Running head: ASSIGNED PRSION TERM

Assigned Prison Term: An Updated Report on The Relationship

Between Attractiveness and Type of Crime

Tracie S. Swanseger

St. Bonaventure University

Abstract

In a study done by Sigall and Ostrove in 1975, it was found that jurors were more likely to give a stiffer prison sentence to those defendants who most fit the crime stereotype. They manipulated two conditions, defendant's attractiveness and the type of crime they were accused of, “con artist” or “burglar”. They found that the attractive defendant received a lighter sentence for burglary but a harsher sentence for a “con artist” and vice versa for the unattractive defendant. I decided to see if the results of their study would hold true 30 years later; therefore I conducted the same study done in 1975. A 2X2 factorial design was used to find the results. My results support the research done by Sigall and Ostrove, in fact the stereotype of the crime plays a major role in prison term.

Assigned Prison Term: An Updated Report on The Relationship

Between Attractiveness and Type of Crime

In my Forensic Psychology class we often discussed criminal cases and how a jury may become biased. In today’s society it seems that the “attractive” person is often more appealing, therefore are treated differently than those who are less attractive. There is a great deal of research done that give evidence that in criminal cases, those who are viewed as being more attractive are often given special treatment over those who are viewed as unattractive.

Downs and Lyons(1991) had police escorts rate the physical attractiveness of defendants in over 1500 misdemeanor cases in Texas. They then correlated the physical attractiveness with the monetary fines given by the judge. Their results showed that those defendants who were more attractive tended to receive smaller fines then those who were less attractive.

McArthur and Berry(1987) tested to see if “baby-faced” adults were treated less harshly then the “more mature” looking adults. They thought that having a “baby-face” would have an advantage for the defendant because they were viewed as being more attractive than the “more mature” looking defendant. They surveyed college students and found that students judged "baby-faced" adults as being more naive and rated them not-guilty of intentional criminal acts more often than "mature-faced" adults.

Research shows that, indeed, attractive defendants receive lighter sentencing than those who are viewed as less attractive. For my research I took it a step further and added type of crime as a variable. Sigall and Ostrove(1975) conducted a study that looked at not only attractiveness but also type of crime. They were interested in seeing if there was any correlation between the two. They had college students read a criminal case of a “con artist” or a “burglar” and stated whether either an attractive man or unattractive man had committed the crime. They then had the students assign a prison term for each case. It was shown that not only attractiveness but, type of crime that affected prison term as well. I wanted to recreate their study to see if crime stereotypes still play a role in criminal cases today. In order to update this study I used white collar and blue collar crimes

It is known that people have a certain stereotype when it comes to crimes. Therefore when a crime is committed it is easier to place blame on a defendant who most fits that stereotype of the crime. White-collar criminals, for instance, tend to be viewed as attractive people who take advantage of their “god-given gift”. Therefore, I hypothesized that the attractive white-collar criminal would receive a harsher sentence than the unattractive defendant because they fit the stereotype. On the other side, blue-collar criminals are often viewed as being dirty and have poor self-care. Because of this I hypothesized that the attractive blue-collar criminal would receive a lighter sentence and the unattractive defendant would receive a harsher sentence because he fits the stereotype.

Methods

Participants

60 (33 female and 27 male) undergraduate students participated in this study.

Materials

Two different criminal cases, white-collar and blue-collar, and two different pictures, attractive and unattractive, were used. A survey consisting of questions concerning length of prison term was also used.

Procedure

In order to find a common view of the definition of attractive and unattractive I conducted research of college students. I had 50 randomly assigned college students view 20 different photographs; 10 women and 10 men. I then had the students place the photographs in order, most attractive to least attractive. After viewing the results of the survey I chose the most attractive individual and the most unattractive individual, both male, and used them in my study.

I broke my participants up into four different groups then randomly assigned each group a different criminal case. The first criminal case explained a male convincing a young, rich, bachelorette to invest over $2000 into a nonexistent company. With the case was a photograph of the attractive male. The second case was exactly the same as the first except the photograph was of the unattractive male. The third case explained that there was a male who broke into an apartment and stole over $2000 dollars worth of jewelry. With this case I included a photograph of the attractive male. The fourth case was exactly the same as the third except the photograph included was that of the unattractive male.

After giving the groups ten minutes to read the case I then asked them to assign a prison sentence ranging from 1-10 years. The data was collected and an ANOVA was done to receive my results.

Results

Once the data was collected the means of each criminal case were calculated. The mean for attractive, white-collar criminal was 6.2, unattractive, white-collar criminal was 4.2, attractive, blue-collar criminal was 5.4, and unattractive, blue-collar criminal was 7.0 (see figure 1). A between-subjects design ANOVA was used to analyze the means.

Discussion

The results of this study are consistent with the research that was done by Sigall and Ostrove 30 years ago. In both 1970’s society as well as today’s society, crime stereotypes have an important affect on jury decision. In this study, whether or not you were attractive was not as important as whether or not you fit the crime stereotype. In both white and blue collar crime the prison term increased by approximately 1.5 years if the defendant fit the stereotype.

This results help to show that the motto of the criminal justice system, “the law is blind”, does not always apply. There will always be negative and positive biases among people in society, therefore it is often hard to remain perfectly objective when it comes to criminal cases.

References

Downs, A. C. & Lyons, P. M. (1991). Natural observations of the links between

attractiveness and initial legal judgments. Personality and Social Psychology

Bulletin, 17, 541- 547.

L. Z. McArthur and D. S. Berry, "Cross-cultural agreement in perceptions of

babyfaced adults," Journal of cross-cultural psychology,

vol. 18, pp. 165-92, 1987.

Sigall, H & Ostrove, N. (1975). Beautiful but Dangerous: Effects of Offender

Attractiveness and Nature of the Crime on Juridic Judgement.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 410-414.

Figure 1: Jail sentence as a function of type of crime and attractiveness.

Table 1: ANOVA Table

Source df f-ratio P

Attractiveness	1	4.132	0.047
Crime	1	0.278	0.600
Attractive*Crime	1	14.743	0.00