An Attitudinal Explanation of Biases in the Criminal Justice System an Empirical Testing of Defensive Attribution Theory

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Sergio Herzog System: An Empirical Testing of Defensive Attribution Theory

An Attitudinal Explanation of Biases in the Criminal Justice

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An Attitudinal Explanationof Biases in the CriminalJustice SystemAn Empirical Testing of DefensiveAttribution Theory

Sergio HerzogThe Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Theoretical perspectives, supported by empirical evidence, have consistentlyargued that the judicial treatment of offenders by criminal justice agents issometimes biased by extralegal factors, such as offenders sociodemographiccharacteristics. According to defensive attribution theory, individuals tend toprotect themselves against unfortunate occurrences, such as becoming crimevictims, by distorting the victims role in his or her own victimization; thesemechanisms depend on the observers perceived similarity to the victim. Thepresent study proposes an attitudinal perspective for explaining biases inlegal decisions of criminal justice agents, by taking into account the per-ceived personal similarity between the victims and offenders involved in suchsituations and the observers. Respondents from an Israeli national samplewere asked to evaluate the seriousness of and to suggest the appropriate pun-ishment for hypothetical, multidimensional crime scenarios committed bya variety of offenders against a variety of victims. Overall, our findingssupported our hypotheses. Their theoretical and practical implications arediscussed.

Keywords: defensive attribution theory; judicial biases; personal similarity;seriousness of crime scenarios; Israel

Principles of justice stipulate that during the handling and disposition ofsuspects, defendants, and sentenced offenders (henceforth, offenders),extralegal factors, such as their individual sociodemographic characteris-tics, should be ignored by police officers, prosecutors, judges, and also byjuries (henceforth, criminal justice agents). However, some theoretical per-spectives, such as conflict and labeling theories, have consistently argued

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that the judicial treatment of certain kinds of offenders, particularly thosebelonging to disadvantaged and consequently threatening social groups(e.g., racial and ethnic minorities, the young, and the poor), tends to beindeed influenced, hence biased, by such extralegal factors (Hawkins, 1993;Steffensmeier, Ulmer, & Kramer, 1998). Complementing contextual expla-nations of biases by criminal justice agents (see Daly & Tonry, 1997;Sampson & Lauritsen, 1997), this study proposes an attitudinal perspectiveas a useful tool for explaining biases in legal decisions by criminal justiceagents. Because all legal processes entail the application of formal rules andprocedures in the context of human decision making, the presence of anindividual discretionary component in criminal justice systems provides anopportunity for perceiving and interpreting, cognitively and emotionally,the same criminal acts and actors in different ways. Among other explana-tions, this differential perception and interpretation of offenses may dependconsiderably on the perceived dissimilarity or similarity in personal char-acteristics between the persons involved in these actsoffenders andvictimsand the individual criminal justice agent evaluating them, leadingto a (un)consciously biased legal decision. Although the relationship betweenattitudes and related behaviors does not tend to be linear or straightforward,some criminological studies reveal clear evidence of such a link, even at thelevel of individual criminal justice agents (Marciniak, 1998; Saunders &Size, 1986; Shoham, 2000; Stith, 1990).

Within this attitudinal perspective, Shavers (1970) defensive attributiontheory (henceforth, DAT) has been used extensively by researchers toexplain peoples differential perceptions of, and attitudes to, criminaloffenses, especially violent acts committed by men against their intimatefemale partners or vice versa (Dexter, Penrod, Linz, & Saunders, 1997; Feather,1996; Locke & Richman, 1999). Like those studies, this one set out to testDAT empirically from a criminological perspective and examine attributesascribed to perpetrators; unlike them, however, this study took into accountnot only the great heterogeneity in criminal offenses but also in the personalcharacteristics of the offenders, the victims, and their evaluators. In thisframe, DAT is suggested as a plausible explanation for biases on theindividual level of criminal justice agents.

Shavers DAT

Because people want to live in coherent and predictable social worlds(Allport, 1954), one of the hardest things to understand in life is the occurrence

458 Crime & Delinquency


of unexpected bad events, such as fatal accidents, natural disasters, terminaldiseases, and crime victimization. According to DAT, when confronted withthe apparently capricious victimization of a person, observers are cognitivelythreatened by the realization that such unwarranted misfortunes could alsobefall them. Acknowledging such an unpleasant possibility produces a nega-tive affective state and initiates a cognitive defense mechanism to meet self-protective needs, such as security and control over ones destiny. Shaver(1970) argues that defensive attribution mechanisms influence our perceptionsof others unfortunate situations, such as crime victimization.

The central tenet of DAT is that people can protect themselves againstunfortunate and unpredictable occurrences by perceiving the event asavoidable. We tend to do this by making defensive attribution distortions ofthe victims role in his or her own victimization, through increased attribu-tion of responsibility to him or her. Blaming the victim reflects an underly-ing self-serving motivational bias on the part of observers to a distressingevent for a number of reasons: It shields them from the possibility of ran-dom misfortune, minimizes their personal responsibility in a possible futuresimilar event, maintains their cognitive sense of control with regard to anotherwise random event, and defends them from feelings of vulnerabilityand mortality, by maintaining some assurance that they are not likely toencounter a similar fate (Bell, Kuriloff, & Lottes, 1994; Thornton, 1992;Wilson & Jonah, 1988).

DAT and Personal SimilarityThe DAT also suggests that blaming the victim would not be in the

observers best interest if the observer somehow resembled the victim. Sucha resemblance might enhance rather than diminish the observers sense ofthreat. The DAT suggests that the degree and even the occurrence of theseDAs depend on the observers perceived similarity to the victim. The DATdistinguishes two kinds of similarity: Situational similarity refers to theobservers belief that they could find themselves involved in a situationcomparable to that of the victim. For personal similarity to occur, observersmust perceive themselves as similar to the victim in salient personal ways,especially in terms of demographically shared characteristics (Bell et al.,1994; Dexter et al., 1997; Elkins, Phillips, & Konopaske, 2002; Kouabenan,Gilibert, Medina, & Bouzon, 2001; Wilson & Jonah, 1988).

According to DAT, situational similarity to a victim creates feelings ofthreat for the observer, but it is personal similarity that determines the direc-tion or intensity of observers victim-directed attribution bias, depending on

Herzog / Biases in the Criminal Justice System 459


the degree of perceived similarity between the stimulus victim and theobserver (Shaver, 1970; Thornton, 1992). In line with the tenets of socialidentity theory (Tajfel, 1981, 1982; Tajfel & Turner, 1979), and its morerecent elaboration, self-categorization theory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes,Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987), DAT formulates two attributional possibili-ties. On one hand, the more the observers perceive victims as similar tothemselves, the less likely are they to attribute blame for the incident to thelatter; this has been termed judgmental leniency or in-group favoritism(Tajfel, 1981, 1982; Turner et al., 1987). Observers activate this defensiveblame avoidance bias because they wish to avoid being potentially blamed,just as they do not blame similar victims, if a similar incident happens tothem. On the other hand, if personal similarity to the victim is perceived tobe low, greater blame will be attributed to the victim (out-group prejudice;Tajfel, 1981, 1982; Turner et al., 1987; for DAT, see Bell et al., 1994;Dexter et al., 1997; Elkins et al., 2002; Kouabenan et al., 2001; Locke &Richman, 1999; Shaver, 1970)1.

Although theoretically this effect of personal similarity may occur withdiverse personal characteristics, it has been demonstrated consistently forgender similarity (Arce, Farina, & Sobral, 1996; Baldwin & Kleinke, 1994;Bell et al., 1994; Dexter et al., 1997; Elkins et al., 2002; Kouabenan et al.,2001). Because women are more likely than men to become future victimsof certain criminal acts, such as wife abuse and rape, female observers aremore likely to feel more positively toward female victims, and conse-quently to perceive such criminal acts as significantly more serious, thanmen. The latter, seeing themselves as dissimilar to female victims, are morelikely to perceive these acts less seriously. In addition, women have alsobeen found to assign more responsibility to male victims than to femalevictims (Bell et al., 1994; Dexter et al., 1997; Feather, 1996; Locke &Richman, 1999).

The Present Study

The existence of DA has been established empirically in a variety ofcontexts (Bell et al., 1994; Dexter et al., 1997; Elkins et al., 2002; Thornton,1992; Wilson & Jonah, 1988), including the criminological (Dexter et al.,1997; Feather, 1996; Locke & Richman, 1999). More specifically, its par-ticular pattern of in-group favoritism and out-group prejudice has beenfound in studies conducted in many countries and using a variety of mea-sures (Capozza & Brown, 2000).



The main criticism raised here of previous analyses of DATs aspect ofpersonal similarity is that its measurement has tended to be limited andoversimplified. First, as stated, previous DAT studies emphasized in partic-ular the concept of gender similarity. However, as social identity theory hasformulated, people tend to define themselves on the basis of several dimen-sions (e.g., race, ethnicity, age), only one of which may be gender.Criminological research has indeed shown that often relationships betweenidentity dimensions, such as gender and race, rather than a single dimen-sion, have greater influence on concrete legal decisions, such as arrests,indictment, sentencing, and jury decisions (Daly & Tonry, 1997; Farnworth& Teske, 1995; Steffensmeier et al., 1998). The specific role of multiplesocial identities in DATs personal similarity effect has not yet been ade-quately explored; the present study did examine similarity in multipledemographic factors (age, gender, and ethnicity).

Second, most previous empirical research on DAT has focused on per-sonal dissimilarity or similarity between the observer and the victim of theunfortunate act, while masking or even ignoring the simultaneous referenceto the perceived personal dissimilarity or similarity between the observerand the offender responsible for the act. Unlike those studies, this oneexamined both. The theoretical rationale of this study is that beyond defen-sive attribution biases toward personally similar victims, observers mayalso engage in defensive attribution while evaluating criminal acts commit-ted by similar offenders (e.g., by judging their actions less harshly thancriminal acts committed by dissimilar offenders, and vice versa; Feather,1996). Moreover, criminological research on biases of criminal justiceagents has consistently established the relevance of a more complicatedtriple offender-victim-observer relationship. For example, Black offendersconvicted of killing or raping White victims tend to be more seriouslytreated by predominantly White judges than when convicted of killing orraping Black victims (Radelet, 1991; Ralph, Sorensen, & Marquart, 1992;Walsh, 1987).

Both criticisms are addressed in the present study: It specifically exam-ines the conditions that trigger defensive attribution by taking into accountmultiple factors affecting the individual perceptions of various criminal acts,such as the perceived personal similarity between some social characteris-tics (age, gender, and ethnicity) of the attributors and of the victims andoffenders involved in such acts. Respondents from a large national samplewere asked to evaluate subjectively the seriousness of, and also to suggestthe most appropriate penal measure (henceforth, punishment) for, hypothet-ical multidimensional crime scenarios, in which the age, gender, and ethnicity



of offenders and victims varied orthogonally. Operationally, the researchgoal was to assess empirically whether significant differences in seriousnessscores and punishment options assigned to the various scenarios would befound among respondents with (dis)similar personal characteristics to thoseof offenders and victims represented in them. More specifically, the mainassumption of this study was that respondents evaluations of criminal caseswould vary significantly with variation in some of their own, the offenders,and the victims personal characteristics. Confirmation of this assumptionwould carry important implications for research in DAT, primarily becauseit would transform DAT into a plausible explanation for judicially individu-alized differential treatment of offenders based on personal dissimilarity orsimilarity between criminal justice agents, offenders, and victims.2 Note thatalthough this study aimed to explain behaviors of law enforcement officials,its focus was on crime seriousness judgments by the general public. The rea-sons for this choice are set forth later.

HypothesesBased on DATs tenets, the hypotheses of this study were the following:

Hypothesis 1: Observers will be significantly more likely to judge more seriously andto choose more severe punishments for crime scenarios representing victims person-ally similar (to themselves) who are victimized by dissimilar offenders than scenariosrepresenting other combinations of both (dis)similar offenders and victims.Hypothesis 2: Unlike the preceding hypothesis, contrary scenarios (representing dis-similar victims and similar offenders) will be considered significantly less serious, andsignificantly less serious punishments will be chosen for the offenders in them, thanscenarios representing other combinations of (dis)similar offenders and victims.Hypothesis 3: Consistent with the aforementioned studies and with their corre-sponding hypotheses, among the personally similar characteristics of observers,offenders, and victims, gender similarity will exercise a significant effect onobservers reactions to both male and female offending and victimization. In thisregard, it is hypothesized that female observers will be significantly more likely tojudge more seriously and to choose more severe punishments for crime scenariosthat describe female victims who are similar to the observers, and who have beenvictimized by male offenders, than scenarios that describe other combinations ofboth (dis)similar offenders and victims. On the other hand, scenarios that involvemale victims and female offenders are expected to be judged as less serious, and toyield significantly less serious punishments, than scenarios that involve other com-binations of (dis)similar offenders and victims.

All significant differences in this study were calculated as p < .05.



Method

The present study was conducted in Israel. This choice was deemedappropriate for two main reasons: (a) Few studies on social attitudes tocriminal offenses and biased judicial practices have been conducted outsideNorth America. Interestingly, the findings of the few studies of these issuesconducted in Israel (Herzog, 2003) are similar to those previously cited. (b)Although some social characteristics of the observers, offenders, and vic-tims are not specific to Israel (gender, age, education, income), other char-acteristics that have traditionally been underrepresented and even ignoredin other samples from Western countries are well represented in this popu-lation, for example, a Jewish majority (77%), and an Arab (mostly Muslim)minority. Moreover, the countrys small population facilitates the collectionof a national sample accurately representing the various social and culturalgroups that form the public.

Theoretically, because legal biases involve concrete decisions made byofficial criminal judicial agents, the latter would constitute the preferredpopulation on which to test the effect of DATs personal dissimilarityor similarity between offenders, victims, and independent observers.However, the necessary formal permission from the Israeli judicial systemcould not be obtained to solicit participants who were criminal judicialagents. Therefore, these relationships were tested among the general public.Note that police officers, prosecutors, and judges represent distinct subsetsof the Israeli adult population, with unique legal education, experience, andon-the-job training. Yet several studies have shown close agreement (i.e.,consensus) in attitudes between the public at large and different types ofjudicial practitioners on various criminological issues (Corbett & Simon,1991; Landsman & Rakos, 1994; Levi & Jones, 1985; McCleary, ONeil,Epperlein, Jones, & Gray, 1981; Sellin & Wolfgang, 1964). Accordingly,we expected our assertion that attitudes to offenders would be influencedby the perceived similarity between them and criminal justice practitionersto be valid for contexts other than the legal system as well. Moreover, thesedefensive attribution processes are assumed to be universal, not restrictedto members of a particular profession; they are believed to stem frompeoples socialization within their culture and not reserved to members ofa particular profession. It thus would seem appropriate to start with aninvestigation of perceptions among the general population. In this regard,this study may also help us to understand potential and actual jurorsdecisions.



Unlike many of the aforementioned criminological studies testing DAT,typically based on samples of students (Dexter et al., 1997; Locke &Richman, 1999), volunteers, or in the best case, local citizens (Feather,1996), respondents in this study formed part of a very large, representative,random national sample of the adult Israeli population (n = 1,650), enhanc-ing considerably the generalizability of the findings.3 The most recentIsraeli telephone directories, covering all geographical regions, providedthe sampling framework, and the application of a systematic random sam-pling method assured identical probability of inclusion of all householdslisted.4 The sample distributions showed a close fit with recent officialnational data on the Israeli population.

Data were collected via anonymous questionnaires, administered bymeans of a telephone survey between mid-December 2003 and mid-March2004. A content analysis of Israels major national newspapers revealedno outstanding crimes, offenders or victims around the time of the survey,which might have affected respondents attitudes. Each questionnaireincluded five randomly chosen (and ordered), different (and unique) hypo-thetical crime scenarios for evaluation, constructed by the factorial-surveyapproach (detailed later; five scenarios per questionnaire 1,650 respon-dents: n = 8,250 unique evaluated scenarios), and a number of demographicquestions about respondents. Each telephone interview lasted between 5and 7 minutes. The language of the questionnaire was kept as simple aspossible, and the students who served as surveyors were carefully trainedby the researcher to minimize potential biases (they asked the respondentsto evaluate explicitly all the scenarios included in their questionnaires).These factors ultimately led to a high response rate of 63%.5 A smallnumber of respondents (n = 50) had pretested the questionnaire for the mea-sures use and reliability and for any unexpected response patterns (nonewere found). The questionnaire was originally written in Hebrew. BecauseIsraels population comprises many Arabic and Russian speakers, question-naires were backtranslated into these languages by two Arabic- and twoRussian-speaking people. A comparison of the original questionnaire withthe translated versions revealed very close similarity.

Dependent VariablesRespondents were asked to judge each scenario appearing in his or her

questionnaire subjectively on two levels: by evaluating its perceived seri-ousness (on a Likert-type scale from 1 = not serious at all to 11 = very seri-ous; Herzog, 2003; OConnell & Whelan, 1996) and by determining the



most appropriate punishment for it (by choosing one option from deathsentence, life imprisonment, a certain number of years in prison, andother less serious punishments; see the appendix). The seriousness scoresand punishment options assigned to the scenarios constituted the dependentvariables of the research. Note that research has consistently reported ahigh correspondence between subjective evaluations of seriousness and ofappropriate sentence severity: Higher evaluations of seriousness usuallyyield more severe punishments recommended for the offenders (OConnell& Whelan, 1996).

Because the punishment variable involves both numerical (years ofimprisonment) and categorical values (death sentence, life imprison-ment, other less serious punishment), for ease of understanding, analy-sis, and presentation, these latter values were recoded using years ofimprisonment as the common measuring unit; similar to the seriousnessvariable, the punishment variable was transformed into an interval scale.The other less serious punishment option (the least serious category) wasscored as the lowest suggested number of years of imprisonment (0.08years); the death sentence and life imprisonment (the most serious cat-egories) were scored just higher than the highest suggested number of yearsof imprisonment (65 and 60 years, respectively. This choice was made arbi-trarily: The rationale was to provide these options with numerical valuesrepresenting severe punishments).6

The Research Design

Given the complexity of the defensive attribution process (Shaver, 1970;Wilson & Jonah, 1988) and the importance of studying the systematic rela-tionships between factors surrounding the crime scenarios (such as the per-sonal details of both offenders and victims, and the personal details of therespondents), a fully crossed factorial design method was applied in thisstudy. This was the first time such design had been used to analyze conceptsof personal similarity related to both DAT and legal biases of individualcriminal justice agents.

This method uses multidimensional scenarios presented in a form thatcombines the benefits of controlled, randomized experimental designs andconventional surveys (Rossi & Anderson, 1982; Rossi & Berk, 1997; Rossi,Simpson, & Miller, 1985). By this technique, the crime scenarios in this studywere created by randomly selecting values from each of several variables(one value per variable per scenario) until each variable had been represented



and a complete scenario was formed (for details of all the variables andvalues used in this study, and included in the evaluated scenarios, and somesample scenarios, see the appendix). For example, within a hypothetical crimescenario, chosen randomly from a variety of possible offenses, the offendersand victims personal characteristics, such as their gender (male or female),ethnicity (Jewish or Arab), and age (25 or 50 years old), were chosen ran-domly. Across the study, the scenarios represent a random sample of all pos-sible scenarios (the research population), employing all possible values of theselected variables. Although (statistically) two identical scenarios might beevaluated by different respondents, each evaluated scenario has a high proba-bility of being unique because of the large number of stimulus combinations.7Because of their complete randomization, a scenarios variables cannotcovary with either the respondents personal (demographic) characteristics orwith themselves. Rossi and Anderson (1982) note that by permitting multiplevariables of a crime scenario to vary randomly across scenarios, and by con-trolling the respondents personal characteristics, this technique allows thesimultaneous exploration of the effects of several independent and controlvariables, while still providing unbiased estimates of each variables contri-bution to the respondents overall judgment (Rossi et al., 1985).

This advantage seems to be decisive, particularly in a study like this one.Some variables related to the scenarios, such as some personal characteris-tics of offenders and victims, were expected to have a considerable influenceon respondents attitudes to them. As formulated in the third hypothesis, itwas also expected that such relationships would vary considerably by socialgroup and especially by gender.

Independent and Control VariablesThe 18 independent and control variables for this study were derived

from two sources: nine from respondents personal characteristics and ninefrom the randomly assigned factorial variables within the crime scenarios(see the appendix). Among the former, the respondents own gender (maleor female), ethnicity (Jewish or Arab in the Israeli context) and age (youngadults, younger than 37.5 years old, or mature adults, older than 37.5 yearsold; more and less the variables median) constituted the first three inde-pendent variables in this study. These variables were chosen for several rea-sons: First, the aforementioned criminological theories usually refer toethnicity and age when explaining judicial biases. Second, as stated, manyprevious findings have related gender to DAT processes. Third, these threevariables are particularly salient categories, usually serving as obvious



bases for social categorization (see social identity and self-categorizationtheories).8 Among these variables, offenders and victims parallel personalcharacteristicsgender (male or female), ethnicity (Jewish or Arab), andage (young or mature adult, 25 or 50 year olds)were orthogonally intro-duced into the scenarios to correlate the public perceptions of the serious-ness of and the punishment for the offenses with some of the observerspersonal traits. They also constituted independent variables in this study.

Crime seriousness studies usually find that significantly higher serious-ness scores and punishment options are given to violent offenses andrecidivist offenders than to property offenses and first-time offenders. Thisis because of the greater psychological and physical consequences of theformer for their victims (Herzog, 2003; OConnell & Whelan, 1996).Accordingly, the type of committed offense described in the scenariovarioustypes of violent and property acts (violence, including examples of intimateand acquaintance murders, intimate and acquaintance violence, partnerrape, and vehicular homicide; property, including examples of burglary,shoplifting, and robbery)and the offenders criminal record, togetherwith the respondents other personal characteristics, served as additionalcontrol variables.

Data Analysis

Tables 1 and 2 respectively present the means and standard deviationsof the (dependent) variables seriousness and punishment apportionedby the respondents in the whole sample to each of the several conditions ofthe three independent variablesdissimilarity or similarity in gender, eth-nicity, and ageregarding offenders and victims, as randomly expressed inthe crime scenarios, and regarding the respondents themselves. The statis-tical significance for several comparisons between the different conditions(36 independent t tests) is also included in the tables. For ease of under-standing, and because of the large number of statistical tests conducted, thesummary statistics are not reported, but only the existence of significant dif-ferences across rows and columns.

The influence of the respondents, offenders, and victims personal dis-similarity or similarity (independent variables) on the seriousness scoresand punishment options (dependent variables) apportioned to the crime sce-narios was also analyzed. Two multivariate OLS regression models wereused, with account taken of all the scenario variables, respondents personalcharacteristics, and the relationships between the independent variables.




Table 1Comparison of the Mean Rating (and Standard Deviations) of the

Seriousness Scores for All the Crime Scenarios, by the Respondents,Offenders, and Victims Gender, Ethnicity, and Age

for the Whole Sample of Respondents

Personal SimilarityComparison by Gender

Kind of Respondent Female Respondents Male Respondents

Kind of Offender Similar Dissimilar Similar DissimilarKind of Victim Offender Offender Total Offender Offender Total

Similar 8.67 9.78* 9.50 8.61 8.65 8.63victim (2.58) (1.95) (2.18) (2.61) (2.54) (2.57)

Dissimilar 8.61 8.86* 8.76* 9.50* 8.36* 9.19*victim (2.27) (2.48) (2.57) (2.06) (2.49) (2.25)

Total 8.64 9.48* 9.16 9.19 8.55* 8.93*(2.52) (2.27) (2.39) (2.31) (2.53) (2.42)

*p < .05.

Personal SimilarityComparison by Ethnicity

Kind of Respondent Jewish Respondents Arab Respondents


Similar 8.94 9.35* 9.14 8.42 9.32* 8.89victim (2.33) (2.18) (2.34) (2.28) (2.28) (2.25)

Dissimilar 8.70 9.25* 9.04 6.52* 8.45* 7.51*victim (2.50) (2.39) (2.34) (3.62) (2.49) (3.19)

Total 8.82 9.31* 9.09 7.49 8.91* 8.19*(2.21) (2.38) (2.29) (3.25) (2.41) (2.78)

*p < .05.

Personal SimilarityComparison by Age

Kind of Respondent Younger Respondents Mature Respondents


Similar 9.03 9.00 9.01 9.10 9.35 9.19Victim (2.44) (2.22) (2.37) (2.54) (2.41) (2.57)

Dissimilar 8.54* 8.88 8.67* 8.33* 8.95* 8.60*Victim (2.63) (2.41) (2.40) (2.88) (2.74) (2.53)

Total 8.82 8.94 8.86 8.76 9.15* 8.94(2.43) (2.37) (2.36) (2.64) (2.51) (2.48)

*p < .05.



Table 2Comparison of the Mean Rating (and Standard Deviation) of the

Punishment Options for the Crime Scenarios, by the Respondents,Offenders and Victims Gender, Ethnicity and Age,

for the Whole Sample of Respondents

Personal SimilarityComparison by Gender

Kind of Respondent Female Respondents Male Respondents


Similar 12.78 21.67* 19.42 13.42 13.64 13.54victim (20.81) (24.23) (23.72) (20.36) (20.90) (20.66)

Dissimilar 10.84 13.24* 12.58* 18.83* 10.25* 14.50*victim (21.21) (20.07) (20.73) (22.98) (18.84) (22.26)

Total 12.47 18.97 15.77 15.93 11.94* 12.11*(21.07) (23.21) (22.60) (22.23) (20.26) (21.56)

*p < .05.

Personal SimilarityComparison by Ethnicity

Kind of Respondent Jewish Respondents Arab Respondents


Similar 15.65 20.04* 17.63 7.49 20.37* 14.28victim (24.62) (24.44) (23.26) (13.42) (24.41) (19.49)

Dissimilar 10.98* 14.46* 12.69* 5.63* 13.68* 10.33victim (18.04) (20.54) (22.03) (9.35) (20.80) (19.71)

Total 13.74 17.82* 15.61 6.66 16.68* 12.29*(22.15) (23.15) (22.55) (20.54) (17.75) (20.02)

*p < .05.

Personal SimilarityComparison by Age

Kind of Respondent Younger Respondents Mature Respondents


Similar 20.92 15.03* 17.70 15.29 20.19* 18.16victim (25.29) (21.42) (23.47) (20.77) (24.62) (19.79)

Dissimilar 13.36* 16.88* 14.27* 10.83* 14.16* 12.12*victim (20.69) (22.60) (20.99) (18.03) (20.78) (22.78)

Total 17.03 16.76 16.26 13.46 17.13* 15.57(23.31) (22.56) (22.47) (21.21) (22.27) (21.61)

*p < .05.


Table 3 presents the unstandardized regression coefficients and standarderrors of these variables for the two regression models, for the whole sam-ple of respondents. As is seen, the categorical, independent and controlvariables were transformed into dummy variables. A potential response biasin respondents judgments existed here because each of them responded tofive different scenarios, and they were treated in this study as units of analy-sis (Hox, Kreft, & Hermkins, 1991). The regression analyses were accord-ingly also conducted using Hierarchical Linear Models software, whichtakes this possible problem into consideration. These latter analyses yieldedfindings that were similar to the former; to save space, only the OLSmodels are presented.

Results

From Table 1, we learn first that regardless of the personal similaritybetween observers, offenders, and victims, male and Arab observersawarded all the evaluated scenarios significantly lower seriousness scoresthan female and Jewish respondents; no such significant difference wasfound in the comparison between younger and mature adult respondents.Second, the observers mostly gave relatively higher seriousness scoresto crime scenarios depicting an offender personally dissimilar, or a victimpersonally similar, to themselves than they gave to scenarios depicting asimilar offender or a dissimilar victim. Except for the case of young respon-dents, these differences reached statistical significance in the other condi-tions. In the exceptional case of male respondents, these significantdifferences were reversed in their direction. Third, concerning the specificresearch hypotheses, Table 1 shows that in most research conditions, thesignificantly highest seriousness means (and the relatively smallest stan-dard deviations) were obtained from scenarios with an offender dissimilarand a victim similar to the observers, whereas the significantly lowestmeans were usually obtained from the opposite scenarios. Note that thissignificant gap in seriousness scores was most evident for Arab respon-dents. Again, this trend was reversed in the case of male respondents. Notethat because of the high number of t tests conducted in this and the nexttable, some significant effects were perhaps because of chance.

Similar trends to those described for the seriousness (first dependent)variable in the three levels of analyses (Table 1) were found for the punish-ment (second dependent) variable chosen by the respondents for the vari-ous crime scenarios. This pattern is expected, considering that the correlation




Table 3Unstandardized Coefficients (and Standard Errors) for the

Seriousness of and Punishment for Crime Scenarios, by ScenarioVariables, Respondents Personal Details and Interrelationships

Between Dissimilarity or Similarity Between Respondents, Offendersand Victims, for the Whole Sample of Respondents

ValuesVariables Dependent Variable Seriousness Punishment

Offenders gender 0 = male; 1 = female .27 (.06)* 1.51 (1.97)*Victims gender 0 = male; 1 = female .25 (.20)* 2.47 (1.84)*Offenders ethnicity 0 = Jewish; 1 = Arab .12 (.08) 1.09 (1.63)Victims ethnicity 0 = Jewish; 1 = Arab .17 (.13) .96 (1.25)Offenders age 0 = 25 years old; .05 (.13) .97 (1.22)

1 = 50 years oldVictims age 0 = 25 years old; .04 (.13) 1.07 (1.60)

1 = 50 years oldDegree of 0 = severe; 1 = light .68 (.06)** 10.63 (1.01)**

offenses harmCriminal offense 0 = violence; 1 = property 1.35 (.12)** .16.40 (1.16)**Offenders 0 = not stated; 1 = yes .86 (.11 )** 11.29 (.99)**

criminal recordRespondents gender 0 = male; 1 = female .22 (.06)* 1.90 (1.75)*Respondents age Interval .00 (.00) .10 (.04)*Respondents education Interval .04 (.01)** .37 (.20)**Respondents income 0 = less than 5, .03 (.12) .71 (1.12)

000 NIS; 1 = moreRespondents ethnicity 0 = Jewish; 1 = Arab .46 (.08)** 3.89 (1.62)**Respondents 0 = secular; 1 = traditional .45 (.07)** 2.21 (1.06)*

religiosity or religiousRespondents 0 = natives or veterans; .52 (.12)** 2.17 (1.11)**

status in the country 1 = immigrantsRespondents 0 = married; 1 = other .29 (.07)** 1.89 (1.18)*

familial statusRespondents 0 = full-time job; .10 (.06) .50 (1.05)

occupational status 1 = otherInterrelationship for Female: Dissimilar .64 (.32)** 9.35 (2.67)**

Offender Similar Victimrespondents gender Female: Similar .27 (.33)* 2.25 (3.11)**

Offender Dissimilar Victim(dummy variable)a Male: Dissimilar .14 (.27) 1.85 (2.51)*

Offender Similar VictimMale: Similar .50 (.25)** 6.56 (2.30)**

Offender Dissimilar VictimInterrelationship for Jewish: Dissimilar .25 (.17)* 7.01 (1.62)**

Offender Similar Victim

(continued)


between the two dependent variables was relatively high (r = 0.42, p

Table 3 presents the regression analysis of the data. In the firstmodelseriousness scoresthis table shows that when both control sce-nario variables and respondents characteristics were controlled for most ofthe relationships between respondents, offenders, and victims personalcharacteristics (9 out of the 12 relationships tested; see the third section ofTable 3) showed significant coefficients, with identical signs for identicalsituations of personal dissimilarity or similarity. A common positive signappeared for the six crime situations depicting a dissimilar offender and asimilar victim, and a common negative sign appeared for five of the six sit-uations depicting a similar offender and a dissimilar victim. The excep-tional case in the latter was again when male respondents evaluatedscenarios in which similar (male) offenders committed offenses against dis-similar (female) victims. Generally, these findings were reinforced by thesecond regression model, in which the punishment scores were used as thedependent variable. Here, all 12 variables representing relationships amongthe personal characteristics showed significant coefficients, the only excep-tion being younger respondents. Some control variables also showed sig-nificant coefficients in both models, a few having an even greater impact onthe respondents judgments than the independent variables. Table 3 alsoshows that scenarios depicting violent offenses, with relatively more severeconsequences for the victim, committed by offenders with previous criminalrecords, and/or evaluated by less educated, Jewish, traditional or religious,married, and/or native-born or veteran respondents, were given significantlyhigher seriousness and punishment scores than their counterpart scenariosand respondents variables.

Discussion

The purpose of the present study was to analyze Shavers DAT from acriminological perspective while (in contrast to former studies) taking intoaccount the heterogeneous nature of personal dissimilarity or similarity inseveral social characteristics between offenders and victims involved incriminal situations and independent observers. This study extends previousresearch on DAT by addressing several personal social characteristicsinstead of only one.

In line with DATs tenets of personal similarity, the first two hypothesesof this study received general, albeit not complete, support from the findings:Taking into account some salient personal characteristics, such as gender,ethnicity and age, respondents scores of seriousness and punishment



tended to vary significantly as a function of the personal dissimilarity orsimilarity between them and the offenders and victims in the hypotheticalcrime situations (Tables 1 and 2). Again, note that because of the highnumber of significance tests conducted, some significant effects may bebecause of mere chance. Moreover, the regression analyses, applied to bothseriousness and punishment variables separately, and controlling simulta-neously for all the scenarios variables and respondents several personalcharacteristics (Table 3), supported these findings. As stated, these findingsare compatible with the extensive literature, theoretical and empirical, onbiases of criminal justice agents (especially judges in conviction and sen-tencing; Daly & Tonry, 1997; Sampson & Lauritsen, 1997) and on DAT(Bell et al., 1994; Shaver, 1970; Thornton, 1992; Wilson & Jonah, 1988).On one hand, the findings may explain the differential treatment of offenders(and victims) because of personal dissimilarity or similarity between them(many of them young Black people) and criminal justice agents (many ofthem adult White people). On the other hand, these studies also link per-sonal similarity between observers and people involved in crime with dif-ferential attitudinal perceptions of such eventsblaming more or lessdissimilar or similar victims respectively. Along with these DAT studies,the present study indicated that motivational processes, such as perceivedpersonal similarity, seem to play a powerful role in the attribution of seri-ousness to diverse criminal events and in the assignment of penalties to theoffenders involved in them. Perhaps for self-protection, each social group(e.g., women) seems to have accused more an offender, and excused morethe victimization of a victim, belonging to the out group. As for a memberof their own, the group appears to have made favorable attributions thattended to excuse or minimize his or her causal role in offending or to inflatehis or her victimization. The DAs appear to be rooted in the fact that socialgroups seem to feel that both offenders and victims in undesirable eventsdeserve what happens to them (punishment and victimization) if theybelong to the out group, and vice versa, thereby justifying the value grantedto their own group.

As anticipated by the first part of the third hypothesis, bivariate andmultivariate analyses showed that gender was a powerful predictor ofrespondents judgments of seriousness and punishment. This part of thehypothesis, assuming trends of in-group favoritism and out-group preju-dice for female respondents, was supported by the findings (Tables 1 and2). These findings, reinforced by the two regression analyses (Table 3), arein line with a DA bias explanation, supporting the interpretation that the



studys female respondents were able to perceive sufficient personal simi-larity to the women in the scenarios to judge their offending or victimiza-tion differently.

A highly exceptional trend, however, completely opposed to DATstenets of personal similarity, and hence to the first two hypotheses, wasfound among male respondents (Tables 1 to 3). This finding may be seen asweakening the applicability of DAT as a plausible explanation for biasescommitted by judicial practitioners. The failure of mens data to supportDAT is particularly problematic as men are represented in greater propor-tions among people who make criminal justice decisions. Further examina-tion of these trends is required.

However, this finding concerning men still finds support in bias in crim-inal justice and in social psychology literature. Women do constitute asocially disadvantaged group, and most of the criminal system agents aremales; still, wide empirical evidence exists that female offenders are oftentreated leniently in the legal system. Unlike personal similarity, the expla-nation for this favorable posture can be found in traditional gender-roleattitudes of men to women in patriarchal societies: It has been documentedthat when groups in society possess high status and sufficient power toprotect their status, as males do, they can afford to be relatively charitabletoward out-groups, such as females, showing a kind of benevolent pater-nalism (Daly & Tonry, 1997; Farnworth & Teske, 1995; Sampson &Lauritsen, 1997). As predicted by social identity theory, female observersseem to rely more heavily than male observers on gender-based identifi-cation processes and to use DA to a greater extent (Elkins et al., 2002).

The second part of this hypothesis predicted similar findings for otherpersonal characteristics; this was also supported by the research findings.First, Tables 1 and 2 show similar identification and prejudice trends forethnicity and age. Second, Table 3 also shows significant coefficients forrespondents other personal characteristics, such as education, religiosity,and status in the country, considerably affecting judgments of seriousnessand punishments. These findings are also in line with social identity theory,assuming that people typically use not one but several group identities todefine themselves, although some categories are expected to hold moresubjective importance than others. Hence, further investigation of the effectof additional independent variables on perceptions of criminal offenses ingeneral, and on personal dissimilarity or similarity with offenders and vic-tims in particular, is required.



Conclusion

Theoretical claims, such as labeling and conflict theories, and empiricalevidence consistently indicate that despite values of equity, the judicial sys-tem is sometimes biased in its treatment of individual offenders, and influ-enced by their personally dissimilar social characteristics. Some socialpsychological theories, such as Shavers DAT, raise a similar argument.This study shows the overall applicability of DAT tenets to explain differ-ential perceptions of crime situations, while taking into account severalsocial characteristics of offenders, victims, and observers. The findingssupport the general use of DAT as a possible explanation for biases in thecriminal justice system regarding offenders by individual justice agents.

In this regard, the presence of an individual discretionary component incriminal justice systems should also entail additional responsibilities. Onone hand, the selection process of legal agents must ensure that the bestpeople are hired. These should be individuals with the intellectual capacityand wisdom to make appropriate use of their discretion. Training and sim-ulations that provide guidelines and that ascribe limits to discretionary deci-sions must also be provided. On the other hand, jurors are expected to beunbiased and free of any preconceived notions of guilt or innocence. In thisregard, the present findings highlight the importance of using challengesand voir dire process, applied both by the prosecution and by defense attor-neys, to ensure the impartiality of selected jurors. Moreover, they furtheremphasize the value of employing professional jurors instead of relying onvoir dire and other strategies. Scientific jury selection, which is based oncorrelational techniques from the social sciences, aims at evaluating thelikelihood that potential jurors will vote for conviction or for acquittal onthe basis of the social and demographic characteristics of jury members.The present findings bear meaningful implications when applying suchtechniques.

Note that the applicability of DAT was not perfect with all the evaluatedvariables: unlike many other observers, men appear to be less influenced bymotivations of personal dissimilarity or similarity when evaluating crimesituations involving men or women and are apparently more influenced byother (perhaps traditional gender-role) motivations when evaluatingwomen. This finding may mean that when men are the observers, the DAeffect is overpowered by a stronger effect. Because criminal justice agentsare predominantly male, further investigation of motivations in the case ofmale respondents concerning male and female offenders and victims isrequired.



Finally, despite the effort invested in this study to overcome theoreticaland methodological obstacles, its limitations need to be taken into accountin the analysis of its conclusions. As previously stated, members of the gen-eral public, instead of criminal justice agents, were sampled as independentevaluators of the crime scenarios. Although some (aforementioned) empir-ical studies report close agreement in perceptions between representativesof the general public and criminal justice agents on various criminologicaland judicial issues, the latter are presumably different from the formerbecause of their legal training and experience, the flow of cases, and formal(e.g., sentencing) guidelines; this may allow them to overcome some of thebiases that the average person has. This feature constitutes the main limita-tion of the present study, which accordingly may be considered exploratoryin this regard. Further examination of the relationship between perceivedpersonal similarity of individual judicial agents and individual offendersand victims as described in crime situations is still warranted. Second,because of the application of the factorial survey approach and othermethodological considerations (see Note 8), this research was based onshort, hypothetical scenarios depicting typical crime situations. In this con-text, other factors not considered in these scenarios might presumablyinfluence the respondents seriousness and punishment judgments: the for-mer relationship between offender and victim, the venue of the act, whetherthe victim and/or the offender had been drinking, and so on. These maywell appear in real-life cases. On the other hand, the offenders and victimsdemographic information detailed in the scenarios was relatively empha-sized to the respondents, leading to a demand effecthints and cues in aresearch situation that may influence subjects perceptions of what isexpected of them (Neale & Liebert, 1986). Third, unlike other studies con-ducted in other national contexts, the ethnicity variable was operationalizedin this study as opposing Jews and Arabs. Fourth, to focus on the studysspecific research questions, the interactions between some of the respon-dents characteristics with similar and dissimilar offenders and victimswere not included in the present text. Fifth, respondents older and youngerthan 37.5 years old (the variables median) evaluated offenses committedonly by 25- or 50-year-old offenders, instead of offenders who are closer,or farther, from them in age. Further analysis of the questions and hypothe-ses raised by the present study (e.g., analyzing male and female respon-dents separately), using other survey techniques, in other national contextsand with more extensive descriptions of crime situations, involving theseand other kinds of offenders and victims, and of interactions, is highlyrecommended.



Appendix 1

Variables and Values:

A. Offenders gender and B. Victims gender1. Male / 2. Female

C. Offenders ethnicity and D. Victims ethnicity1. Jewish / 2. Arab

E. Offenders age and F. Victims age1. 25 years old / 2. 50 years old

G. Degree of offenses harm1. Relatively light / 2. Relatively severe

H. Criminal offense1. Violence (including examples of intimate and acquaintance murders, intimate

and acquaintance violence, partner rape, and vehicular homicide)2. Property (including examples of burglary, shoplifting, and robbery)

I. Offenders criminal record1. Yes / 2. (Not stated)

Sampled scenarios:

1. Because of suspicion of romantic betrayal, a 25-year-old Jewish manwith a criminal record beat his girlfriend, a 25-year-old Jewish woman,seriously.

2. A 50-year-old Arab man, with a criminal record, breaks into a 50-year-oldJewish womans apartment through a window and steals jewels and moneyworth NIS 10,000.

3. A 25-year-old Jewish housewife is shopping at a drugstore owned by a50-year-old Jewish woman and she slips a watch worth NIS 200 into herhandbag and leaves the store without paying for it.

In your opinion, how serious is this act?

Not serious at all Very serious1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

If you were the judge in this case, what would be your decision regarding theappropriate punishment for the offender?

Sentence him/her to death / to life imprisonment / to _________ years of imprisonment/to other less serious punishment (probation, community service, fine).



Notes1. Similar tenets may be found in the similarity-attraction hypothesis (see Osbeck,

Moghaddam, & Perreault, 1997). Sociobiologists have suggested that all living organismshave such a tendency to feel more favorable to genetically similar others and to express fearand loathing toward genetically dissimilar organisms (see Rushton, 1989).

2. The mere presence of women on a jury was sufficient to change the conviction rate incriminal cases against or committed by women (Arce, Farina, & Sobral, 1996).

3. Findings from student samples especially have proven not to generalize well to the pop-ulation at large, particularly to the judicial system (Sears, 1986).

4. Official data indicate that 98% of Israeli households are connected to the phone system,and the percentage of people not listed in the directories is fairly low.

5. The response rate was calculated on the basis of valid household numbers, excludingbusinesses, fax connections, and so forth. To boost response rates, respondents who could notbe reached initially were contacted again. A household was replaced after three unsuccessfulattempts.

6. To increase the uniformity of the evaluative task, respondents were instructed to basetheir responses on their subjective evaluation of the described scenario rather than on any per-sonal legal knowledge they may have had (Herzog, 2003).

7. The decisions regarding the number of variables to include in each scenario and thenumber of scenarios to present to each respondent were pretested and guided by methodolog-ical considerations, such as the use of a telephone survey, interview length, full understandingof the scenarios, and allowing sufficient observations for each research condition to achievesufficient statistical power for the data analyses.

8. Tajfel (1981) stressed the importance of assimilation; individuals do not create theirown categories but assimilate the categories that are culturally available.

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Sergio Herzog is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Criminology, at the Faculty of Law, in theHebrew University of Jerusalem. He received his bachelors degree in psychology and hisPh.D. in criminology (direct track) from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His researchinterests lie in the areas of criminology, criminal justice systems, and social psychology.



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An Attitudinal Explanation of Biases in the Criminal Justice System an Empirical Testing of Defensive Attribution Theory