Beautiful but Dangerous

Effects of Offender Attractiveness and Nature of the Crime on Juridic Judgment

Nazlı Şerifoğlu 20100103054

Authors(born January 9, 1932) is an American psychologist.

He Worked with the Nancy Ostrove in many studies.

Now he worked on University of Maryland in USA.

His research interests are in self-presentation, interpersonal relations, and wishful thinking. Also he interesed to stereotype. The focus of his research is on understanding responses to positive stereotypes

Harold Sigall

Uniformed services University of the Health Sciences and University of mmaryland college Park (Post Doc, Health Psychology1979 – 1980 )

University of Maryland College Park ( PhD, Social Psychology 1972 – 1976 )

SUNY Binghamton (BA, Psychology1967 – 1971 )

She now worked on Adjunct Associate Professor in Georgetown University Medical

She pursued the many studies with the Harold Ostrove.

She generalley focused on the Risk Communication, Public relations, Risk management, Social science and healthy policiy.

Nancy Ostrove

• What factors may have an impact on determining the defendant’s guilt or innocence ?

• İrrelevant factors play a role in our beliefs about guilt or innoncence ?

The following article by Harold Sigall and Nancy Ostrove is a classic piece of research that investigated the impact of the defendant’s physically attractiveness on the severity of sentences given to her.

Earlier studies had indicated that physically attractive individuals often have great advantages over less attractive people in variety situation.

This study not only examined the role of physical attractiveness in a trial-like setting but also how the nature of crime and attractiveness interact to influence judgments about the defendant.

Introduction

Research investigating the interpersonal consequences of physical attractiveness has demonstrated clearly that good-looking people have tremendous advantages over their unattractive counterparts in many way.

Dion, Berscheid and Walster reported, compared to unattractive people, better-looking people were viewed as more likely to posess a variety of socially desirable attributes. Also, they have rosier futures.

More happier and more successful lives.

Unfortunately, for the vast majority of us who have not been blessed with a stunning appearance,the evidence does not permit such consolation.

A recent study by Dion (1972 ) When the transgression was severe the act was viewed less negatively when committed by a good-looking child, than when the offender was unattracrive.

Also, unattractive children were more likely to be involved in future transgressions.

Can baeutiful people get away with murder ?

Although Dion (1972 ) found no differences in punishment recommended for offenders as a fuction of attractiveness, Monahan (1971 ) has suggested that beautiful women are convicted less often of crimes they are accused of, and Efran ( 1974 ) has recently demonstrated that subjets are much more generous when assigning punishment to good-looking as opposed to unattractive.

Essenbetially, the argument here would be that beauty,having possitive reinforcement value, would lead to relatively more possitive affective responses toward a person who has it.

İmplict in this reasoning is that the nature of the affective response, which influences whether kind or harsh treatment is recommended, is determined by the situmulus features associated with the target person.

According to cognitive aproach and Dion’s (1972) study unattractive individuals are viewed as more likely to transgress again.in addition, inasmuch as attractive individuala are viewed as possessing desirable qualities and as having relatively great potential, it makes sense to treat them leniently. They can show successfull social acceptable.

• İn addition, the cognitive approach suggest that in such instances greater punishment would be assigned to the attractive offrender. When the crime is attractiveness related, a beautiful criminal may be viewed as taking advantage of a god-giving gift.

• The attractiveness of a defendant was varied along with the nature of the crime committed.

The crime committed may be viewed as attractiveness related, as in a confidence game, despite being seenas possessing more potential,the attractive defendant may be regarded as relatively more dangerous, and the effects of beauty could be expected to be cancelled our or reserved.

METHOD

Participants ;• 60 Female • 60 Male

• 3 conditions;

1. Physically attractive

2. Attractive-unrelated

3. No information

After begin presented with an account of a criminal case, each subject sentences the defendant to a term of imprisoniment.

%50 of the subjects were presented with written account of an attractiveness are related crime, a burglary, and the rest with unattractiveness related crime, a swindle.

Subject were randomly assigned to condition.

procedure

• They would read a criminal case account, that they would receive biographical information about the defendant and that after considering the materials would be asked to answer questions.

• The case account began on the second page.

• Clipped to this page was a 5*8 inch card which contained routine demographic information and was identical in all conditions. And also added a women’s photograpy on three groups. ( attractive,unattractive and no foto)

• Subjects then reither the account of a burglary or a swindle.

• She was charged with obtaining money under false pretenses and grand larceny in both cases, the setting for the offense and the victim were described identically .

• The information presented left little doubt concerning the defendants guilt.

• Subjects were asked to completed the following statement by circling a number between 1 and 15 : ‘I sentences the defendant, Barbara Helm, to _____ years of imprisonment.’ subject judged to her innocence or guilt.

• İn addition, the defendant was rated on a serious of 9 point bipolar adjective scales, including physically unattractive to physically attractive.

• A post-experimental interview followed, during which subjects were debriefed.

Result

• The physical attractiveness manipulation was successfull. The attractive defendent received a mean rating of 7.53, while the mean for the unattractive defendant was 3.20, F ( 1, 108 ) = 184.29, P < .001.

• These rating were not affected by nature of crime, not was there an interaction.

• These subjects attributed greater beauty to defendant in the swindle condition than in the burglary condition. This findings offers some support for their contention that te swindle was vieved as attractiveness related.

• Subject sex was ignore as a variable.

• Also subjets rated the seriousness of crime on 9 point scale.

• İn swingle condition more serious than bulgraly condition.

• When the offense was attractiveness-unrelated (burglary), the unattractivene defendant was more severely punished than the attractive defendant; however, when the offense was unattractiveness related ( swindle) the attractive defendant was treated more harshly.

• The unattractive burglar received significantly more punishment than attractive burglar.

• The result of the present experiment support the cognitive explanation we offered.

• The argument that pysical attractiveness is a postive trait and therefore has a unidirectionally favorable effects on judgments of those who have it, would have led to accurate predictions in the burglary conditions.

discussion

• Perhaps it is le to derive a small bit of consolation from this outcome, if we speculate that only the very attractive receive special ( favorable or unforable) treatment and that others are treated similary.

• Perhaps, if even 1 of 12 jurors notes that some irrelevant factor may be affecting the jury’s judgments, the others would see the light.

Critical questions

• Would be same result be obtained if male defendants were used ?

• How could the effects of irrelevant factors such as attractiveness somehow be minimized in the real world courtroom ?

• Which other irrelevant factors can effected to judge ?