions, and outcomes of their judgements are inconsequential to the self. Would attractive individuals still be judged favourably in experience-based decision-making where people make iterative decisions and receive consequential feedback (money gained/lost) following each decision? To investigate this question, participants viewed headshots of four financial partners presented side-by-side and repeatedly (over 50-100 trials) selected partners that would help maximize their profits. Following every partner-selection, participants received feedback about the net monetary gains/losses the partner had conferred. Unbeknownst to participants, two partners (one attractive, one unattractive) were equally advantageous (conferred net-gains overtime) and two partners (one attractive and one unattractive) were equally disadvantageous (conferred net-losses overtime). Even though attractive and unattractive partners were equally profitable and despite receiving feedback, participants selected attractive partners more throughout the task were quicker to reselect them even when they conferred losses and judged them as more helpful. Indeed, attractive-disadvantageous partners were preferred to the same extent (or more) as unattractive-advantageous partners. Importantly, the effect of attractiveness on decision-making was fully explained by the perceived trustworthiness of the financial partners.
Despite a well-established body of research demonstrating that others’ evaluations of a person’s physical attractiveness carry significant meaning, researchers have largely ignored how self-perceptions of physical attractiveness relate to offending behaviors. Applying general strain theory and using eight waves of panel data from the Adolescent Academic Context Study, we explore how self-perceptions of attractiveness relate to offending as youth progress through school. Results demonstrate that youth who perceive themselves as more attractive engage in more—not less—offending. Depression, which is treated as a form of negative affect, does not appear to mediate this relationship. We conclude by raising attention to the possibility that being “good-looking” may actually be a key risk factor for crime.
This book focuses on the growing body of empirical research investigating the cognition of musical multimedia, with an emphasis on temporally organized auditory and visual structures. ‘Multimedia’ commonly refers to audiovisual presentations in film, television, video, interactive gaming, computer interfaces, and on the Internet. The term ‘empirical’ refers to the process of collecting data from human participants via systematically designed experiments. Such empirical research provides a framework for understanding the relationships between music, sound, and image in multimedia contexts. The international collection of contributors represents eight countries and a range of disciplines including psychology, neuroscience, musicology, media studies, film, and communications. Each chapter includes a comprehensive review of the topic and, where appropriate, identifies models that can be empirically tested. Part I presents contrasting theoretical approaches from cognitive psychology, philosophy, semiotics, communications, musicology, and neuroscience. Part II reviews research on the structural aspects of music and multimedia, while Part III focuses on research related to the influence of music on perceived meaning in the multimedia experience. Part IV explores empirical findings on a variety of real-world applications of music in multimedia including entertainment and educational media for children, video and computer games, television and online advertising, auditory displays of information, and the impact of surround sound, showing how theory and practice intertwine in various examples of multimedia. Part V includes a final chapter that consolidates emergent themes and concludes with the value of broadening the scope of research to encompass multisensory, multidisciplinary, and cross-cultural perspectives to advance our understanding of the role of music in multimedia.
Many studies have examined how defendant characteristics influence jury decisions, but none have investigated the effect of cosmetics. We therefore examined how cosmetics influence jury decisions for young and middle-aged female defendants. In Study 1, participants were more likely to assign guilty verdicts to middle-aged defendants than young defendants and when presented with cosmetics, male participants gave young defendants longer sentences and middle-aged defendants shorter sentences. In Study 2, however, we did not replicate the age or the cosmetics effects on jury sentences, suggesting that comparisons between defendants may have influenced jury decisions in Study 1. Further work is thus still needed, but our two well-powered studies (N = 1127) provide a first exploration into the influence of cosmetics on jury decisions.
In diesem Kapitel werden die vielfältigen Faktoren vorgestellt, die unsere Entscheidungen maßgeblich beeinflussen. Es wird umfassend beschrieben, warum wir uns im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes oft irrational verhalten und warum es so schwierig ist, dies selbst zu erkennen. Der Bogen wird dabei von der Dissonanztheorie, über unterschiedliche Heuristiken bis hin zum Barnum-Effekt gespannt.
Sexual harassment is still a widespread problem in today’s modern society. Therefore, it is important to identify extralegal factors that shape society’s attitudes towards sexual harassment cases and why, sometimes, the victim of sexual harassment is being blamed for the situation. Most of the previous studies do not explore the causal relationship between the characteristics of the accused and the attitudes towards the cases. Moreover, the results of many existing studies are contradictory. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine the impact of sex, physical attractiveness and socioeconomic status (SES) of the perpetrator on the attitudes towards sexual harassment situations. A hundred seventy-nine respondents participated in the study. During the research, a fictional news report and situation assessment scale were used. It was found that only a perpetrator’s physical attractiveness and socioeconomic status had a statistically significant impact on the appraisal of the perpetrator and victim’s behavior in the situation. The physical attractiveness of the perpetrator resulted in a statistically significant positive appraisal of his behavior and a more negative appraisal of the victim’s behavior. SES only had a statistically significant impact on the appraisal of perpetrator’s behavior: when the perpetrator was of high SES, his behavior in a sexual harassment situation was perceived more negatively than that of low SES. Results of this research not only emphasize the importance of extralegal factors on the attitudes toward the sexual harassment victims and perpetrators among younger adults, but also indicates possible societal changes – diminished gender and opposite SES effects on the attitudes toward the aforementioned situations.
Group-perpetrated crime often involves leaders and followers, but it is not currently understood how peer groups form around leaders during a criminal incident. Impression formation research has shown that specific facial cues are associated with leadership and perceptions of leadership. We extend this research to leadership among group-perpetrated youth crime and examine its role in downstream sentencing outcomes. Study 1 revealed that leaders of groups may be perceived as more dominant than their followers. In Study 2, participants were tasked with selecting the leaders from their groups and were more likely to (correctly) select targets perceived as more dominant but also (incorrectly) select targets perceived as more Trustworthy. In Study 3, we examined whether facial impressions were associated with downstream sentencing outcomes. Perceptions of Trustworthiness were associated with reduced sentencing, but dominance was unrelated. The results underscore the role that facial appearance plays in group formation and sentencing among youth.
We study whether sell-side financial analysts’ physical attractiveness is associated with their job performance. We find that attractive analysts make more accurate earnings forecasts than less attractive analysts. Moreover, more attractive analysts make stock recommendations that are more informative in the short run and more profitable in the long run. Additional analyses reveal that attractive analysts attain their better job performance at least partly through their privileged access to information from firm management. For the sources of the beauty effect, we find that more attractive analysts gain more media exposure, have better connections to institutional investors, and receive more internal support from their employers. Additional evidence suggests that analysts’ physical appearance per se at least partly explains our findings. Overall, our study shows that physical attractiveness has a profound impact on the job performance and information access of sell-side financial analysts.
This paper was accepted by Shiva Rajgopal, accounting.
A substantial body of research examining the role that attractiveness plays in a wide range of outcomes has revealed that attractiveness is a beneficial characteristic across multiple domains of life, including some related to crime and the criminal justice system. The current study uses these findings as a springboard to examine the potential association between attractiveness and multiple measures of criminal justice processing, including being arrested, being convicted, being sentenced to probation and being incarcerated. Analysis of data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health revealed that more attractive persons were less likely to be arrested and convicted than less attractive persons, but there was no association with odds of being sentenced to probation or incarcerated. Follow-up analyses revealed that the beneficial effect of being attractive was confined solely to females. We discuss possible reasons for these results and provide suggestions for future research.
Cambridge Core - Sociology of Race and Ethnicity - Appearance Bias and Crime - edited by Bonnie Berry
The main purpose of this research is to develop a framework of trust determinants in the interactions between people and cognitive assistants (CAs). CAs are defined as new decision tools that can provide people with high quality recommendations and help them make data-driven decisions to understand the environment around them. Trust is defined as the belief of people that CAs will help them reach a desired decision. An extensive review on trust in psychology, sociology, economics and policy making, organizational science, automation, and robotics was conducted to determine the factors that influence people's trust in CAs. On the basis of this review, a framework of trust determinants in people's interactions with CAs was developed where reliability, attractiveness, and emotional attachments positively influence people's trust in CAs. The framework also shows that relative advantages of innovativeness positively affect the intention to use CAs. Future research directions are suggested for developing and validating more concrete scales in measuring trust determinants in the interactions between people and CAs.
The chivalry hypothesis and attractiveness bias were evaluated among 323 police officers and 364 students, serving as a control group. The participants were asked to read a description of a swindle, where the offender was either physically attractive or unattractive. They then had to assign a punishment to the offender and judge the blame ascribed to both offender and victim. The findings showed that the offender’s sex, more than his or her external appearance, affects differences in punishment severity. Female offenders were treated more forgivingly than male offenders. Nonetheless, analysis of blame attributions shows that attractive offenders are blamed more than unattractive offenders. Women were also found to dispense severe punishments more than men.
Extralegal factors, including physical attractiveness, may bias juristic opinions. The present study provided 450 university students with hypothetical scenarios of physical, domestic, and sexual assault in which complainant’s attractiveness and other legal and extralegal characteristics were independently varied. Results indicate complainant’s attractiveness mattered in sexual assault scenarios only for guilt of the defendant, but not for physical or domestic assault. Complainant’s attractiveness was not related to perceptions of blameworthiness of complainant or punishment of defendant. Overall, legal factors of injury level, prior offending, and intoxication mattered more than attractiveness or race of the victim. Implications are discussed.
Do judges make decisions that are truly impartial? A wide range of experimental and field studies reveal that several extralegal factors influence judicial decision making. Demographic characteristics of judges and litigants affect judges' decisions. Judges also rely heavily on intuitive reasoning in deciding cases, making them vulnerable to the use of mental shortcuts that can lead to mistakes. Furthermore, judges sometimes rely on facts outside the record and rule more favorably toward litigants who are more sympathetic or with whom they share demographic characteristics. On the whole, judges are excellent decision makers and sometimes resist common errors of judgment that influence ordinary adults. The weight of the evidence, however, suggests that judges are vulnerable to systematic deviations from the ideal of judicial impartiality.
We investigate the associations among physical appearance, threat perceptions, and criminal punishment. Psychological ideas about impression formation are integrated with criminological perspectives on sentencing to generate and test unique hypotheses about the associations among defendant facial characteristics, subjective evaluations of threatening appearance, and judicial imprisonment decisions. We analyze newly collected data that link booking photos, criminal histories, and sentencing information for more than 1,100 convicted felony defendants. Our findings indicate that Black defendants are perceived to be more threatening in appearance. Other facial characteristics, such as physical attractiveness, baby-faced appearance, facial scars, and visible tattoos, also influence perceptions of threat, as do criminal history scores. Furthermore, some physical appearance characteristics are significantly related to imprisonment decisions, even after controlling for other relevant case characteristics. These and other findings are discussed as they relate to psychological research on impression formation, criminological theories of court actor decision-making, and sociological work on race and punishment.
Varied the physical attractiveness of a criminal defendant (attractive, unattractive, or no information) and the nature of the crime (attractiveness-related or attractiveness-unrelated) in a factorial design. After reading 1 of the case accounts, 120 undergraduates sentenced the defendant to a term of imprisonment. An interaction was predicted: When the crime was unrelated to attractiveness (burglary), Ss would assign more lenient sentences to the attractive defendant than to the unattractive defendant; when the offense was attractiveness-related (swindle), the attractive defendant would receive harsher treatment. Results confirm the predictions, thereby supporting a cognitive explanation for the relationship between the physical attractiveness of defendants and the nature of the judgments made against them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Preliminary evidence indicates that effects of a physical attractiveness stereotype may be present at an early childhood developmental level. Several of the mediating processes that may be responsible for these effects presuppose that adults display differential treatment toward attractive and unattractive children in circumstances in which their behavior is identical. The present study used a situation integral to the socialization process, that in which the child has committed a transgression and the socializing adult must evaluate the child's behavior. 243 female undergraduates rated 7-yr-olds reading descriptions of the act and viewing a photograph of the child involved. Within a 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 design (Attractiveness of Child*Severity of Transgression*Sex of Child*Type of Transgression), support was found for the hypotheses that (a) the severe transgression of an attractive child is less likely to be seen as reflecting an enduring disposition toward antisocial behavior than that of an unattractive child and (b) the transgression itself tends to be evaluated less negatively when commited by an attractive child. No differences in intensity of advocated punishment were found. These and additional findings are discussed.
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The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
This work focuses on the effects of a popular conception of criminality in the adjudication of homicide defendants. Data from a sample of persons arrested for murder suggest that the stereotype of the violent offender, the "normal primitive," constitutes an official imagery within which legal decisions are made. Path analytic techniques indicate that conformity to the criminal conception, along with the social class of the defendant, has significant consequences for the assignment of public counsel, denial of bail and a plea of guilt before the judge. Lack of access to legal resources, in turn, produces the more severe convictions awarded by the court.
Nearly half a century after Thorsten Sellin (1928) first introduced the topic for research, the issue of discrimination in judicial sentencing is still very much with us. Thus, Richard Quinney (1970: 142), among the more provocative critics of our system of criminal justice, observes that Obviously judicial decisions are not made uniformly. Decisions are made according to a host of extra-legal factors, including the age of the offender, his race, and social class. Perhaps the most obvious example of judicial discretion occurs in the handling of cases of persons from minority groups. Negroes, in comparison to whites, are convicted with lesser evidence and sentenced to more severe punishments.
The article considers several methodological and legal issues that arise from the use of quantitative methods to prove intentional discrimination in judicial and administrative proceedings. Following an analysis of the relevance of evidence of adverse impact in intentional discrimination cases, the paper discusses the issues involved in the construction of a measure of adverse impact, i.e., how one identifies the before and after popula tions used as a basis for comparison and inference. The paper next considers the issues involved in the selection of a mathematical formula used to compare the respective treat ment of the minority and majority groups. Finally the article analyzes the issues involved in the selection of a statistical procedure that will enable the decision maker to test the plausibility of the defense that the adverse impact observed in the case was caused by the application of a nondiscriminatory criterion selection or by chance.
In this article I argue that several conceptual and methodological deficiencies have plagued research on racial discrimination. Discrimination is usually conceptualized as a function of societal or institutional forces rather than as an attribute of individual decisionmakers, resulting in research designs that analyze decisions of courts, rather than those of individual judges. However, a finding of no discrimination in aggregate court data does not preclude the possibility that individual judges discriminate against or in favor of minorities. Thus the selection of the unit of analysis, and other methodological choices, can significantly affect substantive conclusions. Finally, research has largely been concerned with description, rather than explanation, and has therefore failed to illuminate the decisional processes that produce discrimination.
Each of these critiques is substantiated with data from the Fulton County (Georgia) Superior Court. My findings suggest three patterns of sentencing among judges: pro-black, anti-black, and nondiscriminatory. Anti-black judges are strongly tied to traditional southern culture, concerned about crime, prejudiced against blacks, and relatively punitive in their sentencing philosophies. In addition, they tend to rely more heavily on the defendant's attitude and prior record in making their sentencing decisions. Thus, discrimination seems to flow from both the attitudinal predispositions of the judges and the process they employ to make decisions.
Both an opinion survey and an experimental study were conducted. The survey revealed that substantial majorities of those polled believed (a) that a defendant's character and previous history should influence jurors' decision (79%) and (b) that the defendant's physical appearance should not bias these decisions (93%). The hypothesis, derived from a reinforcement model of interpersonal attraction and previous research on physical appearance, was that attractive defendants would be more positively evaluated than unattractive ones despite the seeming irrelevance of appearance to judicial decisions. The results of a simulated jury task were that physically attractive defendants were evaluated with less certainty of guilt (p < .05), less severe recommended punishment (p < .005), and greater attraction (p < .005), than were unattractive defendants. The importance of independent affective and cognitive components of the attraction process were emphasized.
Applies psychophysical ratio scaling procedures to the construction of a quantitative index for the seriousness of crimes. Harvard Book List (edited) 1971 #99 (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A classic in the field, "Understanding Social Psychology" is built around an exceptionally accurate view by premier scholars of what it takes to lay the groundwork in social psychology. Exciting and accessible, each chapter opens with an incident from social and political events that is carried through the chapter. The book stresses a balance between being up-to-date and keeping focus on historical roots and the enduring character of important questions in social psychology and its fundamental scientific underpinnings. The authors underline the importance of the great classical findings and have been applauded for their explanation of theory and methodology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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