Erin Walker, senior in psychology, is conducting a study on the relationship between the American court justice system and transgender victims of violent crime under the mentorship of Dr. Apryl Alexander.
“We chose to examine that [transgender] population because the laboratory was already researching racial and ethnic minorities and the impact that being a racial and ethnic minority had on judicial decision making and the legal process,” Walker said. “I chose to study gender minorities, specifically transgender populations, to see the effect that being transgender would have on the judicial decision-making process.”
Walker said because statistics show transgender people as being among the least likely populations to commit violent crime, she chose to focus on the outcomes of court cases involving transgender victims.
Walker also said she chose to conduct a “vignette study,” in which a hypothetical situation is played out by real participants, because existing data had set a “clear precedent” for the quantitative statistics of violent crime against transgender individuals.
For her vignette study, Walker chose a group of undergraduate psychology students, whom she said are “primarily upper-middle-middle class, heterosexual Caucasian women, who tend to come from historically Christian backgrounds,” and assembled a “mock jury” to settle a hypothetical court case involving violent crime against a transgender victim.
“In our vignettes, a transgender person was a victim of a violent crime, and we designed it this way, so we could measure whether or not there were prejudicial views had by those who were put in a mock jury setting,” Walker said.
Walker said she chose her study partially because of increasing awareness of transgender populations and issues, and because the population is less thoroughly researched than many other minority groups.
“There are studies which examine transgender populations…however, there is much research to be done on gender, sexual, and romantic minorities, especially gender minorities,” Walker said. “It is paramount that more data be brought to the surface, so that a scientific understanding of how much discrimination affects these populations can be more readily understood by the general public.”
Walker said despite generally conservative attitudes in Auburn, she has met little backlash over the course of her study.
“Most of the individuals with whom I discuss research are academically-minded, and because of this, there is a smaller chance that backlash will occur,” Walker said. “When individuals are interested in the pursuit of knowledge, and the process of learning and growing in general, open-mindedness tends to follow.”
Walker said because transgender individuals are still an emergent and largely misunderstood minority, the best way to educate people on transgender issues is through patience and kindness.
“It is rare for individuals who are well-educated about a particular group to be openly discriminatory,” Walker said. “Such discrimination does come from a place of ignorance rather than a place of malice, and one of the best approaches for combating such prejudicial behavior and attitudes is education.”
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