5 ms·

Are unattractive people more likely to commit crimes?

eavc 16y ago
[reply edited to something more appropriate] That's an interesting question. If they do, it would be interesting to see if people were good at discerning which types of unattractiveness correlate to higher crime-rates. Or said differently, do we instinctively pick up on something meaningful in personal appearance that correlates to unacceptable social behaviors.
- eavc 16y ago
  I didn't intend this to be rude. I was trying to point out that, for raw numbers, of course unattractive people are going to commit more crimes. There are more of them (by definition).
  - goodside 16y ago
    If someone asks if Blacks are more likely to die of heart attack, they don't care that there are more whites in the country and therefore they have more heart attacks.
    - eavc 16y ago
      You're right. My mistake.
goodside 16y ago
Separating offense from conviction reliably is impossible, so we'll never know for sure. One thing you can do though is measure more quantifiable predictors of criminality, such as IQ, and compare estimates based on attractiveness to actual performance. In most such cases the answer is that ugly people are dumber than average and pretty people are smarter than average, but people's subjective estimates are biased much more strongly by attractiveness than they should be given the actual strength of the correlation. A similar phenomenon is seen for height, also.
- bd 16y ago
  The effect of intelligence may be even harder to assess reliably - are smarter people simply committing less crimes or are they just harder to be found / convicted?
  - goodside 16y ago
    They commit less crime, or at least less violent crime. The evidence is unambiguous. They have fewer behavioral problems in school, they measure lower on biological correlates of aggression (serum testosterone/DHT and cortical norepinephrine), and, perhaps most importantly, they are less likely to be victims (most murders are committed against people of similar socioeconomic status to the perpetrator).
    - bd 16y ago
      All this sounds reasonable. Though given how huge proportion of all crimes goes unsolved (even violent crimes are just about 45% "cleared" [1]), it also makes sense that ones who got caught will be on average less smart than ones who got away, thus skewing statistics in a major way. [1] http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/clearances/index.html http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/clearances/index.ht...
    - Qz 16y ago
      That's funny -- at one point I attended a boarding school for people with 'behavioral problems', and every person there was incredibly smart. I call shenanigans on this idea that smart people get into less trouble.
      - bdr 16y ago
        Wow, talk about a sampling bias.
scrod 16y ago
Relevant: The Ugly Face of Crime: http://www.metafilter.com/49356/The-Ugly-Face-of-Crime http://www.metafilter.com/49356/The-Ugly-Face-of-Crime
dkarl 16y ago
Irrelevant. The relevant question is, are unattractive people on trial more likely to be guilty?
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  And there is the ?converse?- given someone has committed a crime, is it more likely than not that he/she is unattractive?
- keefe 16y ago
  Of course. Reality is a bitch.
- Alex3917 16y ago
  It's not irrelevant. The fact that unattractive people are more likely to be found guilty doesn't mean anything without knowing whether or not they are more likely to have committed the crime.
  - sesqu 16y ago
    Grandparent wants to want to compare P(found guilty|unattractive) to P(found guilty) to reason about whether attractiveness and the jury's finding are independent. You want to compare P(found guilty|unattractive,guilty) to P(found guilty|guilty) to see the same while taking into account the desirable bias against guilty people, which is of course more informative but has both components unknown. These arguments tend to crop up whenever someone notices dependence between effects desired to be independent. The argument is then about where the the dependence lies. The topic is always politically sensitive. I favor the grandparent's position, since it's the simpler one (and actually tractable). That doesn't mean it's right, and if someone's sufficiently convinced otherwise, they can attempt to estimate the guilt of various convicted (perhaps by waiting 50 years and looking for pardons). The results would have to be extraordinarily convincing, however, and quite possibly they would be harmful in that they would establish a genuine bias against unattractive people, which was the original problem. So this is a situation where the grandparent's position is better whether or not it's right.
  - wanderr 16y ago
Kepler2 16y ago
Positive attributes tend to build on one another. The attractive are more likely to be wealthy because the wealthy are more likely to be healthy, and the healthy, to be attractive. The wealthy also tend to be better-educated, and the better-educated are less likely to turn to a life of crime--and so on. It is known in social psychology as the Matthew effect, and it explains why there are those among us who seemingly have it all (wealth, intelligence, beauty, happiness) and so many others who don't. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect
ianium 16y ago
Perhaps. Prison inmates who receive plastic surgery are less likely to get charged with new crimes. Of course, maybe they also don't get charged as often in much the same way as better looking people don't get convicted as often. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3420443 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3420443

eavc 16y ago

[reply edited to something more appropriate] That's an interesting question. If they do, it would be interesting to see if people were good at discerning which types of unattractiveness correlate to higher crime-rates. Or said differently, do we instinctively pick up on something meaningful in personal appearance that correlates to unacceptable social behaviors.

eavc 16y ago
I didn't intend this to be rude. I was trying to point out that, for raw numbers, of course unattractive people are going to commit more crimes. There are more of them (by definition).
- goodside 16y ago
  If someone asks if Blacks are more likely to die of heart attack, they don't care that there are more whites in the country and therefore they have more heart attacks.
  - eavc 16y ago
    You're right. My mistake.

goodside 16y ago

Separating offense from conviction reliably is impossible, so we'll never know for sure. One thing you can do though is measure more quantifiable predictors of criminality, such as IQ, and compare estimates based on attractiveness to actual performance. In most such cases the answer is that ugly people are dumber than average and pretty people are smarter than average, but people's subjective estimates are biased much more strongly by attractiveness than they should be given the actual strength of the correlation. A similar phenomenon is seen for height, also.

bd 16y ago
The effect of intelligence may be even harder to assess reliably - are smarter people simply committing less crimes or are they just harder to be found / convicted?
- goodside 16y ago
  They commit less crime, or at least less violent crime. The evidence is unambiguous. They have fewer behavioral problems in school, they measure lower on biological correlates of aggression (serum testosterone/DHT and cortical norepinephrine), and, perhaps most importantly, they are less likely to be victims (most murders are committed against people of similar socioeconomic status to the perpetrator).
  - bd 16y ago
    All this sounds reasonable. Though given how huge proportion of all crimes goes unsolved (even violent crimes are just about 45% "cleared" [1]), it also makes sense that ones who got caught will be on average less smart than ones who got away, thus skewing statistics in a major way. [1] http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/clearances/index.html http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/clearances/index.ht...
  - Qz 16y ago
    That's funny -- at one point I attended a boarding school for people with 'behavioral problems', and every person there was incredibly smart. I call shenanigans on this idea that smart people get into less trouble.
    - bdr 16y ago
      Wow, talk about a sampling bias.

scrod 16y ago

Relevant: The Ugly Face of Crime: http://www.metafilter.com/49356/The-Ugly-Face-of-Crime http://www.metafilter.com/49356/The-Ugly-Face-of-Crime

dkarl 16y ago

Irrelevant. The relevant question is, are unattractive people on trial more likely to be guilty?

sliverstorm 16y ago
And there is the ?converse?- given someone has committed a crime, is it more likely than not that he/she is unattractive?
keefe 16y ago
Of course. Reality is a bitch.
Alex3917 16y ago
It's not irrelevant. The fact that unattractive people are more likely to be found guilty doesn't mean anything without knowing whether or not they are more likely to have committed the crime.
- sesqu 16y ago
  Grandparent wants to want to compare P(found guilty|unattractive) to P(found guilty) to reason about whether attractiveness and the jury's finding are independent. You want to compare P(found guilty|unattractive,guilty) to P(found guilty|guilty) to see the same while taking into account the desirable bias against guilty people, which is of course more informative but has both components unknown. These arguments tend to crop up whenever someone notices dependence between effects desired to be independent. The argument is then about where the the dependence lies. The topic is always politically sensitive. I favor the grandparent's position, since it's the simpler one (and actually tractable). That doesn't mean it's right, and if someone's sufficiently convinced otherwise, they can attempt to estimate the guilt of various convicted (perhaps by waiting 50 years and looking for pardons). The results would have to be extraordinarily convincing, however, and quite possibly they would be harmful in that they would establish a genuine bias against unattractive people, which was the original problem. So this is a situation where the grandparent's position is better whether or not it's right.
- wanderr 16y ago

Kepler2 16y ago

Positive attributes tend to build on one another. The attractive are more likely to be wealthy because the wealthy are more likely to be healthy, and the healthy, to be attractive. The wealthy also tend to be better-educated, and the better-educated are less likely to turn to a life of crime--and so on. It is known in social psychology as the Matthew effect, and it explains why there are those among us who seemingly have it all (wealth, intelligence, beauty, happiness) and so many others who don't. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect

ianium 16y ago

Perhaps. Prison inmates who receive plastic surgery are less likely to get charged with new crimes. Of course, maybe they also don't get charged as often in much the same way as better looking people don't get convicted as often. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3420443 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3420443