Psychology and Justice - How can we prevent miscarriage of justice? (Part 3)

in the name of justice you might wonder now do we really have to equalize our looks to give everybody the same chances to win in a trial well there might be another way and this way has been observed in the study by pottery published in 2008 called attractive but guilty deliberation and the physical attractiveness bias and in this really nice study 122 participants were presented a written description of a trial in which a young woman was accused of robbing a retail business and it wasn't possible to say well she is definitely guilty or not because there was some evidence for her guiltiness like a witness who claimed to have seen a tattoo on her hand and in fact the accused woman really had a tattoo but there was also evidence against her guiltiness because the woman said well she wasn't even in town she's been 75 miles away in a motel the description also included a picture of the defendant and as you can imagine it was either a good looking defendant or a less attractive defendant but there has also been another variation in one group the participants the mock euros who had to judge is she guilty or not they had the possibility to deliberate with other euros so they could discuss reflect exchange pro and con troe arguments whereas in other groups the mock euros had to decide individually and the results were if there was no deliberation there has been a clear effect of the attractiveness halo the more attractive defendant was clearly more often regarded not guilty but if the participants had the chance to deliberate this effect was no longer visible so this might be a good way to come to better decisions judges should be reflecting they should discuss they should have to give an account of their decisions and this is the result of many other studies they should be relaxed not stressed because otherwise their decisions are influenced by superficial aspects and I remember another really interesting study by Danziger in which could be shown that judges decisions were also influenced by when they had their last meal the more time had passed since their last meal the more superficial seemed to be it their decisions well that's it for today don't become a criminal even if you're good looking and if you want we will hear next time and next time we will talk about the importance of looks in politics you you