CHOI & NISBETT (1998): The cross-cultural
generality of correspondence bias.

• Method:
  
  
  • Subjects: One hundred and one male and one hundred and one female University of Michigan students and one hundred and thirty eight and twenty one female So-Gang University students taking introductory psychology courses. (So-Gang University is located in Seoul, Korea.)
    
    
  • Procedure:
    
    
    • Subjects were assigned to one of four conditions defined by the crossing of two independent variables: essay choice (position chosen vs. position assigned) and behavior direction (pro-capital punishment essay vs. anti-capital punishment essay).
      
      
    • Subjects were told the short essays were written by another undergraduate in a "writing class" and that their task as subjects was to make "judgments of another's personality and attitudes on the basis of very limited information."
      
      
    • After reading an essay in one of the four conditions of the study, all subjects were asked to estimate the essayist's "true attitude toward capital punishment" using a 10-item scale. These ratings constituted the primary dependent measure in the study. Scores on this measure could vary from 10 (negative attitudes toward capital punishment) to 70 (positive attitudes toward capital punishment).
      

    
    

• Results:
  
  
  • Choice Conditions:
    
    
    • American Participants:
      
      
      • Pro-Capital Punishment: Attributed attitude = 62.4
      • Anti-Capital Punishment: Attributed attitude = 23.6
        
        
    • Korean Participants :
      
      
      • Pro-Capital Punishment: Attributed attitude = 59.6
      • Anti-Capital Punishment: Attributed attitude = 17.4
        
        
  • No Choice Conditions:
    
    
    • American Participants :
      
      
      • Pro-Capital Punishment: Attributed attitude = 60.0
      • Anti-Capital Punishment: Attributed attitude = 23.0
        
        
    • Korean Participants :
      
      
      • Pro-Capital Punishment: Attributed attitude = 55.4
      • Anti-Capital Punishment: Attributed attitude = 26.2
        
        
• Discussion:
  
  
  • What do these findings suggest about the cross-cultural generality of correspondent bias?
    
    
  • Note that the results of research using other paradigms suggest there may be cross-cultural differences in attributions. Miller (1984), for example, compared subjects from the United States and from India and found that among older subjects (but not young children) Americans were more likely to make internal attributions.
    
    
  • What further tests might help evaluate this issue?