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The Journal ofSocial Psvcholom. 2001.141~5~.603-615 Interactive Effects of Characteristics of Defendant and Mock Juror on U.S. Participants Judgment and Sentencing Recommendations DAVID A. ABWENDER KENYATTA HOUGH Department of Psychology State University of New York College at Bmckport ABSTRACT. The authors examined the effects of interactions (a) between defendant attractiveness and juror gender and (b) between defendant race and juror race on judgment and sentencing among 207 Black, Hispanic, and White participants in the United States. After reading a vehicular-homicide vignette in which the defendant’s attractiveness and race varied, the participants rated guilt and recommended sentences. The women treated the unattractive female defendant more harshly than they treated the attractive female defendant; the men showed an opposite tendency. The Black participants showed greater leniency when the defendant was described as Black rather than White. The Hispanic par- ticipants showed an opposite trend, and the White participants showed no race-based leniency. The findings on racial effects were consistent (a) with in-group favorability bias among the Black participants and (b) with attribution effects unrelated to race among the White participants. Key words: attractiveness, defendant characteristics, gender, in-group bias, interactive effects, judgment, mock-juror characteristics, race, sentencing ALTHOUGH TRIAL JURIES are expected to be impartial, extralegal variables (e.g., pretrial publicity;jurors’ exposure to inadmissible evidence; characteristics of the victims, defendants, and jurors) have influenced verdicts (Fein, Morgan, Norton, & Sommers, 1997; Johnson, Whitestone, Jackson, & Gatto, 1995; Mazzella & Feingold, 1994). A sizable literature has suggested that those extra- legal variables may influence the impressions formed by jurors. The authors thank Herbert C. Finkfor helpful comments. Brockport. 350 New Campus Drive, Bmckport, NY 14420. Address correspondence to David A. Abwender, Department of Psychology, SUNY 603

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Page 1: Interactive Effects of Characteristics of Mock U.S ...facweb.plattsburgh.edu/wendy.braje/students/psy205/abwender.pdf · socially desirable characteristics, the so-called “what

The Journal ofSocial Psvcholom. 2001.141~5~.603-615

Interactive Effects of Characteristics of Defendant and Mock Juror on U.S.

Participants ’ Judgment and Sentencing Recommendations

DAVID A. ABWENDER KENYATTA HOUGH

Department of Psychology State University of New York College at Bmckport

ABSTRACT. The authors examined the effects of interactions (a) between defendant attractiveness and juror gender and (b) between defendant race and juror race on judgment and sentencing among 207 Black, Hispanic, and White participants in the United States. After reading a vehicular-homicide vignette in which the defendant’s attractiveness and race varied, the participants rated guilt and recommended sentences. The women treated the unattractive female defendant more harshly than they treated the attractive female defendant; the men showed an opposite tendency. The Black participants showed greater leniency when the defendant was described as Black rather than White. The Hispanic par- ticipants showed an opposite trend, and the White participants showed no race-based leniency. The findings on racial effects were consistent (a) with in-group favorability bias among the Black participants and (b) with attribution effects unrelated to race among the White participants.

Key words: attractiveness, defendant characteristics, gender, in-group bias, interactive effects, judgment, mock-juror characteristics, race, sentencing

ALTHOUGH TRIAL JURIES are expected to be impartial, extralegal variables (e.g., pretrial publicity; jurors’ exposure to inadmissible evidence; characteristics of the victims, defendants, and jurors) have influenced verdicts (Fein, Morgan, Norton, & Sommers, 1997; Johnson, Whitestone, Jackson, & Gatto, 1995; Mazzella & Feingold, 1994). A sizable literature has suggested that those extra- legal variables may influence the impressions formed by jurors.

The authors thank Herbert C. Finkfor helpful comments.

Brockport. 350 New Campus Drive, Bmckport, NY 14420. Address correspondence to David A. Abwender, Department of Psychology, SUNY

603

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604 The Journal of Social Psychology

One of the most widely studied extralegal variables is the defendant’s phys- ical attractiveness. A fairly consistent literature suggests that physically unat- tractive defendants are generally at a disadvantage, with respect to both the like- lihood of being found guilty and the severity of the recommended sentence. Researchers have traditionally attributed the tendency to treat physically attrac- tive defendants more leniently to the belief that attractive persons possess more socially desirable characteristics, the so-called “what is beautiful is good” hypothesis (Dion, Bersheid, & Walster, 1972). In their meta-analytic review, Mazzella and Feingold (1994) suggested that attractive defendants receive better treatment because juries consider such defendants more likable and, consequent- ly, treat them more leniently.

Although attractive defendants seem to have an advantage, researchers have indicated that their advantage may hold only for certain crimes, such as rape, rob- bery, and other offenses (Mazzella & Feingold, 1994). For other crimes, includ- ing swindle (Sigall & Ostrove, 1975; Smith & Hed, 1979) and negligent homi- cide (Mazzella & Feingold), physically attractive defendants tend to be treated more harshly, perhaps because they are perceived to have used their appearance to their advantage (in the former case) or should have exhibited better judgment (in the latter case). As Mazzella and Feingold noted, attractive persons may receive harsher treatment when they do not live up to people’s higher expecta- tions for them, as in the poor judgment usually associated with negligent vehic- ular homicide.

Although researchers have frequently demonstrated the attractiveness- leniency effect (ALE), there has been little investigation of the possible mediating effect of juror characteristics. Using several crimes related to criminal mischief, Darby and Jeffers (1988) reported that the ALE held for self-rated attractive par- ticipantslmock jurors but that self-rated unattractive participantslmock jurors showed leniency toward both highly attractive and highly unattractive defendants. The latter finding suggests that similarity between juror and defendant also leads to leniency. Researchers have studied the main effect of participant gender on judgment and sentencing, but with mixed results; the most consistent finding is that gender mattered only in cases of sexual assault (Ellsworth & Mauro, 1998; Nemeth, 1981). In few published studies have researchers explored possible inter- actions between juror gender and defendant attractiveness. One might expect, in the case of crimes for which attractiveness confers advantage, that the ALE would be strongest for attractive defendants being judged by participants of the other gen- der, for whom the defendant’s attractiveness may be more salient. On the one hand, Wuensch, Castellow, and Moore (199 1) found an ALE for female partici- pants rating male defendants but no effect for those rating female defendants; the male participants did not show an ALE for defendants of either gender. On the other hand, Efran (1974) reported an ALE for male participants judging female defendants but not for female participants judging male defendants. Efran’s data did not include conditions in which participants judged sarne-sex defendants.

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Abwender & Hough 605

In contrast, for crimes in which attractiveness may be a disadvantage (e.g., swindle, negligent homicide), attractive defendants being judged by partici- pantshock jurors of the other gender may be treated more harshly (i.e., a reverse ALE). Again, the increased salience of defendant attractiveness, and thus expec- tations for responsible conduct, may precipitate harsher judgments from other- gender mock jurors, consistent with the suggestion of Mazzella and Feingold (1994). However, Wuensch et al. (1991) included both swindle and burglary and found that female participants showed a conventional ALE in rating male defen- dants regardless of offense. Moreover, the female participants in their study showed a stronger ALE when rating male defendants accused of swindle than when rating those accused of burglary, contradicting earlier findings (Sigall & Ostrove, 1975; Smith & Hed, 1979). Wuensch et al. speculated that they did not obtain the ALE for male participants because of the possible influence of a female experimenter.

Investigators of interactions between defendant attractiveness and juror gen- der have not explored negligent homicide, an unintentional crime associated with poor or lapsed judgment, in which there is no implication that defendants exploit- ed their attractiveness for personal gain. If salient attractiveness engenders greater expectation of sound judgment, then male mock jurors may accord harsh- er treatment to an attractive woman accused of a crime of negligence (e.g., vehic- ular homicide). This effect may be weaker for female mock jurors, for whom the female defendant’s attractiveness may be a less salient, and thus less potent, determinant of expectations for good judgment.

A second widely researched extralegal variable is defendant race. Researchers have suggested that, although Black defendants are not routinely treated more harshly than White defendants, White defendants appear to be favored in cases of negligent homicide (Mazella & Feingold, 1994). The reason for this tendency is unclear, although the few available studies of this crime have involved White participants almost exclusively. Little research has directly explored interactions between defendant race and juror race. Social identity the- orists (Tajfel & Turner, 1985) hold that individuals categorize others into in- group or out-group members and favor the in-group in the service of enhancing self-image. A tendency for jurors to treat same-race defendants more leniently, and other-race defendants more harshly (Ugwuegbu, 1979), may be explained parsimoniously by an in-group favorability bias.

Complicating matters is the possibility that defendant-juror race interactions are moderated by type of crime. Some researchers have suggested that, if defen- dants are accused of crimes uncommon among members of their race, then jurors may make external. unstable attributions for the criminal act and show leniency (Gordon, Bindrim, McNicholas, & Walden, 1988). Attribution theorists would suggest that, if jurors perceive crimes of negligence as more common among one group, then they may view members of that group as more dispositionally prone to such crimes than are nonmembers. Thus, one would expect harsher treatment

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606 The Journal of Social Psychology

from jurors based on the assumption that the defendant is likely to behave simi- larly in the future (Gordon et al.). Gordon (1990) reported that defendants accused of race-stereotypic crimes were indeed treated more harshly, but without any defendant-juror race interaction. Negligent homicide is not stereotypically associated with any particular ethnic or racial group (Gordon, 1993). If jurors lack preconceptions about the racial stereotypicality of this crime, one might expect negligible attribution-related effects, leaving open the potential for simple in-group favorability biases. However, one might anticipate a stronger in-group effect for Black than for White jurors, given the tendency for greater in-group salience, and thus bias, among members of racial minorities, especially those who have faced discrimination by the out-group (Stephan, 1985).

On the basis of the foregoing review, we formulated the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis I : The attractiveness of the female defendant accused of negli- gent homicide interacts with participant gender, so that the male participants show a stronger reverse ALE than do the female participants.

Hypothesis 2: Defendant race interacts with participant race. so that Black participants show a stronger in-group favorability bias (i.e., greater leniency when the defendant is of the same race) than do White participants.

Although we initially expected that most participants would identify them- selves as either Black or White, the large number identifying themselves as His- panic allowed us to analyze their data as well, but we had formed no a priori hypothesis about their judgments of the defendant.

Method

Participants

There were 240 participants from 25 Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement programs from across the United States. The McNair program, operated through a U.S. Department of Education grant, seeks to prepare acade- mically promising college students from groups underrepresented in graduate- level study (e.g., first generation, low income, and ethnic minority) for admission into doctoral programs. Because of insuEcient numbers, we did not include 23 participants who identified themselves as either Asian or Native American in the analyses involving participant race. To maintain sample consistency, we also eliminated those 23 participants from analyses involving participant gender and defendant attractiveness, with no change in the results. After we excluded anoth- er 10 whose data were incomplete, the 207 participants remaining in the analy- ses consisted of 89 who identified themselves as Black (62 women, 27 men), 55 who identified themselves as Hispanic (33 women, 22 men), and 63 who identi- fied themselves as White (34 women, 29 men), They ranged in age from 19 to 51 years (A4 = 24.1 1, SD = 6.01).

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Abwender & Hough 607

Materials

A demographic-background questionnaire included items pertaining to par- ticipant age, primary racial background (American Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut; Asian or Pacific Islander; Black; Hispanic; White), and gender, as well as dis- tracter items pertaining to academic major, class standing, number of traffic tick- ets received, and how closely participants had followed the 0. J. Simpson and Oklahoma City bombing trials.

Next, we presented a case vignette describing a negligent homicide, modi- fied slightly from Friend and Vinson (1974). In brief, the vignette told of a 25- year-old woman who was stopped by a police officer for reckless driving. Although the woman was intoxicated, the officer decided not to arrest her and instead hailed a taxi. Soon after, the woman got out of the cab, returned to her own car, and proceeded driving home again, at which point she struck and killed a pedestrian. There were four versions of the vignette, varying in terms of embedded descriptions of the defendant’s race (Black or White) and attractive- ness (attractive or unattractive). The case descriptions were identical in all other aspects.

Last, the participants completed a questionnaire containing two dependent variables: their impression of the defendant’s guilt, rated on a 7-point Likert-type scale (1 = guilty, 7 = not guilty), and their recommended jail sentence (0-99 years) for the defendant. Although most juries are not responsible for sentencing and guilt is dichotomous rather than continuous, we chose those measures to be consistent with previous research in which they were sensitive indicators of par- ticipants’ impressions of, and attitudes toward, defendants (DeSantis & Kayson, 1997; Efran, 1974; Johnson et al., 1995; Nemeth & Sosis, 1973; Sigall & Os- trove, 1975). On the questionnaire, we also asked participants to rate, again on 7- point Likert-type scales, the defendant’s attractiveness, likability, degree of intoxication at the time of the incident, and level of responsibility for the inci- dent. Only the endpoints of the scales contained anchor terms (e.g., 1 = very unattractive, 7 = very attractive). The participants also indicated whether they had “ever known anyone who struck a pedestrian while driving drunk” and “ever known anyone who was struck by a drunk driver.”

Procedure

We asked all McNair programs in the United States to participate. We requested the 25 who agreed to indicate the number of students who might be willing to participate, and we mailed a sufficient number of questionnaire pack- ets. Each packet, which was to be completed individually and returned in an enclosed, postage-paid envelope, contained, in order, a cover letter indicating instructions and specifying that anonymity would be maintained, the demo- graphic questionnaire, the case description, and the dependent measure ques-

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608 The Journal of Social Psychology

tionnaire. We asked the participants not to discuss this project with one another and gave them the authors’ address should they wish to contact them to learn more about the study or the findings.

Results

Effectiveness of Defendant Attractiveness Manipulation

Results of an analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that the participants whose vignette described the attractive defendant did indeed rate her as signifi- cantly more attractive (M = 4.83, SD = 1.51 for both male and female partici- pants) than did the participants whose vignette described the unattractive defen- dant ( M = 2.97, SD = 1.21), F(1, 183) = 75.32. p < .001. None of the other independent variables (defendant race, participant race, participant gender) influ- enced attractiveness ratings, nor were any of the interaction terms significant.

Effect of Juror Gender and Defendant Attractiveness

We analyzed the two dependent variables of interest, impression of guilt and recommended sentence, in a two-way (Participant Gender x Defendant Attrac- tiveness) multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) using Pillai’s trace. We selected MANOVA because of the moderate correlation between the dependent variables ( r = -.26; lower scores = greater impression of guilt) and, thus, as pro- tection against Type I error. Levene’s test revealed that both dependent variables exhibited heterogeneity of error variance across conditions, violating an assump- tion of MANOVA. We subjected them to a logarithmic transformation to improve homogeneity of error variance. This procedure is recommended for positively skewed data, as was the case with ratings of impression of guilt, and inferences drawn from log-transformed data can be applied safely to the original data (Kirk, 1982). Neither of the main effects was significant, aIthough we found a significant Participant Gender x Defendant Attractiveness interaction effect, F(2,202) = 4.69,

We conducted follow-up univariate ANOVAs on the log-transformed depen- dent measures. The interaction effect was not significant for impression of guilt, but the results revealed a significant interaction for recommended sentence, F( 1, 203) = 9.14, p = .003. The male participants recommended longer sentences for the attractive defendant (M = 21.95 years, SD = 26.50, untransformed) than for the unattractive defendant (M = 14.00 years, SD = 17.33, untransformed). By contrast, the female participants recommended longer sentences for the unattrac- tive defendant ( M = 26.98 years, SD = 33.25, untransformed) than for the attrac- tive defendant (M= 13.83 years, SD = 21.23, untransformed). Examination of the simple main effect of defendant attractiveness indicated that the difference in rec- ommended sentences was significant only for female participants, F( 1, 127) =

p = .010.

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Abwender & Hough 609

8.99, p = .003. To further explore this finding, we included ratings of defendant likability (which were correlated positively with ratings of attractiveness, r = .42) and responsibility for the incident in separate analyses of covariance (ANCOVA), with no appreciable change in results for either male or female participants. Examination of the simple main effect of participant gender also revealed that gender differences in recommended sentence were significant for both attractive, F(1, 104) = 5.03, p = .027, and unattractive defendants, F(1, 100) = 4.30, p = .041. For the attractive defendant, the female participants recommended shorter sentences than did the male participants, and inclusion of either responsibility or likability ratings as covariates did not alter this result. However, for the unattrac- tive defendant, the male participants recommended shorter sentences than did the female participants. Moreover, we eliminated this gender effect by inclusion of responsibility, but not likability, ratings as a covariate.

Regression analysis showed a significant curvilinear relationship between participant-rated attractiveness and responsibility for the incident for the male participants, F(2,78) = 3.47, p = .036. The male participants who rated the defen- dant as unattractive tended to rate her also as less responsible for the incident, with responsibility ratings reaching a ceiling as rated attractiveness of the defen- dant increased. We found no relationship between participant-rated defendant attractiveness and responsibility for female participants.

Effect of Defendant and Juror Race

We performed a two-way (Defendant Race x Participant Race) MANOVA on the two log-transformed dependent variables. Neither main effect was statis- tically significant, although the interaction effect was, F(4,402) = 2.43, p = .047. Follow-up univariate ANOVA, with impression of guilt as the dependent vari- able, indicated that the interaction term was statistically significant, F(2, 201) = 3.30, p = .039. Whereas the Black participants gave higher guilt ratings to the White ( M = 1.38, SD = 0.69, untransformed) than to the Black (M = 1.77, SD = 0.96, untransformed) defendant, the Hispanic participants exhibited the opposite pattern (for the White defendant, M = 1.90, SD = 1.17; for the Black defendant, M = 1.46, SD = 0.88, untransformed). The White participants gave fairly similar guilt ratings to both the White ( M = 1.54, SD = 0.79, untransformed) and the Black ( M = 1.71, SD = 1.45, untransformed) defendants. Tests of simple main effects showed that differences in guilt ratings were significant only for the Black participants, F(1, 89) = 5.04, p = .027, but approached significance for the His- panic participants (p = .095). To explore this finding further, we correlated rat- ings of defendant responsibility for the incident (higher scores = greater respon- sibility) with guilt (lower scores = greater certainty of guilt) separately for Black ( r = -. 18, ns), Hispanic (r = -.21, ns), and White participants ( r = -.65, p < .OOl). ANOVA revealed that responsibility ratings did not vary as a function of defen- dant race, participant race, or their interaction. Moreover, including responsibil-

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610 The Journal of Social Psychology

ity ratings as a covariate in a Defendant Race x Participant Race ANCOVA did not change the results noted earlier. Thus, although the defendant was perceived as equally responsible across experimental conditions, guilt ratings among the Black, and to a lesser extent the Hispanic, participants seemed to vary more as an interactive function of defendant race and juror race than of perceived defen- dant responsibility. Defendant likability did not vary as a function of her race for any of our participant groups.

Examination of the simple main effect of participant race revealed a border- line significant difference @ = .058) between groups for the White, but not the Black, defendant. The Black participants tended toward greater ratings of guilt for the White defendant, and the Hispanic participants tended to assign lesser guilt ratings to the White defendant; the White participants’ ratings fell between.

Follow-up univariate ANOVA on recommended ‘sentence revealed no signif- icant main effects. The interaction term approached significance QJ = .068), and the relationships among group means were nearly identical to those for impres- sion of guilt: The Black participants recommended shorter sentences for the Black than for the White defendant, the opposite pattern obtained for Hispanic partici- pants, and the White participants recommended slight differences in sentences.

Discussion

The findings offer partial support for both hypotheses. Regarding Hypothesis 1, the female participants showed a significant conventional ALE they were more punitive to the unattractive female defendant. On the other hand, the male partic- ipants recommended longer sentences for the attractive than for the unattractive female defendant. In addition, the male participants tended to rate the unattractive defendant as less responsible for the incident, and the observed gender difference in sentencing the unattractive defendant (i.e., the male participants were less puni- tive than the female participants) was moderated by responsibility ratings. With respect to Hypothesis 2, although the White participants showed little difference in their impressions of guilt or recommended sentences for the White versus the Black defendants, the Black and the Hispanic participants showed greater lenien- cy toward the Black and the White defendants, respectively.

Mazzella and Feingold (1994) suggested that attractive defendants may be held to higher standards for judgment, conduct, and behavior and, thus, may be treated more harshly when they do not live up to those standards (i.e.. the reverse ALE with certain crimes). They noted that negligent homicide differs from other crimes in being unintentional (i.e., a function of lapsed judgment), and persons accused of this crime may receive harsher treatment because they should have “known better.” The present male participants’ group means and their parallel perceptions of the unattractive defendant as less responsible for the incident sug- gest the reverse ALE associated with negligent homicide. At least for decisions that may turn on the soundness of a defendant’s judgment, the male jurors’

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Abwender & Hough 61 1

impressions of the female defendant appeared to be influenced by attractiveness- related attributions regarding her level of responsibility for the crime.

Perhaps more striking was the finding that the female participants showed leniency to the attractive female defendant. Mazzella and Feingold (1994) sug- gested that the ALE may be a function of defendant likability; inasmuch as attractiveness may promote liking, they proposed using likability ratings as a covariate in analyses involving defendant attractiveness. We found that control- ling for likability did not change the ALE among our female participants; that finding suggests that they were responding to something beyond the attractive defendant’s merely being more likable.

If the ALE is contingent on the defendant’s having external justification for committing the crime (Izzett & Fishman, 1976), then it may be that the ALE may have held for the present female participants if they perceived the defendant’s actions as justified under the circumstances (i.e., if they made a situational attri- bution for her behavior). Izzett and Fishman found that shorter sentences were recommended for attractive defendants whose actions seemed justified than for those whose actions lacked external justification, even though all defendants were rated equally guilty. We did not assess the participants’ beliefs about whether the defendant’s actions were justified, but the inclusion of ratings of the defendant’s responsibility for the incident as a proxy covariate in analyses for the female participants did not eliminate the ALE. Finally, perhaps because we manipulated the female defendant’s attractiveness by descriptions rather than photographs, the female participants may have more easily construed the attrac- tive defendant as similar to themselves (i.e., as an in-group member), thus cast- ing the ALE as an in-group bias. The ALE is considerably more complex than the “what is beautiful is good” stereotype indicates (Wuensch et al., 1991). At least among the present college students, the effect of defendant attractiveness was moderated by juror gender.

Although one could view the absence of a main effect for defendant race on guilt and sentencing as an encouraging sign, the interaction between defendant and participant race, although close to what we had expected, is noteworthy. Indeed, our findings are consistent with the assertion of Johnson et al. (1995) that justice is still not colorblind.

Jurors are thought to be more likely to convict when they attribute defen- dants’ actions to stable, internal causes, as opposed to situational, external caus- es (Gordon et al., 1988; Graham, Weiner, & Zucker, 1997; Izzett & Fishman, 1976). In the latter case, defendants are considered less responsible. The partici- pants in the present study did not systematically make attributions about the defendant’s responsibility for her actions on the basis of her race. Reanalysis of the Defendant Race x Participant Race data, including ratings of responsibility for the accident as a covariate, did not change the results. Whereas the White par- ticipants showed a stronger tendency to assign guilt ratings in accordance with perceived defendant responsibility, the Black and the Hispanic participants

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612 The Journal of Social Psychology

appeared to be responding to defendant race in assigning guilt ratings, even though they did not rate same-race defendants as more likable. At least for the Black participants, the hypothesized in-group favorability bias held.

The lack of an in-group bias for the White participants is consistent with pre- vious data indicating a tendency for White research participants to “bend over backwards” to prove they are not prejudiced against Blacks (Gordon, 1993; Rogers & Prentice-Dunn, 1981). Given the prevailing attitudes on U.S. college and university campuses, it is not surprising that the White participants made a point of demonstrating their egalitarianism, or at least their political correctness (Mack et al., 1997). The willingness of the Black participants to treat the White defendant significantly more harshly appears to reflect the reported tendency toward greater in-group bias among members of smaller, lower status, or oppressed groups (Mullen, Brown, & Smith, 1992). Our findings parallel those of other studies in which the Black, but not the White, participants expressed less favorable views of the racial out-group (e.g., Jackson, Hymes, & Sullivan, 1987; Mack et al.). We reluctantly offer post hoc speculations about the results from the Hispanic participants. One possibility is that the Hispanic participants perceived the White defendant more as an in-group member. The present results, which suggest that the processes by which extralegal variables influence trial outcomes may vary as a function of juror demographics, underscore the value of exploring interactive effects between defendant and juror characteristics.

One must bear in mind several limitations of the present study. First, the re- cruitment of McNair program undergraduates as participants, on the one hand, may limit the extent to which our findings can be generalized to broader popula- tions, because such students are (a) generally high academic achievers and (b) almost invariably from lower socioeconomic strata. On the other hand, our racial- ly and geographically diverse sample may be no less representative than the single-site, mostly White samples typical of many studies in this area. Moreover, our sampling method eliminates the confounding of race with socioeconomic status (Gordon, 1990). Second, all participants were residents of the United States, where they were educated and affected by the mass media. In other soci- eties, therefore, researchers may need to consider other variables and weight those in the present study differently. Finally, all research of this type sacrifices external validity for the sake of internal validity and control. The extent to which findings from analogue studies, even those that used mock juries with group deliberation, reflect the complex intra- and interpersonal processes inherent in jury trials remains unclear. However, observers of actual defendants in criminal trials (Daudistel, Hosch, Holmes, & Graves, 1999; Downs & Lyons, 1991; Stew- art, 1980, 1985) have indicated that defendant attractiveness and race were relat- ed to adjudication outcome; their observations suggest that the effects noted in analogue studies may hold in the courtroom as well. However, researchers have yet to explore the complex interactions between defendant and juror characteris- tics in naturalistic studies,

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Although juror characteristics may influence the results of analogue research, apparently by interacting with defendant characteristics, the disparate findings across studies discussed earlier suggest that other variables may be involved. Future researchers in this area of continuing interest may profit from exploration of the role of individual differences among jurors in relation to defen- dant characteristics. One useful tack would be to assess the strength of partici- pants’ ethnic identification, inasmuch as this variable may influence relative impressions of in-group versus out-group members (Tajfel & Turner, 1985). Relatedly, it seems necessary also to pursue investigations that depict not only defendants described as Hispanic but also those whose ethnicity is identified more specifically (e.g., Cuban American, Puerto Rican, Mexican American), given the existence of in-group biases among these Hispanic subgroups (Huddy & Virtanen, 1995). By collecting similar ethnicity and ethnic identification data on participants, future investigators may elucidate reasons for the present His- panic participants’ tendency to treat the White defendant more leniently.

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Received June 1 I , 1999 Accepted March 29, 2000