An aversive racism explanation for the influence of race, SES, and race-stereotypical crimes on jury decision biases against East Asian American defendants

Strongly identified White Europeans’ humanization of the complainant predicts elevated punishment for a Black but not White university student accused of sexual assault.

“…Given that there was an assessment of support for criminal punitive sanctions, the present study has clear legal policy implications. This is because one of the most consistent findings in the juror decision-making literature is that juror race (Ewanation et al, 2022; Sommers, 2007) and defendant race (Doherty et al, 2022; Phan et al, 2022) have substantial implications for final legal outcomes in mock jury and actual criminal cases. These outcomes seem especially important in cases involving violence because of the possibility that violent individuals may be exonerated or innocent individuals may face severe and unjust legal sanctions.…”

“…Second, social scientists have shown minimal interest in examining factors which might play a mediating role in aversive racism reactions. The key mediating factor for the current research involved the following two problematic attributions that would likely play a role in punitive reactions toward an alleged perpetrator of sexual assault: (a) hypersexualization which is viewed as increasing the likelihood of sexual violence (Ferber, 2007; Gregório Hertz et al, 2022; Hall, 2001) and (b) perceived threat which has been shown to predict elevated legal punitive reactions toward an alleged violent perpetrator (Nir & Sophie, 2018; Phan et al, 2022; Thompson, 2018). These two items will be combined to create a measure of sexualized threat attributions .…”