Effects of native American race, intoxication, and crime severity on judgments of guilt

Abstract

The effects of Native American race, crime severity, and intoxication on 293 college students' judgments of guilt were investigated. Participants read vignettes of a robbery or a robbery resulting in murder committed by a male defendant with a Native American or a White European surname. The defendant was described as highly intoxicated in half of the conditions. A 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA revealed a marginally significant 3-way interaction. In the robbery-murder condition, the intoxicated Native American defendant was judged as guiltier than the Native American defendant with no intoxication information. We labeled this a stereotypical drunken-Indian bias. The results suggested that judgments given by lower and higher prejudiced participants canceled each other out. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.