Stereotypes as Dominant Responses: On the “Social Facilitation” of Prejudice in Anticipated Public Contexts Alan J. Lambert Washington University B. Keith Payne Ohio State University Larry L. Jacoby and Lara M. Shaffer Washington University Alison L. Chasteen University of Toronto Saera R. Khan University of San Francisco This article challenges the highly intuitive assumption that prejudice should be less likely in public compared with private settings. It proposes that stereotypes may be conceptualized as a type of dominant response (C. L. Hull, 1943; R. B. Zajonc, 1965) whose expression may be enhanced in public settings, especially among individuals high in social anxiety. Support was found for this framework in an impression formation paradigm (Experiment 1) and in a speeded task designed to measure stereotypic errors in perceptual identification (Experiment 2). Use of the process dissociation procedure (B. K. Payne, L. L. Jacoby, & A. J. Lambert, in press) demonstrated that these effects were due to decreases in cognitive control rather than increases in stereotype accessibility. The findings highlight a heretofore unknown and ironic consequence of anticipated public settings: Warning people that others may be privy to their responses may actually increase prejudice among the very people who are most worried about doing the wrong thing in public. The premise of this article is highly counterintuitive: We argue that public settings can stimulate greater expression of prejudice compared with more private settings, and we report two studies showing support for this prediction. Such findings cannot easily be explained by current models of stereotyping (e.g., Bodenhausen & Macrae, 1998; Brewer, 1988; Devine, 1989; Dovidio & Gaertner, 1986; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990). Although these models are gener- ally silent on the moderating role of private versus public settings, they all emphasize the role of social and normative pressure in inhibiting the expression of prejudice. Hence, research showing that public contexts exacerbate prejudice appears to fall outside the explanatory scope of these models. The premise of this article also is seemingly inconsistent with work in the impression management area, which generally assumes that people are motivated to stra- tegically present themselves in favorable ways to other people (Cooley, 1902/1964; Goffman, 1959; Mead, 1934; Schlenker, Britt, & Pennington, 1996). It might seem odd to argue, then, that public settings might exacerbate prejudice relative to private contexts. Why might such effects occur? One can better understand such findings by drawing from largely unrealized connections between the stereotyping and social facilitation literatures. In particular, stereotypes may be conceptualized as a type of dominant response (Hull, 1943; Zajonc, 1965) whose expression may be enhanced in public set- tings in a manner roughly akin to the facilitation of other well- learned responses. To our knowledge, this is the first line of research to demonstrate that public contexts can increase the expression of prejudice and the first formal model articulating when and why such effects might occur. Theoretical Background Gordon Allport (1985) suggested that a defining characteristic of social psychology lies in its concern with how behavior and judgment are affected by “the actual, imagined, or implied pres- ence of others” (p. 3). Consistent with Allport’s appraisal, several paradigms (e.g., social facilitation, social loafing, conformity) have vigorously explored the role of interpersonal factors in driv- ing what people say and do. Although there are many ways to demonstrate the power of actual or imagined others in the labora- tory, one classic approach has been to have all participants engage in essentially the same task but to have them do so either in relatively private settings or, alternatively, in the actual or antici- pated presence of others (e.g., Asch, 1955; Triplett, 1898). Alan J. Lambert, Larry L. Jacoby, and Lara M. Shaffer, Department of Psychology, Washington University; B. Keith Payne, Department of Psy- chology, Ohio State University; Alison L. Chasteen, Department of Psy- chology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Saera R. Khan, Department of Psychology, University of San Francisco. This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant SBR 9817554 awarded to Alan J. Lambert. Special appreciation is expressed to John Hetts for his insightful comments on drafts of this article. Appreci- ation is extended also to the following undergraduate research assistants who devoted tireless hours of their time assisting in data collection and analyses: Shanon Harlowe, Suzi Ramsey, Adam Lazarewicz, Angela Cor- liss, Ben Harrell, and Maggie Moore. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Alan J. Lambert, Department of Psychology, 1 Brookings Drive, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63139. E-mail: alambert@artsci.wustl.edu Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Copyright 2003 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 2003, Vol. 84, No. 2, 277–295 0022-3514/03/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.84.2.277 277