Previous research on how stereotypes affect perceptions of intimate
partner violence and domestic homicide has found that violence committed
by men is perceived as more severe and judged more harshly than
violence committed by women. The present mock jury study investigated
how perpetrator sex (male or female), crime type (familicide or
filicide), and relatedness between perpetrator and child victims
(biological or step) affect laypeople’s perceptions of the appropriate
consequence of the crime, the reason for the offense, responsibility of
the perpetrator, the likelihood of certain background factors being
present, and the risk of future violence. One hundred sixty-seven
university students read eight fictive descriptions of cases of
multiple-victim domestic homicides, in which the sex of the perpetrator,
the crime type, and the relatedness between the perpetrator and the
child victims were manipulated. We found that participants recommended
equally severe punishments to and placed the same amount of
responsibility on male and female offenders. Female offenders were,
however, regarded as mentally ill to a larger extent and perceived more
likely to have been victims of domestic violence compared with male
offenders. Male offenders were seen as more likely to have committed
domestic violence in the past, having been unemployed, have substance
abuse, hold aggressive attitudes, and commit violent acts in the future.
Participants also perceived offenders killing biological children as
more mentally ill than those killing stepchildren. The present study
extends the literature on the possible effect of stereotypes on decision
making in psychiatric and judicial contexts.