I'm Too Sexy for your Jail, Please Let Me out on Bail: how attractive defendants are treated more favorably by juries

"Please put these on before entering the courtroom."

Most of us know that jurors can be swayed by extra-evidential factors. However, did you know that juries will be more lenient to defendants who are more attractive? Robert Cialdini in his book “Influence: Science and Practice” wrote, “Research has shown that we automatically assign to good-looking individuals such favorable traits as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence.” The social science on the favorable treatment attractive defendants receive from juries is extensive.

This has been dubbed the “what is beautiful is good” phenomenon (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster (1972)). Physically attractive people are perceived by strangers as possessing higher social desirability, marital competence, parental competence, social and professional happiness, and likelihood of marriage. An experiment in 1969 held various mock “negligent homicide” trials, varying the attractiveness of a male defendant and asking the mock jurors to rate the degree of guilt of the defendant as well as determine his sentence length. The result was astonishing: “the attractive defendant was sentenced less harshly than the unattractive defendant, even when they were similarly rated as guilty of the crime.” Another study in 1975 by Sigall and Ostrove found similar results —that attractive defendants were sentenced less harshly by mock jurors— however, with one notable caveat: “attractive defendants were only treated more leniently when their attractiveness was unrelated to the crime they committed.” For example, if an attractive defendant swindled money out of someone by using their beauty or seduced a victim to burglarize them, then they were sentenced more harshly than unattractive defendants.

Not only do jurors give more lenient sentencing to attractive defendants, but they are also very favorable toward them in awarding damages. In a study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, “the damages awarded in a staged negligence trial [to] a defendant who was better-looking than his victim was assessed an average amount of $5,523; but when the victim was the more attractive of the two, the average compensation as $10,051” (Kula & Kessler, 1978).

These results can be replicated outside of controlled research. A study gathering data about sentencing from real judges demonstrated that judges fined unattractive criminals “significantly more than attractive criminals.”

Source

Also, a study of 67 defendants’ sentencing in real Pennsylvania courts showed that criminals of “low attractiveness” were sentenced, on average, at a rate 119.25% higher than the attractive criminals.

This data is clearly troubling. What is to be done for those of us who have “good personalities” and find ourselves being sued for $4,000,000 in damages by some attractive person? Well, a controlled study indicates that when subjects are expressly told to “disregard the defendant’s physical appearance” in their judgment, the leniency factor disappeared (Friend & Vinson (1974)). However, this was in a controlled study. Could a real judge give a pre-trial, implicit bias speech in which he asks jurors to acknowledge that, deep-down, beautiful people are just as terrible as the rest of us? I think so. I believe that if a jury were made aware of the evidence of inherent bias toward attractive people, that may prompt them to reflect on whether their decision is based on evidence or based on societal stereotypes. After all, Cialdini wrote “we make these judgments without being aware that physical attractiveness plays a role in the process.” I believe that if juries were, perhaps, shown data of leniency toward more attractive defendants, then they may take care to not make similar assumptions of those who would appear before them. I think most jurors want to truly give a fair sentencing and being made aware of these biases may help them to do so.