The Attractive Criminal: Do Defendants' Attractiveness, Crime, and Juror Gender Affect Punitiveness and Verdict?

Each year, hundreds of thousands of jurors judge a defendant's guilt.Understanding factors that influence their judgments is crucial.Both attractive-leniency bias and juror gender influence their decisions (Kulka & Kessler, 1978;Meaux et al., 2018;Papenbrook, 2013;Scroggs, 1976;Stewart, 1985).The present series of studies (N =110 Study 1; N = 82 Study 2; N = 68 Study 3) explored these factors in addition to the type of crime by using mixed factorial (Studies 1 and 3) and between-subjects (Study 2) designs.I hypothesized that there would be a statistically significant interaction between type of crime and level of attractiveness.Women were hypothesized to deliver harsher sentences.With some variation, participants viewed versions of criminal scenarios (motor-vehicle theft, rape, murder) with or without a defendant's mugshot and selected the appropriate sentence (Studies 1-3) and decided on guilt (Study 3 only).Neither hypothesis was supported in Study 1 or 2. In Study 3, the hypothesized interaction was found between attractiveness and type of crime on sentence severity, p < 0.001, r 2 = 0.18.The "attractive criminal" is sensationalized in media.The results from the current series of studies provide hope for the American legal and justice systems as people are not necessarily making judgments of guilt and enforcing harsh sentences based purely on the defendant's looks.