I See You Mr. Double Standard.
Mirthe Luria
A double standard is the application of different sets of principles for situations that are, in principle, the same.[1] It is often used to describe treatment whereby one group is given more latitude than another.[2] A double standard arises when two or more people, groups, organizations, circumstances, or events are treated differently even though they should be treated the same way.[3] A double standard "implies that two things which are the same are measured by different standards".[4]
In a study conducted in 2000, Dr. Martha Foschi observed the application of double standards in group competency tests. She concluded that status characteristics, such as gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic class, can provide a basis for the formation of double standards in which stricter standards are applied to people who are perceived to be of lower status. Dr. Foschi also noted the ways in which double standards can form based on other socially valued attributes such as beauty, morality, and mental health.[5]
Dr. Tristan Botelho and Dr. Mabel Abraham, Assistant Professors at the Yale School of Management and Columbia Business School, studied the effect that gender has on the way people rank others in financial markets. Their research showed that average-quality men were given the benefit of the doubt more than average-quality women, who were more often "penalized" in people's judgments. Botelho and Abraham also showed that women and men are similarly risk-loving, contrary to popular belief. Altogether, their research showed that double standards (at least in financial markets) do exist around gender. They encourage the adoption of controls to eliminate gender bias in application, hiring, and evaluation processes within organizations. Examples of such controls include using only initials on applications so that applicants' genders are not apparent, or auditioning musicians from behind a screen so that their skills, and not their gender, influence their acceptance or rejection into orchestras.[6] Practices like these are, according to Botelho and Abraham, already being implemented in a number of organizations.
It has long been debated how someone's gender role affects others' moral, social, political and legal responses. Some believe that differences in the way men and women are perceived and treated is a function of social norms, thus indicating a double standard. For example, one claim is that a double standard exists in society's judgment of women's and men's sexual conduct. Research has found that casual sexual activity is regarded as more acceptable for men than for women.[7] According to William G Axinn,[8] double standards between men and women can potentially exist with regards to: dating, cohabitation, virginity, marriage/remarriage, sexual abuse/assault/harassment, domestic violence and singleness.
Kennair et al. (2023) found no signs on a sexual double standard in long or short-term mating contexts, nor in choosing a friend. They did find however that women's self-stimulation was judged positively, and men's self-stimulated was judged negatively.[9] A 2017 study of American college students also found no evidence of a gendered double standard around promiscuity.[10]
A double standard may arise if two or more groups who have equal legal rights are given different degrees of legal protection or representation. Such double standards are seen as unjustified because they violate a common maxim of modern legal jurisprudence - that all parties should stand equal before the law. Where judges are expected to be impartial, they must apply the same standards to all people, regardless of their own subjective biases or favoritism, based on: social class, rank, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age or other distinctions.[citation needed]
A double standard arises in politics when the treatment of the same political matters between two or more parties (such as the response to a public crisis or the allocation of funding) is handled differently. This could occur because of the nature of political relationships between those tasked with these matters, the degree of reward or power that stands to be gained/lost, or the personal biases/prejudices of politicians.[citation needed]
Gómez Berrocal M del C, Vallejo-Medina P, Moyano N, Sierra JC. Sexual double standard: a psychometric study from a macropsychological perspective among the spanish heterosexual population. Front Psychol. 2019;10. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01869
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The violent breaching of the halls of power on Capitol Hill by the insurrectionist mob on Wednesday, which left one woman dead of a police gunshot wound, represents one of the plainest displays of a racial double standard in both modern and recent history.
This double standard has had powerful consequences for how the FBI and other law enforcement agencies allocate counterterrorism resources, leading invariably to international threats being prioritized over domestic ones. While no public government report quantifies the number of domestic extremists arrested by federal, state, and local authorities, Justice Department officials have fastidiously maintained a list of international terrorism prosecutions since 9/11. That list has been released periodically, in 2010, 2014, and 2015, and the data is often used to bolster political initiatives, as happened last year when the Trump administration apparently manipulated it in an attempt to justify its so-called Muslim ban.
Policymakers have done little to address the racially discriminatory impact of the war on drugs. Congress reduced the disparity between powder cocaine and crack from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1 in 2010, but experts say that ratio has no basis in science and the Network found it perpetuates the double standard for people convicted of crack offenses in the federal court system, who are overwhelmingly Black.
Women have long been subject to a double standard when it comes to sex and sexuality. Research has shown that women who have multiple sexual partners are judged more critically than men who engage in the same type of activity.
Both women and men exhibit a double standard in evaluating the morality of extramarital affairs, although this is somewhat larger among women. Seventy percent of women say that a married man who has an affair is always morally wrong, while fewer (56 percent) say the same when married women have relationships outside their marriage. Gender plays a more modest role among men in how they judge the morality of marital infidelity. Fifty-three percent of men say it is always morally wrong for a woman to have an affair, while 61 percent say same for men.
There is a notable age gap as well. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of young women say it is always morally wrong for a man to have an affair, while only about half (51 percent) say the same for a woman. The double standard among older women is not nearly as large. Sixty-nine percent of senior women say it always wrong for a married man to have an affair while six in ten say it is always wrong when a woman does.
The result is a double standard in the law of deception that governs interactions between private citizens and law enforcement officials. In most areas of the law that govern deceptive acts, a deceived individual must show an actual harm arising from the deceptive act to recover. The opposite is true for deception between citizens and law enforcement. When citizens lie to the police, they face punishment regardless of whether harm resulted. Yet when police lie to citizens, they remain free of liability even when actual harm results. Injured citizens are thus robbed of a remedy that most areas of the law would provide simply because the government, rather than another citizen, deceived them. Individuals who lie or deceive law enforcement but cause no injury, however, are penalized for lies that the law otherwise would not punish. To remedy this double standard, the law that governs citizen interactions with law enforcement should adopt some form of the harm requirement present throughout most of the law of deceit. A harm requirement would allow harmed citizens to hold those who deceive them accountable and would prevent the unfair punishment of citizens whose lies cause no harm.
The law that governs deceit between citizens and law enforcement centers on a strange double standard, and the harm requirement common in the law of deception in other contexts offers a ready solution. Part I of this Note will provide an overview of three areas of the law that deal with deception: the common law of deceit, the law of false advertising, and securities law; and will highlight the harm requirements prominent in each. Part II of the Note will explore lies made to law enforcement officials, initially outlining the legal standard applied to such lies and subsequently arguing that in some circumstances no actual harm results from such lies. Part III will discuss lies and deceit perpetrated by law enforcement officials. It will first examine the legal standards that apply to lies police use in undercover work, to conduct searches and seizures, and to facilitate custodial interrogations, as well as the legal and ethical standards that apply to deceptive conduct by prosecutors, particularly in the plea-bargaining process. Part III will further review real harms that occur as a result of lies by both police and prosecutors. The concluding remarks will discuss the practical realities that explain why this double standard exists and argue that the standards applied to deception of and by government officials should be modified to incorporate some version of the harm requirement present in the other areas of the law of deception. The harm requirement presents a needed solution to the problematic double standard in the law of deception that governs deceit between citizens and law enforcement.
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