The Effects of Gender Crime Congruency on Jurors' Decisions and Confidence

The Effects of Gender Crime Congruency on Jurors' Decisions and Confidence

Alvin Sherman Library

A basic principle of the U.S. court system is that every individual has the right to a fair and unbiased trial. While this is the ideal, it is not always reality. Jurors come in with their own beliefs and attitudes before the trial starts. These preconceived beliefs can jeopardize the integrity of the trial. An example of these beliefs is gender stereotypes. Gender stereotypes can influence a juror's attitude towards a defendant, to either have a more negative or positive view on whether the defendant's gender matched the nature of their crime. This is called gender crime congruency. In this study, we created fictitious scenarios that depict a "male" (autotheft) or a "female" (shoplifting) crime that were potentially committed by a male or female defendant. We then had participants read one of the four scenarios and give the defendant a verdict and rate how confident they were in that verdict. If the participant gave the verdict of guilty to the defendant, we also had them sentence the defendant. We found evidence of gender crime congruency as female defendants were rated more guilty that male defendants when the autotheft scenario was given. Vice versa, male defendants were rated as more guilty than female defendants when the shoplifting crime was given. These results have implications for how gender biases can influence the court system.