Slashdot Mirror
Justice Not As Blind As Previously Thought
NotSoHeavyD3 writes "I doubt this is much of a surprise but apparently Cornell University did a study that seems to show you're more likely to get convicted if you're ugly. From the article: 'According to a Cornell University study, unattractive defendants are 22 percent more likely to be convicted than good-looking ones. And the unattractive also get slapped with harsher sentences — an average of 22 months longer in prison.'"
Those will take a real toll on your looks. They also have a nasty tendency to turn people into thieves, prostitutes, and murderers. Also, being white trash will tend to age you about ten years, and it usually also comes with at least two or three DUI-on-an-ATV/public-intoxication/starting-a-fight-down-at-the-bar arrests.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Maybe they should have thought about that BEFORE being ugly...
who are in jail and are wondering why their prison term was longer than the average.
The statues of justice are always blindfolded, not blind...
On the plus side, we could spend some time discussing phrenological theories of the "physiognomy of the criminal type" which are always amusing.
Did anyone consider that the ugly may commit more crimes?
No, because typically politicians are not ugly.
:-|
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Any time a study comes out, twelvity million Slashdotters start chanting "Correlation!=Causation". None actually read the article. In fact, most have their rant typed out long before the story hits slashdot, and simply cut and paste into the comment box.
So, in the interest of keeping up this fine tradition, I offer the following:
1) Ugly people are more likely to actually commit the crime. Makes sense. Pretty people are less likely to need to do a crime as they are more likely to get good employement.
2) Committing a crime MAKES you ugly. Far fetched? Maybe. But I am sure those stupid researchers who only get by on grant money never thought of such a thing.
Clearly, I a faceless Slashdotter am more capable of analyzing the situation without actually reading the article, or giving it more than 20 seconds of thought.
Can the rest of my Slashdot bretheren help support my contentions?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Any movie or TeeVee show has shown this for years... there is a caveat, however...They can be good-looking and convicted if theyhave menacing music to accompany them...
http://www.beanleafpress.com
If this is true, how'd Micheal Jackson keep getting off?!
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
Read TFA please. The study was done with students at Cornell, who were asked to give their verdict after reading the closing arguments from the trial. The pictures of ugly and non-ugly people were inserted into these case studies, so that the same facts were presented as though they were about two different people.
The ugly might very well commit more crimes, but this study eliminates that as a confounding factor.
if i see another +5 insightful "correlation != causation" my brain is going to fucking explode.
From an Ev Psych perspective, ugliness is a possible marker of some kind of degeneracy, and our negative reactions to the ugly are likely a gene-regulatory mechanism (conformity's hand - that thing in side of us that makes us think "FREAK" when we see people who can't walk correctly, who are missing limbs or deformed, etc - the whole attraction of "freak shows" in circuses was to engage this, although in modern times we aim for a more compassionate society and try not to engage or mention this anymore).
Judges, police, the boss considering promoting someone, they're all human, and unless they use some objective metrics as their primary means for choice, attractiveness will accidentally factor in.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
correlation != causation c'mon guys. Mod me up. You know you want to see it, too.
So what it really says is, 'Cornell students are more likely to punish you if you are ugly'.
OK, but how do we know that your brain exploding isn't causing these posts to be moderated highly?
-Dave
No, it's because most of us wish we had teachers like that.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
The study was done with students at Cornell, who were asked to give their verdict after reading the closing arguments from the trial. The pictures of ugly and non-ugly people were inserted into these case studies, so that the same facts were presented as though they were about two different people.
The students read the closing arguments.
They were shown a picture of the "defendant."
They did not spend days or weeks in a courtroom. Listening to testimony. Viewing exhibits. Making their decision. They did not spend days or weeks observing the defendant - perhaps hearing him testify in his own defense.
Not everyone photographs well. "Ugly" is subjective. Body language matters. Speech matters.
The student may half the age of the average juror. With all that implies in experience and perspective. Does "ugly" have the same meaning to a combat vet as it does to an eighteen year old kid?
A woman at a grocery store near here was in charge of counting money from the tills and putting it in the safe. Over the course of a year she managed to steal over $100,000 in cash by doctoring the electronic sales records. The managers noticed, but she was too hot, so they routinely fired+blackballed the ugliest cashiers for stealing. Well, she finally got caught. The judge gave her a stern warning, no jail time, no probation. And she didn't have to pay back, she got to keep the $100,000. Judge even called her a wonderful person, said she has no chance of reoffending, and has a bright future as a university student and it would be wrong of him to get in the way of her! Left implied is that she gives good head, I guess.
I wish I was hot enough to steal 100 Gs and get to KEEP IT ALL with no other punishment.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
The study let the fake jury read the case history and listen to taped closing arguments. However in a real trial, the lawyers are up in front and interacting. I wonder how much the lawyers physical attractiveness works into the equation. After all the defendant just sits at the table (unless he/whe takes the stand).
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
Did they start the study of a "Hot or Not" prisoner website?
Like the say in the auto sales game... "Theres an ass for every seat"
I think that applies here too. Some people are turned on by strangely shaped faces, legs, asses... midgets (where are my old videos?) ....
This is way too subjective to be taken seriously...
Yes, maybe this doesn't matter at all. You go ahead and prove that. Meanwhile, the evidence suggests that looks do matter, just like we already know race and gender matters.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
There are lots of studies on this.
Here is just one of them.
Holland, etc al. 2009
http://www.scientificjournals.org/journals2009/articles/1439.pdf
Female average sentence 11.60 years
Male average sentence 28.05 years
And if the victim and perpetrators are both male, the mean sentence is over 45 years. (this usually includes very long probationary periods ~20 years)
The mean sentence for first degree murder is currently around 34 years.
What some people here are trying to argue is that if ugly people commit more crimes, then being ugly is itself a piece of evidence, so they the burden of other, factual evidence is less.
I have conservative friends who think this way. DNA evidence springs some black guy from jail after serving 10 years for a rape he didn't commit, and my friend says, oh well, look at him, he probably did other crimes for which he was never caught.
I don't know if that was unintentionally stupid or intentionally funny.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/butte
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Maybe because people are cruel to ugly people so they lash back at society more often. People choose to surround themselves with good looking people, so ugly people miss out on opportunities, friendships, jobs, advancement, and other facets of social life. Not feeling good about life makes them not want to smile, which just makes them uglier.
When was the last time to saw an ugly CEO, politician, salesperson, or "employee of the month"? Ugly people could be famous musicians, but that was before MTV. And without success people sometimes resort to crime.
So there is probably a greater proportion of guilty ugly people, but the innocent ugly definitely have a tougher battle than the good looking ones. The charming crooks tend to evade suspicion from the beginning, so more "ugly" suspects will get picked up off the street, possibly just because the forensic artist lacks talent and all his sketches look ugly. Crime victims tend to describe their assailants as "ugly", because, let's face it, even good-looking people look ugly when they're trying to strangle you.
Will that be a causation, or merely a correlation?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
No, the scientists have shown an indicative bias in a simplified controlled study. If you want a more concise conclusion, you'll either have to wait for someone to perform further study with a different sampling of people/environments, or you can formulate another hypothesis and provide some test data.
Making the exact opposite statement is equally untested in a scientific sense and also requires proof. Many scientific theories can never be proven with 100% certainty, however, by definition, they must be falsifiable in some way, and in this case provide a numeric analyses that can be refined with improved test methods and data.
What the students have done is formulate a hypothetical argument and provided data to support that position. If further confounding variables are established, then the confidence in the hypothesis is weakened, but doesn't automatically default to an opposite viewpoint. In this case, it merely defaults to a lower confidence of accuracy. The conclusion is what it is, and does support the hypothesis. If contrary evidence is provided, then the hypothesis may be weakened to the point where it does support the opposing argument.
A follow-up study to this one could include a random sampling of people from the greater population. Beyond that, they could use actors. Beyond that, they could provide analyses of numerous real case studies and normalise against various background variables. etc.
At some point, the confidence level of the original hypothesis will increase to a point that extrapolating into the real justice system could produce highly accurate results.
The article author implies that the result extrapolates to the real justice system. However, the actual scientific study is really about human reasoning being influenced by emotional bias. So, I suspect the author of the article has taken liberties to generate their own more sensationalist conclusion.