Lady Injustice: The Moderating Effect of Ambivalent Sexism in a Mock Case of Intimate Partner Homicide

Abstract

Extra-legal biases have an undue effect on legal proceedings, warranting explorations of gender bias in the courtroom to promote and maintain just verdicts. We used an experimentally manipulated mock court transcript of an intimate partner homicide, in which the defendant has been victimized by intimate partner violence. We explore whether hostile and benevolent sexism moderate the decisions of mock jurors. Men and women mock jurors (N = 220) responded to the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory before being randomly allocated to read a transcript of either a female or male defendant, and then responding to five sentence outcome variables. Hostile and benevolent sexism moderated several sentencing outcome variables, across a range of male and female juror and defendant gender combinations, suggesting these forms of sexism are consequential in driving forensic gender biases. This study also contributes to the literature suggesting that male victims of female-perpetrated intimate partner violence are systemically disadvantaged in courtroom processes.