A influência da aparência nas decisões tomadas pelo tribunal do júri

Abstract

A person's appearance has important implications for his functioning and his life. Physical appearance and its consequences also influence members of the Judiciary and their decisions.The objective of this study is to investigate the influence of the defendant's appearance in the formation of the conviction of potential jurors. Method: descriptive, cross-sectional study. Initially, 30 portraits (faces) were obtained by Artificial Intelligence, taken from two websites that generate artificial faces from a combination of real photos. These 30 portraits were presented to judges, who chose the most and least attractive ones. Next, potential jurors individually answered a sociodemographic questionnaire and were then asked to read a description of a fictional homicide crime. After reading, they received the 10 portraits considered most attractive and the 10 unattractive ones indicated by the judges and were informed that they should point out the portrait of the perpetrator of the crime, who was one of the people presented in the portraits. Results: 391 potential jurors participated in the study, most of them female (277 / 71%). As for the level of education, most had completed higher education (306 / 78.2%). The Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling technique generated results of all respondents' perceptions represented by points (each point is an image). The close points demonstrate the existence of a relationship between the respondents' perceptions, while the distant points present different characteristics when compared to the close points. Two points (portraits) were identified that were distant and isolated from the others, both men and considered unattractive (high index of unattractiveness). These two individuals received the highest number of YES votes (considered the perpetrator of the crime) and have a high percentage of unattractiveness: 91.9% and 89.2% considered them unattractive. Conclusion: xxii two portraits, both of men and with a high degree of unattractiveness, were considered the author of the crime by most participants.