Attractiveness In Sigall And Ostrove's Study

The general topic the class experiment was how attractiveness affected the sentence length of a crime. This is important since it directly affects the lives of defendants in court room situations. Judges should be aware of this potential bias as they are deciding ruling. Sigall and Ostrove, conducted a study focusing on the same topic. The independent variable was the level of attractiveness with the crime committed. The dependent variable was how long the sentence was that the participant determined. “An attractive defendant would receive more lenient treatment than an unattractive defendant when the offense was unrelated to attractiveness; when the crime was related to attractiveness, the attractive defendant would receive relatively harsh treatment.” (Sigall and Ostrove, 1975). The hypotheses were supported through Sigall and Ostrove’s study. When the defendant used her attractiveness to help her commit the crime, she was given a harsher sentence …show more content…
We hypothesized that the attractiveness related crime would have a higher sentence than burglary. Yet, we did not replicate these previous researchers. One of the major reasons is that the majority of participates found that fraud was more serious than burglary. Our attempt was to balance these two crimes. Our results are different due to several reasons. The participants read similar descriptions yet of different crimes. Therefore, the length and detail may have changed the perception that the participants concluded with that changed the seriousness of the crimes. For example, in fraud, there was interaction and a relationship that the criminal had with the victim. This could have caused the idea of betrayal. Also, there was no conclusion if the victim received the money or the items back. In the fraud condition, one could conclude that she did not, which differed from burglary