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The physical attractiveness of a criminal defendant (attractive, unattractive, no information) and the nature of the crime (attractiveness-related, attrac-tiveness-unrelated) were varied in a factorial design. After reading one of the case accounts, subjects sentenced the defendant to a term of imprison-ment. An interaction was predicted: When the crime was unrelated to attrac-tiveness (burglary), subjects 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. The results confirmed 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. Research investigating the interpersonal consequences of physical attractiveness has demonstrated clearly that good-looking people have tremendous advantages over their un-attractive counterparts in many ways. For example, a recent study by Miller (1970) pro-vided evidence for the existence of a physical attractiveness stereotype with a rather favor-able content. Dion, Berscheid, and Walster (1972) reported similar findings: Compared to unattractive people, better-looking people were viewed as more likely to possess a vari-ety of socially desirable attributes. In addi-tion, Dion et al.s subjects predicted rosier futures for the beautiful stimulus persons-— attractive people were expected to have hap-pier and more successful lives in store for them. Thus, at least in the eyes of others, good looks imply greater potential. Since physical attractiveness hardly seems to provide a basis for an equitable distribu-tion of rewards, one might hope that the powerful effects of this variable would occur primarily when it is the only source of infor-mation available. Unfair or irrational conse-quences of differences in beauty observed in some situations would cause less uneasiness if, in other situations given other important data, This study was supported by a grant from the
Sigall et al. (Sat,) studied this question.