Stereotypes as dominant responses: On the "social facilitation" of prejudice in anticipated public contexts.

Abstract

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 self-regulation of automatic associations and behavioral impulses.

“…Consistent with this depiction, our tests of the Quad model have demonstrated that contextual factors and interventions may influence two different automatic or controlled processes independently or even in opposite directions. For example, our reanalysis of Lambert et al's (2003) data showed that a public context simultaneously decreased the ability to detect correct responses and increased the ability to overcome automatic biases. Likewise, individual differences may be differentially related to different automatic and controlled processes.…”

“…Given that stereotypic associations reflect a particular kind of dominant response, public contexts may lead to a higher activation level of stereotypical associations than do private contexts, leading to greater stereotypical bias. The second possible explanation offered by Lambert et al (2003) is an impairment of control account. According to this explanation, public contexts divide participants' attention (Baron, 1986), thereby reducing cognitive capacity.…”

Addressing Moderated Mediation Hypotheses: Theory, Methods, and Prescriptions

“…2 Often a variable M is investigated to determine whether it serves as a mediator, a moderator, or both. For example, Lambert et al (2003) investigated the role of state anxiety as a mediator and/or moderator of the effect of context (private vs. public) on cognitive control over prejudiced reactions using separate mediation and moderation analyses. Such investigations could theoretically be conducted on the basis of a single path analysis.…”

Motivational Representations within a Computational Cognitive Architecture

“…First of all, Lambert et al (2003) showed that in socially stressful situations, social stereotyping was more pronounced. To demonstrate this point, they examined the task of the recognition of tool versus gun, with priming by black or white faces.…”