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The relationship between facial attractiveness and perceived guilt across types of crime

Robin SS Kramer Orcid Logo, Janie-Lea Jarvis, Michaela Green, Alex Jones Orcid Logo

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

Swansea University Author: Alex Jones Orcid Logo

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DOI (Published version): 10.1177/17470218231218651

Abstract

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...

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Published in: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
ISSN: 1747-0218 1747-0226
Published: SAGE Publications
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa65122
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Abstract: 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, and 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” attractive 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 of murder but more guilty of 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.
Keywords: Face perception, bias, facial attractiveness, defendant, juror decision-making, guilt
College: Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences

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