• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.11 no.9
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• pp.362-371
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• 2011

We often find that we, as a social group, share stereotypes of criminals. For the present study we investigated the stereotypes of rapists, and examined if they match their characteristics on the national crime statistics in Korea. Collecting data from 82 college students and 91 police officers, we compared stereotypes about rapists with the characteristics of those reported on the national crime statistics. As a result, we found that both college students and police officers have distorted stereotypes of rapists which are not consistent with their characteristics. More specifically, both college students and police officers believed that rapists came from broken families and that they were likely to have more previous criminal convictions than they actually did. In addition, both college students and police officers believed that rapists tended to recidivate within a short period of time, e.g. 1-3 months, which is much shorter than the time that actually took for them to recidivate. Finally, suggestions for future research were made.