Already in the Middle Ages, when two men were accused of the same crime, the judge sentenced the least physically attractive of the two. And if in doubt, the ugly ones were the culprits.
This trend is still evident in the courts of law: those with facial defects They tend to be convicted more easily by popular juries. According to This studioIn fact, there is a positive relationship between cosmetic surgery and criminal rehabilitation, measured by a decrease in recidivism.
Legal beauty bias
Judges and juries are affected by all types of cognitive distortions, such as emotive evidence, time of day, the defendant's obvious remorse, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender, anchoring effect, and contrast bias.
Beauty is also a fundamental distortion according to research based by 27 different studies. The results of three studies, e.g. show a minimum increase of 119,25% and a maximum increase of 304,88% in convictions due to this bias.
Attractiveness had little effect on a judge's guilty verdict, although it also had one: where the bias is best seen is in the harshness of the sentence, which tends to be greater for unattractive criminals.
For example in This studio that looked at convictions for misdemeanors, judges sentenced unattractive offenders significantly more than attractive offenders. The fine gradually increased as the attractiveness decreased.
- Misdemeanors \u003d + 224,87%
- Moderate misdemeanors \u003d + 304,88%
- Serious misdemeanors \u003d + 174,78%
The results are shown below:
In cases of negligent homicide, robbery, burglary, and civil negligence, unattractive defendants were sentenced more harshly than attractive defendants. However, for scam cases, attractiveness bias seems to have the opposite effect.
Attractiveness bias can also affect civil cases. In another study Participants were presented with an audio-video showing a case of automobile negligence. Mock Juries Consistently Gave More Guilty Verdicts to Unattractive Defendants.
halo effect
All this happens because of the call halo effect: In general, attractive people are perceived as more intelligent, with more social skills, more interesting personalities, more moral, more altruistic, more likely to be successful, more desirable as managers, and more competent.
Thus, attractive people tend to have better physical health, better mental health, better dating experiences, earn more money, obtain higher professional positions, get selected in job interviews more often, get promoted more often, receive better job evaluations, and are chosen as business partners more often What unattractive people. That is to say, we are facing a very deep gap: that of beauty.
This unconscious bias is even reflected [in neuroimaging studies] (Physical Attractiveness and Femininity: Helpful or Hurtful for Female Attorneys (2015) by Peggy Li). When a person comes into contact with an attractive person, certain parts of the brain are activated. The activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the brain region associated with processing positive emotions, stimuli, and rewards, increases based on ratings of attractiveness and moral goodness. Similarly, the activity in insular cortex, a brain region associated with processing negative emotions and pain, increases as a result of unattractiveness and negative ratings of goodness.
Consequently, your face is what will determine your success in life, and one of the biggest sources of inequality is How your face fits into current beauty standards:
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The news
The less attractive the criminal, the harsher the sentence: ugly criminals are sentenced up to 304,88% more
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.