Abstract

The present experiment examined the hypothesis that people attributed the behavior that was consistent with regional stereotypes to internal stable factors and as a consequence, they would form more extreme impression about the target person. Experiment 1 examined whether the regional stereotypes indeed affcted attribution and impression judgment. Subjects read Honam or Youngnam-stereotypic behavior episodes after they had been informed of the hometown (Honam, Youngnam or no information) of the target person. Subjects were then asked to make attribution judgment and impression judgment(general impression, liking, evaluation of the desirability of the target bahavior), and they were also asked to recall the episodes that they had read about the target person. The results showed that as expected, subjects attributed the Youngnam-stereotypic behavior of the target person less to external factors and tended to evaluate the target person as being more impatient and unwise when they thought he was from Youngnam than when he was from Honam or when no information was provided. In the case of the Honam-stereotypic behavior, subjects attributed the target behavior more to stable factors and evaluated it as being less desirable when the target person was from Honam than in other conditions, althoush these results were limited to certain situations. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that as expected, subjects perceived the target. person as being more impatient and unwise when the internal attribution regarding Youngnam-stereotypic behavior was provided than when external attribution was provided. They also evaluated the target behavior less desirable in the former case than in the latter case. The theoretical and practical implications of these results as well as the limitation of the present study were discussed.