Beauty and the Law

Beauty and the Law

Jessica D. Alston

The Chicago School of Professional Psychology

Physical Attractiveness

Traits commonly associated with physically attractive people include talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence (Aronson, 2007: Wheeler and Kim, 1997). Being physically attractive can produce what is referred to as a halo effect. A halo effect occurs when one positive or negative characteristic dominates the way a person is viewed by others (Cialdini 2001; Aronson, 2007). Cialdini (2001), a well established and published researcher on similarity and liking explains that with physical attractiveness “good-looking equals good.” Physically attractive people enjoy numerous benefits throughout their lives. They are thought to be more intelligent in school, more favorably looked upon during job interviews, paid more in the workplace, and receive superior treatment within the US legal systems. These are not small insignificant advantages (Cialdini 2001: Aronson, 2007). Cialdini (2001) also found that defendants were sentenced to jail twice as often if they were categorized as unattractive people.

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Judge and Jury

Kenneth Lopez (2007) wrote an article about a survey in the March issue of the ABA magazine Law Technology Today. The results revealed that attorneys and the general public communicate in significantly different ways. While "61% of the general public learns visually,” the survey found that “attorneys show a greater preference for auditory learning and kinesthetic learning.” Based on the results of the study, a typical twelve-person jury would likely be composed of seven “visual” jurors, three “feeling” jurors and only two “hearing” jurors. Accordingly, it is likely that a visual-majority jury is going to be listening to ...

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