Does a Pretty Smile Get You Out of a Speeding Ticket?

You've heard the story about the woman who cried to get out of a speeding ticket -- something that's likely much harder for a man to pull off.

Researchers at Cornell University tried to find out if there really was a systematic failing of equality among police officers, at least as far as gender was concerned.

They first asked a total of 539 students at three different universities whether they thought males or females were more likely to be ticketed when stopped. Students overwhelmingly (85 percent) chose men.

The researchers then looked at actual data from five U.S. locations: Bloomington, Ill.; Highland Park, Ill.; Wichita, Kan.; Boston, Mass.; and the state of Tennessee.

And, once again, the results show that conventional wisdom appears to be in the wrong.

Overall, men were a statistically insignificant 0.3 percent more likely to get ticketed after being pulled over. (Men received tickets 60.1 percent of the time after getting pulled over while women were ticketed 58.8 percent of the time.)

But in three of the locations -- Bloomington, Tennessee and Wichita -- women were actually more likely than men to get ticketed.

Interestingly, the researchers were also able to investigate whether younger woman got less tickets based on the conjecture that police, who were overwhelmingly male in each of the five regions, were more lenient on those they found attractive. But even in these situations, younger women were more likely to get ticketed than younger men.

So cops seem to be a lot more gender neutral than popular sentiment gives them credit for.

Related research:
- The Impact of Race on Policing and Arrests
- Testing for Racial Profiling in Traffic Stops From Behind a Veil of Darkness
- Contacts Between Police and the Public