Social Class Correlates of Perceived Offender Typicality

A mock juror-simulation was utilized to analyze the effect of socio-economic status on the tendency to be viewed as a typical offender. Student-subjects (n = 386) were presented a newspaper article in which an individual, varied by social class, was being tried for one of two crimes, petty larceny or armed robbery. As hypothesized, the lower the stimulus person's social class, the lower the perceived personal attractiveness and the higher the tendency to be viewed as a typical offender.

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