Physical attractiveness bias in the legal system (2017)
Disclaimer: I&#x27;ve only read the &#x27;Key takeaways&#x27; in the article.<p>Should we consider a system where the judge and jury do not see the defendant (and suer if applicable) in the pursuit of objectivity? I think the bias towards attractive people is quite obvious in so many spheres of life. For employment, for the way people treat you as a customer, colleague or day-to-day, for housing, etc. We are actively fighting many -ism in (rational) societies, but &quot;unattractivism&quot; is more taboo. I am not sure what the solution would be at societal level. My feeling is that a societal movement for this inclusion is more unlikely than the other ones, but that would require to acknowledge an implicit scale of attractiveness which is divisive in the first place (as opposed to gender, sexual orientation, ethicity, religion, etc which are either obvious or self-decided). But I could be misreading the situation obviously.<p>The judicial system is different, and with radically impactful consequences, you do not have to eliminate human bias (which probably isn&#x27;t even possible), you just have to make the decision-maker blind just like peer-reviewed papers. While we can&#x27;t really hide identity for employment or housing, but a judge and juree do not need to know the name or see the person. To go further, please could be read by impartial narrator which would also take care of emotional bias (should a good actor have a more lenient sentence?). In a way, the justice system should seek ultimate objectivity for the sake of fairness. On the flipside however, it would have a dehumanizing effect on the deciders to have zero connection with the convicted and perhaps lead to an increase in sentencing lengths, which I&#x27;m not particularly in favor of.