Women’s Dangerous World Beliefs Predict Biases Against Formidable Men in Legal Domains

Abstract

Recurring threats of physical aggression throughout human evolutionary history presented selection pressures that favored the ability to perceive threats accurately. One heuristic from which perceivers estimate the potential threat is men’s formidability. Despite the functionality of these inferences in self-protection domains, such responses could bias perceivers in domains wherein evaluations based on physical features may be inappropriate. The demands of a modern legal system could be mismatched with these ancestrally informed motives. This study considered how self-protection motives foster biases against formidable men in legal decision-making, particularly as it relates to sentencing decisions. Mock jurors reported dispositional dangerous world beliefs and provided sentencing recommendations for a male target convicted of aggravated assault who was either physically strong or weak. Women recommended less lenient sentences toward strong men when they believed the world was dangerous. Men’s punitive decisions were not associated with such beliefs. These findings provide evidence for how self-protection motives may inform modern legal decision-making, particularly as it relates to women’s navigation of prospective physical threats.