A defendant’s age can be an important determinant of judicial outcomes, but the perception of a defendant’s age can have implications for how these outcomes are determined. Research has suggested a connection between racial bias and age perception. This study sought to describe an age bias against African-Americans, and to connect this to jury sentencing outcomes. Undergraduate participants (N = 318) were recruited from university in the Appalachia region. First, participants estimated the ages of individuals in photographs. Analyses primarily focused on 18 and 19-year-old African-American and Caucasian males, but included a number of photographs from older males and females. Then, participants suggested a prison sentence in a mock jury sentencing task. African-Americans were estimated to be older than Caucasians by nearly four years (d = 1.75). This difference was present when controlling for exposure to African Americans, but with a negligible effect (d = 0.17). A modest increase (0.5 years, d = 0.32) was found in the sentence lengths assigned to African-American defendants. Discrepancies between age estimates and Page 112 2015 Appalachian Student Research Forum sentence lengths were not correlated. However logistic regression analyses found that age estimates of African-Americans were predictive of sentences exceeding state guidelines for this group, and the difference in age estimates between African-Americans and Caucasians was predictive of excessive sentences for both groups. While these regressions produced statistically significant (p < 0.05), the effect sizes of these regressions were negligible (d < 0.20). These findings suggest age bias is present and may have implications for juveniles and young adults in criminal proceedings.

Estimating others characteristics from facial cues plays an important role in our everyday lives. People usually agree in these estimates well and many of these estimates correlate. Majority studies consider one or few character- istics only and their respondents usually are in narrow ranges of ages. This study is partly based on rating of 13 characteristics of 80 men's and women's faces by respondents of various ages. These data were originally collected within yet unpublished study of Jaroslav Flegr, Amy E. Blum and Šebastian Kroupa. In this study I most strikingly found out that: i) older respondents of both genders rates photos of women as more attractive, ii) respondents spend more time by rating faces considered by themselves as more attractive or nice, iii) men rate people with different eye color as more attractive and women rate others with the same eye color as nicer, iv) preferences computed by two methods do not differ much. 1