The Impact Of Male Suspects' Facial Attraction On Simulated Judicial Decision-making

Judicial decision-making is a series of processes in which the person with judicial decision-making authority determines the facts and evidence of the case,and ultimately makes the judicial decision that has legal effects based on the law and legal trial procedures.Judicial decision-makers are subject to a variety of intuitive factors in conducting judicial decisions.The facial characteristics of criminal suspects are difficult to avoid in the judicial decision-making process and have been suggested to be intuitive factors in judicial decisions among which facial attractiveness is one of the most commonly studied facial features among researchers.The conclusions about the impact of facial attractiveness on judicial decisions are not very consistent.It may aggravate or mitigate the penalties imposed on the accused.This study believes that there is close interaction between facial attractiveness and facial trustworthiness,and therefore the level of facial trustworthiness should be controlled when exploring the attractiveness of the face on the judicial decisions.To this end,this study controlled the level of facial trustworthiness to ensure that the facial trustworthiness is high and intended to examine the impact of facial attractiveness on legal decision-making.In study 1,we examined the impact of male defendants' facial attractiveness on simulated conviction and sentencing decisions in theft and fraud with the purpose to reveal how different types of cases regulate the effect of facial attractiveness on the judicial decision-making process.Study 2 used the cases of acquaintances and strangers' sexual assault and aimed to reveal how the different circumstances in the same type of case regulate the effect of facial attractiveness on the judicial decision-making process.In addition,in the past,most of the research on the influence of facial attraction on legal decision-making came from abroad.Therefore,it is very necessary to find out how facial attractiveness affects serious judicial decisions under the Chinese culture and legal system.We first evaluated the face and case materials through pre-experiment,and finally determined four male faces and four cases.In the formal experiment,241 college students and postgraduates were recruited as mock judges,and the subjects were asked to make judicial decisions on the suspects according to the law and the actual cases after reading the case materials.In addition to sentencing intensity punishment and actual sentencing punishment,the subjects also needed to judge the responsibility of the suspects and the victims in the cases of sexual assault.After completing the judicial decision,the participants also needed to complete some post-event questionnaires and re-evaluation of facial characteristics.This study assumed that when a crime is attractiveness-related,facial attractiveness may be disadvantageous for the defendants.Therefore,we conjectured that facial attractiveness is more likely to affect the outcome of the judicial decision in the cases of fraud and sexual assault than in the case of theft.The results show that:(1)In the case of theft,there was no significant influence of facial attractiveness on the simulated conviction and sentencing decision.In the fraud case,only in the actual sentencing classification judgment,the defendants with higher facial attractiveness tended to receive more severe punishment than those with lower facial attractiveness;(2)Compared with the stranger's sexual assault case,the participants had a higher degree of confidence in the conviction of the defendants in the acquaintances' sexual assault case.There was no significant influence of face attraction on the simulated legal decisions in the case of stranger sexual assault;however,in the acquaintances' sexual assault case,the participants tended to give more serious penalties and assign more responsibilities to attractive defendants than the unattractiveness defendants;(3)The scores of on the Rape Fallacy Scale can significantly predict the sentencing judgments of defendants in the sexual assault cases.In general,the results of this study showed that the effect of face attraction on judicial decisions is not obvious when the faces are trustworthy.The weak effect of facial attraction on the judicial ruling in the fraud case and acquaintances' sexual assault cases may support that the influence of facial attraction on judicial decisions may be modulated by different types of cases and different circumstances in the same type of the cases.Finally,the false beliefs and attitudes about rape that people hold intheir daily lives can significantly predict the judgment of punishment in sexual assault cases.