A 14 December 2023 article in The Times of London reported on a US study which found that
“Murderers who look untrustworthy get harsher sentences … The results imply, the authors said, that facial stereotypes could be leading to hidden biases across the criminal justice system … The study … took advantage of a database containing mugshots of 400 men convicted of first degree murder, half of whom had been sentenced to death and half who had been given life sentences … More than a thousand volunteers were asked to judge the trustworthiness of the men’s faces, without knowing anything about the men’s fates. When the scientists analysed the results, they found that the less trustworthy faces — from men with, for instance, downturned lips and angry eyebrows — belonged to men who were more likely to have been executed.”
This example points to the clear risks of negative stereotyping.