Sugar and Spice, and Everything Nice: Do Female Stereotypes Supersede In-group Favoritism Among Men When Evaluating Female Criminal Suspects in News Stories?

Abstract

Some scholars argue that stereotypes of women as docile and non-violent result in women receiving leniency from the public compared to men who commit identical crimes. However, others assert that women who commit violent crimes violate traditional gender roles, which can lead the public to evaluate them more harshly than their male counterparts. M ore than 900 adults read news stories about either a woman abusing a man or a man abusing a woman before evaluating the criminal suspect. Female participants showed in-group favoritism towards criminal suspects that matched their gender. Conversely, male participants did not show a preference for their in-group.Overall, both male and female participants were more likely to believe the crime was justified, have more sympathy for the criminal suspect, assign less jail time, and have a more positive attitude towards the suspect when the criminal suspect was female vis-à-vis male. These findings were more pronounced when there was a non-fatal crime compared to a crime involving a fatality. Chivalry hypothesis and social identity theory are discussed.