• Korean Journal of Forensic Psychology
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.37-61
• /
• 2020

Lee, Khogali, Despodova, and Penrod (2019) demonstrated that American participants whose races are different from a defendant and a victim rendered more punitive judgments against the defendant in a same-race crime (e.g., White observer-Black defendant-Black victim) compared to a cross-race crime (e.g., White observer-Black defendant-Hispanic victim). The aim of the current study was to test the replicability of their findings in a different country-South Korea. Study 1a failed to replicate the race-combination effect in South Korea with three new moderators-case strength, defendant's use of violence, and race salience. Study 1b was conducted with the same design of Study 1a in the United States to examine whether the failure of the replication in Study 1a was due to cultural differences between South Korea and the United States. However, Study 1b also failed to replicate the race-combination effect. Study 2 conducted a meta-analytic review of the data from Lee et al.'s (2019) study, along with the data from Study 1a and 1b and revealed that the race-salience manipulation in Study 1a and 1b might have caused the null results. We conclude that when people' races are different from both a defendant and a victim, they are likely to render more punitive judgments against the defendant in a same-race crime than a cross-race crime. However, the race-combination effect is only sustained when race-relevant issues are not salient in the crime.