Research Article The Influence of Afrocentric Facial Features in Criminal Sentencing

ABSTRACT—Prior research has shown that within a racial cat-egory, people with more Afrocentric facial features are pre-sumed more likely to have traits that are stereotypic of Black Americans compared with people with less Afrocentric features. The present study investigated whether this form of feature-based stereotyping might be observed in criminal-sentencing decisions. Analysis of a random sample of inmate records showed that Black and White inmates, given equivalent criminal histories, received roughly equivalent sentences. However, within each race, inmates with more Afrocentric features re-ceived harsher sentences than those with less Afrocentric fea-tures. These results are consistent with laboratory findings, and they suggest that although racial stereotyping as a function of racial category has been successfully removed from sentencing decisions, racial stereotyping based on the facial features of the offender is a form of bias that is largely overlooked. Stereotypes are commonly defined as widely shared beliefs about the attributes of social groups (Fiske, 1998; Judd & Park, 1993). As such, they are assumed to influence judgment through categorization: Peo-ple are judged to have stereotypic attributes if and only if they are categorized as members of the relevant social group (Bodenhausen &amp