Effects of offenders' age and attractiveness on sentencing by mock juries.

Abstract

Pictures of physically attractive or unattractive women, who were either young or old, were attached to case reports of either a swindle or a burglary. “Juries” of three female college students each were then asked to sentence the “defendants” to between 1 and 10 yr. in jail. It was hypothesized that the young, attractive defendant would be sentenced less harshly than the old, unattractive defendant and that this effect would be more evident in a crime of burglary than a crime of swindle, as the attractiveness of the con artist might be viewed as an integral component of the crime of swindle. Older defendants were judged more harshly than young defendants and, for the burglary condition, attractive people were judged less harshly than unattractive people. However, in the swindle condition, attractiveness had no influence on the sentencing by the jury.