Research Report

Looking Deathworthy
Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts
Capital-Sentencing Outcomes
Jennifer L. Eberhardt,1 Paul G. Davies,2 Valerie J. Purdie-Vaughns,3 and Sheri Lynn Johnson4

1Department of Psychology, Stanford University; 2Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles;
3Department of Psychology, Yale University; and 4Cornell Law School

ABSTRACT—Researchers previously have investigated the

role of race in capital sentencing, and in particular,

whether the race of the defendant or victim influences the

likelihood of a death sentence. In the present study, we

examined whether the likelihood of being sentenced to

death is influenced by the degree to which a Black defen-

dant is perceived to have a stereotypically Black appear-

ance. Controlling for a wide array of factors, we found

that in cases involving a White victim, the more stereo-

typically Black a defendant is perceived to be, the more

likely that person is to be sentenced to death.

Race matters in capital punishment. Even when statistically

controlling for a wide variety of nonracial factors that may in-

fluence sentencing, numerous researchers have found that

murderers of White victims are more likely than murderers of

Black victims to be sentenced to death (Baldus, Pulaski, &

Woodworth, 1983; Baldus, Woodworth, & Pulaski, 1985, 1990,

1994; Baldus, Woodworth, Zuckerman, Weiner, & Broffitt, 1998;

Bowers, Pierce, & McDevitt, 1984; Gross & Mauro, 1989; Ra-

delet, 1981; U.S. General Accounting Office, GAO, 1990). The

U.S. GAO (1990) has described this race-of-victim effect as

‘‘remarkably consistent across data sets, states, data collection

methods, and analytic techniques’’ (p. 5).

In one of the most comprehensive studies to date, the race of

the victim and the race of the defendant each were found to

influence sentencing (Baldus et al., 1998). Not only did killing a

White person rather than a Black person increase the likelihood

of being sentenced to death, but also Black defendants were

more likely than White defendants to be sentenced to death.

In the current research, we used the data set from this study by

Baldus and his colleagues (1998) to investigate whether the prob-

ability of receiving the death penalty is significantly influenced by

the degree to which the defendant is perceived to have a stereo-

typically Black appearance (e.g., broad nose, thick lips, dark skin).

In particular, we considered the effect of a Black defendant’s per-

ceived stereotypicality for those cases in which race is most sali-

ent—when a Black defendant is charged with murdering a White

victim. Although systematic studies of death sentencing have been

conducted for decades, no prior studies have examined this potential

influence of physical appearance on death-sentencing decisions.

A growing body of research demonstrates that people more

readily apply racial stereotypes to Blacks who are thought to

look more stereotypically Black, compared with Blacks who are

thought to look less stereotypically Black (Blair, Judd, & Fall-

man, 2004; Blair, Judd, Sadler, & Jenkins, 2002; Eberhardt,

Goff, Purdie, & Davies, 2004; Maddox, 2004; Maddox & Gray,

2002, 2004). People associate Black physical traits with cri-

minality in particular. The more stereotypically Black a person’s

physical traits appear to be, the more criminal that person is

perceived to be (Eberhardt et al., 2004). A recent study found

that perceived stereotypicality correlated with the actual sen-

tencing decisions of judges (Blair, Judd, & Chapleau, 2004).

Even with differences in defendants’ criminal histories statis-

tically controlled, those defendants who possessed the most

stereotypically Black facial features served up to 8 months

longer in prison for felonies than defendants who possessed the

least stereotypically Black features. The present study exam-

ined the extent to which perceived stereotypicality of Black

defendants influenced jurors’ death-sentencing decisions in

cases with both White and Black victims. We argue that only in

death-eligible cases involving White victims—cases in which

race is most salient—will Black defendants’ physical traits

function as a significant determinant of deathworthiness.

PHASE I: BLACK DEFENDANT, WHITE VICTIM

Method

We used an extensive database (compiled by Baldus et al., 1998)

containing more than 600 death-eligible cases from Philadel-

Address correspondence to Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Department of
Psychology, Stanford University, Jordan Hall, Building 420, Stan-
ford, CA 94305-2130, e-mail: [email protected].

PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

Volume 17—Number 5 383Copyright r 2006 Association for Psychological Science

phia, Pennsylvania, that advanced to penalty phase between

1979 and 1999. Forty-four of these cases involved Black male

defendants who were convicted of murdering White victims. We

obtained the photographs of these Black defendants and pre-

sented all 44 of them (in a slide-show format) to naive raters who

did not know that the photographs depicted convicted murder-

ers. Raters were asked to rate the stereotypicality of each Black

defendant’s appearance and were told they could use any

number of features (e.g., lips, nose, hair texture, skin tone) to

arrive at their judgments (Fig. 1).

Stanford undergraduates served as the raters. To control for

potential order effects, we presented the photographs in a dif-

ferent random order in each of two sessions. Thirty-two raters (26

White, 4 Asian, and 2 of other ethnicities) participated in one

session, and 19 raters (6 White, 11 Asian, and 2 of other eth-

nicities) participated in the second session. The raters were

shown a black-and-white photograph of each defendant’s face.

The photographs were edited such that the backgrounds and

image sizes were standardized, and only the face and a portion of

the neck were visible. Raters were told that all the faces they

would be viewing were of Black males. The defendants’ faces

were projected one at a time onto a screen at the front of the room

for 4 s each as participants recorded stereotypicality ratings

using a scale from 1 (not at all stereotypical) to 11 (extremely

stereotypical). In both sessions, raters were kept blind to the

purpose of the study and the identity of the men in the photo-

graphs. The data were analyzed for effects of order and rater’s

race, but none emerged.

Results

We computed an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) using ste-

reotypicality (low-high median split) as the independent vari-

able, the percentage of death sentences imposed as the de-

pendent variable, and six nonracial factors known to influence

sentencing (Baldus et al., 1998; Landy & Aronson, 1969; Stew-

art, 1980) as covariates: (a) aggravating circumstances, (b)

mitigating circumstances, (c) severity of the murder (as deter-

mined by blind ratings of the cases once purged of racial in-

formation), (d) the defendant’s socioeconomic status, (e) the

victim’s socioeconomic status, and (f) the defendant’s attrac-

tiveness.1 As per Pennsylvania statute (Judiciary and Judicial

Procedure, 2005), aggravating circumstances included factors

such as the victim’s status as a police officer, prosecution wit-

ness, or drug-trafficking competitor; the defendant’s prior con-

victions for voluntary manslaughter or violent felonies; and

characteristics of the crime, such as torture, kidnapping, or

payment for the murder. Mitigating circumstances included

factors such as the defendant’s youth or advanced age, extreme

mental or emotional disturbance, lack of prior criminal con-

victions, minor or coerced role in the crime, and impaired ability

to appreciate the criminality of his conduct. The Baldus data-

base of death-eligible defendants is arguably one of the most

comprehensive to date; using it allowed us to control for the key

variables known to influence sentencing outcomes.

The results confirmed that, above and beyond the effects of the

covariates, defendants whose appearance was perceived as more

stereotypically Black were more likely to receive a death sen-

tence than defendants whose appearance was perceived as less

stereotypically Black, F(1, 36) 5 4.11, p< .05, Z 2
p ¼ :10 (Fig.

2a). In fact, 24.4% of those Black defendants who fell in the

lower half of the stereotypicality distribution received a death

sentence, whereas 57.5% of those Black defendants who fell in

the upper half received a death sentence.

PHASE II: BLACK DEFENDANT, BLACK VICTIM

Method

Using the same database and procedures described earlier, we

examined whether this stereotypicality effect extended to cases

in which the victims were Black. Of all cases that advanced to

penalty phase, 308 involved Black male defendants who were

convicted of murdering Black victims. The photographs for all of

these defendants were obtained. The death-sentencing rate for

these 308 defendants, however, was only 27% (as compared with

41% for the cases with White victims). Given both the low death-

sentencing rate and the large number of cases involving Black

defendants and Black victims, we selected 118 of these 308

cases randomly from the database with the stipulation that those

defendants receiving the death sentence be oversampled. This

oversampling yielded a subset of cases in which the death-

sentencing rate (46%) was not significantly different from that

for the cases with White victims (41%; F 5 1). Using this subset

provided a conservative test of our hypothesis. We then pre-

Fig. 1. Examples of variation in stereotypicality of Black faces. These
images are the faces of people with no criminal history and are shown here
for illustrative purposes only. The face on the right would be considered
more stereotypically Black than the face on the left.

1With the exception of defendant’s attractiveness, all of the covariates em-
ployed here were included in the Baldus database and have been described in
detail elsewhere (e.g., see Baldus et al., 1998). We added defendant’s attrac-
tiveness, basing this variable on 42 naive participants’ ratings of the defendants’
faces using a scale from 1 (not at all attractive) to 11 (extremely attractive).

384 Volume 17—Number 5

Looking Deathworthy

sented this subset of Black defendants who murdered Black

victims to 18 raters (12 White and 6 Asian), who rated the faces

on stereotypicality.2

Results

Employing the same analyses as we did for the cases with White

victims, we found that the perceived stereotypicality of Black

defendants convicted of murdering Black victims did not predict

death sentencing, F(1, 110)< 1 (Fig. 2b). Black defendants who

fell in the upper and lower halves of the stereotypicality dis-

tribution were sentenced to death at almost identical rates (45%

vs. 46.6%, respectively). Thus, defendants who were perceived

to be more stereotypically Black were more likely to be sen-

tenced to death only when their victims were White.

Although the two phases of this experiment were designed and

conducted separately, readers may be interested in knowing

whether combining the data from the two phases would produce

a significant interactive effect of victims’ race and defendants’

stereotypicality on death-sentencing outcomes. Analysis con-

firmed that the interaction of victims’ race (Black vs. White) and

defendants’ stereotypicality (low vs. high) was indeed signifi-

cant, F(1, 158) 5 4.97, p < .05, Z 2
p ¼ :03.

DISCUSSION

Why might a defendant’s perceived stereotypicality matter for

Black murderers of White victims, but not for Black murderers

of Black victims? One possibility is that the interracial character

of cases involving a Black defendant and a White victim renders

race especially salient. Such crimes could be interpreted or

treated as matters of intergroup conflict (Prentice & Miller,

1999). The salience of race may incline jurors to think about

race as a relevant and useful heuristic for determining the

blameworthiness of the defendant and the perniciousness of the

crime. According to this racial-salience hypothesis, defendants’

perceived stereotypicality should not influence death-sentenc-

ing outcomes in cases involving a Black defendant and a Black

victim. In those cases, the intraracial character of the crime may

lead jurors to view the crime as a matter of interpersonal rather

than intergroup conflict (Prentice & Miller, 1999).

These research findings augment and complicate the current

body of evidence regarding the role of race in capital sentencing.

Whereas previous studies examined intergroup differences in

death-sentencing outcomes, our results suggest that racial dis-

crimination may also operate through intragroup distinctions

based on perceived racial stereotypicality.

Our findings suggest that in cases involving a Black defendant

and a White victim—cases in which the likelihood of the death

penalty is already high—jurors are influenced not simply by the

knowledge that the defendant is Black, but also by the extent to

which the defendant appears stereotypically Black. In fact, for

those defendants who fell in the top half as opposed to the bottom

half of the stereotypicality distribution, the chance of receiving a

death sentence more than doubled. Previous laboratory research

has already shown that people associate Black physical traits

with criminality (Eberhardt et al., 2004). The present research

demonstrates that in actual sentencing decisions, jurors may

treat these traits as powerful cues to deathworthiness.

Acknowledgments—The authors thank R. Richard Banks,

Hazel Markus, Claude Steele, and Robert Zajonc for comments

on a draft of this article and Hilary Bergsieker for preparation of

the manuscript. This research was supported by a Stanford

Center for Social Innovation Grant and by National Science

Foundation Grant BCS-9986128 awarded to J.L. Eberhardt.

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2Faces of 15 of the Black defendants who murdered White victims were re-
peated in this session. Analysis of the ratings confirmed interrater reliability.

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(RECEIVED 7/27/05; REVISION ACCEPTED 10/20/05;
FINAL MATERIALS RECEIVED 11/9/05)

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