Youths’ Facial Appearance Distinguishes Leaders From Followers in Group-Perpetrated Criminal Offenses and Is Associated With Sentencing Outcomes

• Author: Eric Hehman,David M. Day,Ana M. Cojocariu,Jessica E. Sutherland
• DOI: 10.1177/0093854819889645
• Published date: 01 February 2020
• Date: 01 February 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2020, Vol. 47, No. 2, February 2020, 187 –207.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854819889645

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© 2019 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

187

YOUTHS’ FACIAL APPEARANCE

DISTINGUISHES LEADERS FROM

FOLLOWERS IN GROUP-PERPETRATED

CRIMINAL OFFENSES AND IS ASSOCIATED

WITH SENTENCING OUTCOMES

JESSICA E. SUTHERLAND

York University

ANA M. COJOCARIU

DAVID M. DAY

Ryerson University

ERIC HEHMAN

McGill University

Group-perpetrated crime often involves leaders and followers, but it is not currently understood how peer groups form around

leaders during a criminal incident. Impression formation research has shown that specific facial cues are associated with

leadership and perceptions of leadership. We extend this research to leadership among group-perpetrated youth crime and

examine its role in downstream sentencing outcomes. Study 1 revealed that leaders of groups may be perceived as more

dominant than their followers. In Study 2, participants were tasked with selecting the leaders from their groups and were more

likely to (correctly) select targets perceived as more dominant but also (incorrectly) select targets perceived as more

Trustworthy. In Study 3, we examined whether facial impressions were associated with downstream sentencing outcomes.

Perceptions of Trustworthiness were associated with reduced sentencing, but dominance was unrelated. The results under-

score the role that facial appearance plays in group formation and sentencing among youth.

Keywords: youth offending; criminal groups; impression formation; youth sentencing

Adolescence is a period of development marked by a significant increase in risk-taking

behavior, which may include delinquency. Moffitt’s (1993) dual taxonomy of offending

proposes that adolescence-limited offenders, who comprise the vast majority of young people

involved in some antisocial and delinquent behavior, begin offending during adolescence,

cease offending in late adolescence, and engage in low-level offending alongside peers. By

contrast, life course-persistent offenders, who comprise about 5% of adolescents involved in

AUTHORS’ NOTE: This research was supported by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (430-2016-00094) to

EH. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jessica E. Sutherland, Department of

Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3; e-mail: jesuther@yorku.ca.

889645CJBXXX10.1177/0093854819889645Criminal Justice and BehaviorSutherland et al. / Facial Appearance and Youth Group-Perpetrated Crime

research-article2019

188 CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR

delinquency and antisocial behavior, engage in more persistent delinquency throughout ado-

lescence and into adulthood, and this pattern emerges at an earlier age. These dual pathways

are supported by the age-crime curve, whereby criminal behavior generally declines after

adolescence (Stolzenberg & D’Alessio, 2008).

A key distinction of crimes committed by adolescents is that they are more likely to occur

alongside a peer group than are crimes by adults (Carrington, 2009; Moffitt, 1993).

Compared with childhood and adulthood, adolescence is marked by a significant increase

in susceptibility to peer influence (Albert et al., 2013), as well as emerging autonomy from

parents and an increase in time spent with peers (Brown, 2004). These changes are under-

laid by neurobiological evidence indicating that the onset of puberty is associated with

significant reorientation of the adolescent brain toward social and emotional stimuli in their

environments, such as indicators of social acceptance in a peer group (Forbes & Dahl,

2010). As a result, sensitivity to peer group dynamics, such as peer group norms and one’s

relative social status in a group, becomes heightened in adolescence (LaFontana & Cillessen,

2010; Shi & Xie, 2012). Thus, social status in a peer group is especially relevant for consid-

ering how leaders and followers may emerge, particularly in delinquent peer groups.

The significance of being a leader in a peer group engaged in delinquency has been high-

lighted by early work on cooffending that suggests some youth serve as recruiters to such a

peer group while others are primarily joiners (Reiss, 1988). In contrast, Warr (1996) argues

that while some youth are more likely to instigate crimes (e.g., because of more experience

engaging in criminal behavior), leadership in cooffending contexts is primarily driven by

situational and not stable individual traits. Some evidence exists for both possibilities.

Criminal behavior in a group of youth will typically involve a leader and his or her follow-

ers (McGloin & Nguyen, 2012). Yet, group members who are older (Amemiya et al., 2016;

van Mastrigt & Farrington, 2011; Warr, 1996) and who have more specific expertise related

to criminality (i.e., having engaged in criminal behavior before; Amemiya et al., 2016) are

more likely to be instigators. Behaviors specific to the incident can also be indicators of

leadership. Instigators in gang rape cases (Porter & Alison, 2001) and group robbery (Porter

& Alison, 2006) were identifiable by their level of involvement in the act and by their par-

ticular actions, including initiating the idea, selecting the victim, and disposing of the body

when the crime resulted in death. Together, these findings suggest two trends: first, leaders

do typically emerge in a group; and second, leaders can be identified by individual-specific

factors (e.g., age and criminal expertise), and/or by the particular actions taken during the

crime itself.

Although leadership during a criminal incident may be incident-specific or driven by

individual characteristics, it is not well understood how peer groups coalesce around an

instigator when initiating a particular crime. First, the effect of others’ presence during a

criminal act may reflect social facilitation or coaction effects, whereby group members’

performances on a given task are enhanced by the presence of others (Geen, 1991). In the

case of group-perpetrated crime in youth, leaders may instigate a crime due to the support

of other group members, and followers may participate because other group members are

also participating. Second, youth might select peers who are similar to their own level of

delinquency (i.e., by seeking peers who engage in similar behaviors; Haynie et al., 2014)

or they might be socialized into delinquency by spending time around peers engaged in

delinquent behavior and adopting the delinquency-promoting norms of the group (Akers

et al., 1979; Haynie & Osgood, 2005). For example, offending with others instead of