Prejudice on the stage: Self-monitoring and the public expression of group attitude

According to self-monitoring theory (Snyder, 1987), high self-monitors tailor their self-presentation for the sake of desired public appearances,whereas low self- monitors are relatively unlikely to practice such situationally guided impression management strategies. It was therefore predicted that, when asked to publicly express their attitudes regarding a social group, high self-monitors would modify their expressive behavior in a direction consistent with the attitudes attributed to their audience. Conversely, low self-monitors would be unaffected by their audience's attitude towards this group. A study was conducted to test this hypothesis: participants, whose level of self-monitoring and prejudice towards homosexuals had been previously measured, were asked to report their thoughts regarding this group in an open-ended manner. They anticipated discussing these thoughts with an audience perceived as either prejudiced or tolerant,or they expected that their responses would remain private. In line with predictions, high self-monitors expressed more prejudice when the audience was perceived as prejudiced than tolerant, whereas low self-monitors were not affected by the audience's attitude.