STUDIES: ​“Untrustworthy” Faces Increase Likelihood of Death Sentence

Two new stud­ies sug­gest that a defen­dan­t’s facial appear­ance pre­dicts whether he is sen­tenced to life or to death, regard­less of actu­al guilt or inno­cence. A study of Florida inmates pub­lished in the July 15 edi­tion of Psychological Science finds that the per­ceived degree of trust­wor­thi­ness of a defen­dan­t’s face pre­dict­ed which of the two sen­tences a defen­dant who has been con­vict­ed of mur­der ulti­mate­ly received. A fol­low-up study also showed that the link between per­ceived untrust­wor­thi­ness and the death penal­ty per­sist­ed even when study par­tic­i­pants viewed inno­cent peo­ple who had been exon­er­at­ed after hav­ing orig­i­nal­ly been sen­tenced to death. Researchers John Paul Wilson (pic­tured, l.) and Nicholas Rule (pic­tured, r.) of the University of Toronto showed par­tic­i­pants pho­tos of Florida inmates who had been con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der and sen­tenced either to life with­out parole or death. Participants rat­ed the trust­wor­thi­ness of each face, with­out know­ing that the per­son pic­tured had been con­vict­ed of any crime. The inmates who had been sen­tenced to death had faces that the raters per­ceived to be less trust­wor­thy than the faces of those who had been sen­tenced to life. The less trust­wor­thy a face was rat­ed, the more like­ly it was that the inmate had been sen­tenced to death. ​“Here, we’ve shown that facial bias­es unfor­tu­nate­ly leak into what should be the most reflec­tive and care­ful deci­sion that juries and judges can make — whether to exe­cute some­one,” Wilson and Rule said. A fol­low-up study includ­ed the faces of indi­vid­u­als who had been con­vict­ed and lat­er exon­er­at­ed. Even among the exonerees, low­er trust­wor­thi­ness rat­ings cor­re­lat­ed with high­er like­li­hood of a death sen­tence. ​“This find­ing shows that these effects aren’t just due to more odi­ous crim­i­nals adver­tis­ing their mal­ice through their faces but, rather, sug­gests that these real­ly are bias­es that might mis­lead peo­ple inde­pen­dent of any poten­tial ker­nels of truth,” the authors explained.

(“The trust­wor­thi­ness of an inmate’s face may seal his fate,” ScienceBlog, July 15, 2015; J. Wilson, N. Rule, ​“Facial Trustworthiness Predicts Extreme Criminal-Sentencing Outcomes,” Psychological Science, July 15, 2015.) See Studies and Arbitrariness.