Male jurors are more likely to find women guilty of a crime if they are overweight, study finds

  • 'Defendants' skinny male/female and obese male/female
  • Men were more likely to find the obese female guilty
  • Skinny men even more likely than other bodytypes

Male jurors are more likely to find a defendant guilty if the accused is an overweight female.

They are also more likely to believe that a fat woman is a repeat offender who knows what she is doing, a study by Yale University found.

Participants were asked to assess potential guilt of hypothetical offenders, of both genders, who were either skinny or overweight/obese.

Guilty, he says: Male jurors are more likely to find an overweight or obese female defendant guilty than a lean woman or a man or any weight, the study found

The study by Yale psychologists included 471 participants of various body types.

The simulated jurors were described a case of check fraud whilst shown one of four images of an alleged defendant, either a skinny man, obese man, skinny woman or obese woman.

They were asked to rate the likelihood of guilt on a scale from one to five.

Men were significantly more likely to believe that the obese female defendant was guilty of check fraud.

They also to a greater extent assumed that she would be a repeat offender with 'awareness' of the crime committed.

No bias: Female jurors showed no gender or fat-bias towards the defendants accused of fraud

In addition, the lean male participants in the study were even more likely to find the fat female defendant guilty than those of other body types.



According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, the average BMI in the U.S. is 28.6.