{"id":2885,"date":"2020-12-03T20:08:22","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T01:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.law.temple.edu\/aer\/?p=2885"},"modified":"2021-12-16T14:56:06","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T14:56:06","slug":"brain-lessons-attractive-rotten-scoundrels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.temple.edu\/aer\/2020\/12\/03\/brain-lessons-attractive-rotten-scoundrels\/","title":{"rendered":"BRAIN LESSONS: ATTRACTIVE ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I [Grant] discovered recently that <em>Dirty Rotten Scoundrels<\/em>, the hilarious movie about two con-men competing to swindle a rich heiress, was released on December 14<sup>th<\/sup>, 31 years ago.\u00a0 You may recall the premise of the movie:\u00a0 A dashing and debonair swindler, played by Michael Caine, gets into a winner-takes-all swindling battle for an heiress\u2019s money with a low-level con-man, played by Steve Martin.\u00a0 [Spoilers ahead!\u00a0 Skip to the next paragraph and then proceed to Netflix.]\u00a0 In a terminating twist, the lovely heiress, played by Glenne Headly, swindles them both.\u00a0 Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (MGM Studios 1988).<\/p>\n<p>The movie\u2019s con-men, played by physically attractive Hollywood stars, are an exemplary backdrop to answer this month\u2019s cognitive question:\u00a0 Does the attractiveness or unattractiveness of a swindler affect how a police officer would choose to blame and punish them?\u00a0 For instance, would a male or female police officer treat, say, an <em>attractive<\/em> male swindler the same way they would treat an <em>unattractive<\/em> male swindler?\u00a0 These interesting questions, and more, were tested by researchers Mally Shechory-Bitton and Lisa Zvi in a study published last year.\u00a0 Mally Shechory-Bitton &amp; Lisa Zvi, <em>Chivalry and Attractiveness Bias in Police Officer Forensic Judgments in Israel<\/em>, 159 The Journal of Social Psychology, no. 5, 2018, at 503, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/00224545.2018.1509043<\/p>\n<p>Lawyers likely have varying views of how an accused\u2019s physical attractiveness may impact his or her case.\u00a0 The idea that one\u2019s attractiveness or unattractiveness can affect other\u2019s judgments about them is part of a well-known cognitive bias called the \u201chalo effect.\u201d\u00a0 As a refresher, the halo effect is a cognitive short-cut in which a particular characteristic\u2014usual a positive trait\u2014is irrelevantly extended to other judgments one might make about the person \u201cwearing\u201d the halo.\u00a0 Thus, it seems most lawyers believe that the glowing halo of an attractive defendant might extend to a judgment of lower culpability or a reduced sentence.\u00a0 Indeed, the authors of this study cite multiple studies bearing out the truth that the most-attractive criminals among us might benefit from their looks in ways the system never intended. <em>See generally, Id. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>For this experiment, the authors crafted a story vignette in which the swindle was the same but the authors could swap in-and-out attractive and unattractive swindlers and attractive and unattractive marks.\u00a0 <em>Id. <\/em>at 506.\u00a0 The vignettes were accompanied by photos of men and women who would serve as the fictitious swindlers and marks.\u00a0 Each male and female photo had been thoroughly tested through survey groups to objectively categorize each swindler and mark as attractive or unattractive. <em>Id. <\/em>at 506, 507.\u00a0 The vignettes were given to a few hundred male and female police officers and a few hundred male and female college students who served as a control group.\u00a0 Each respondent was asked to assign a level of culpability to the swindler and the mark, and then asked to assign a particular sentence to each swindler on a spectrum of high-culpability imprisonment to low-culpability therapy or rehabilitation.\u00a0 <em>Id. <\/em>at 507.<\/p>\n<p>The prevailing wisdom of the halo effect, as it relates to the more pulchritudinous among us, is that they benefit from their good looks without much hindrance.\u00a0 However, the study revealed quite the opposite when it came to the more dashing and lovely swindlers.\u00a0 Say the authors, \u201cIn contrast to the attractiveness bias (citations omitted) the advantage of good looks, which serves good looking offenders well in other types of offences, disappears and might be unhelpful <strong><em>when appearance is used as part of a crime.<\/em><\/strong>\u201d <em>Id. <\/em>at 513 (emphasis added). \u00a0The squeezing choke of the attractiveness halo appears to be that looks are a criminal asset only when they are not also used as a tool for evil! \u00a0None of which bodes well, it seems, for our dirty, rotten scoundrels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I [Grant] discovered recently that Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the hilarious movie about two con-men competing to swindle a rich heiress, was released on December 14th, 31 years ago.\u00a0 You may recall the premise of the movie:\u00a0 A dashing and debonair swindler, played by Michael Caine, gets into a winner-takes-all swindling battle for an heiress\u2019s money<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11],"tags":[],"coauthors":[203],"class_list":["post-2885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brain-lessons","category-trial-advocacy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>BRAIN LESSONS: ATTRACTIVE ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS - Advocacy and Evidence Resources<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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