Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice: Do Gender Biases Supersede Other Preferences in Domestic Violence Cases

• In Event: Media Psychology and the Study of Gender-Related Issues

Abstract

Some scholars argue that stereotypes of women as docile and non-violent results in women receiving more leniency from the public and justice system than men who commit identical crimes. However, others argue that violent women who violate traditional gender roles, leads to the public evaluating them more harshly than men. Over 900 adults read news stories that featured either a woman abusing a man or a man abusing a woman, then evaluated criminal suspects. Women showed in-group favoritism towards criminal suspects that matched their gender. Men did not show preference for their in-group. Overall, men and women participants were more likely to believe the crime was justified, have more sympathy for the criminal suspect, assign less jail time, and have more positive attitude towards the suspect when the criminal suspect was female vis-à-vis male. Chivalry hypothesis, expectancy violation’s and black sheep hypothesis, and social identity theory are discussed.

Authors

• Osei Appiah, Ohio State U

• Lanier Frush Holt, Ohio State U

• Katherine R. Dale, Florida State University

• Tiffany Nichole White, OSU