TU AND FISHBACH 004:Ger &Rogers.2009).Whereas conformity is c ce cogn itive di ce from othe n frends,peop orm to in-group m oper.&Hogg.200 oal completion (MeCulloch,Fit ns.Chu he pproval and social affiliation.Lakin Chartrand.2003 the world.For example,people inc orate their close other mory of anv such that the confo heir close es and actions provide so uggest that people mentally share both othersprefere nce 2005)Individua lopt inderlying preference es for the acti while als actions g what others own ( furniture),have on the tru le of options(Bron andello &B 1 or li to (e.g ter ell as feel they have had s with them 、they will like the How influence does not always take the form of bout thers' actions.they ill feel less compelled to pe might actually signal a l sponse cial s the expre on of di ytactionsresults actions defined as actions that add ad p le to do en less likely rdina xperienced (e.g. eaten In other words.whe ct (i. are m o take the yinformation (Wegne Erber.Ra mentary decisions. Research Hypotheses motivated o pursue dif erent actions,con mpani Wey action than when th only conve Mentally Sharing Others'Preferences and Actions nce (i.e.no mand Revond normative and informational influen others be use Ve study situations in which minimal objective differenceex Burger.Mes ource of 1978)and individuals can experience others emotions.evalua information could cover a large sample (esales data),wherea of thes 004).For exampl eel lonely upon seeing the who rate cts tend toh ve extr ews: I(ie..vicarious ostracism:Wesselmanr mons, & Morales, 2010), environmental decisions (Allcott, 2011; Goldstein et al., 2008), and prosocial behaviors (Frey & Meier, 2004; Gerber & Rogers, 2009). Whereas conformity is common between friends, people also conform to in-group members in large settings; for example, those in an online community (Chen, Wang, & Xie, 2011; Salganik, Dodds, & Watts, 2006). Part of the reason that conformity is ubiquitous is that others’ judgments and behaviors bear normative and informational social influence (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955). Normative social influence results from the benefits that conforming to others engenders (e.g., social approval and social affiliation, Lakin & Chartrand, 2003) and the penalties (e.g., disapproval) that not conforming engenders (Griskevicius, Goldstein, Mortensen, Cialdini, & Kenrick, 2006). Because conforming is normatively desirable, it is often a mind￾less, automatic response that requires minimal deliberation (Char￾trand & Bargh, 1999). Informational social influence results from the perception that others’ preferences and actions provide social proof to an individual that others’ preferences and actions are the most appropriate ones (e.g., the wisdom of the crowd; Simmons, Nelson, Galak, & Frederick, 2011; Surowiecki, 2005). Individuals believe they can improve their decision accuracy by relying on information from others because others presumably have informa￾tion on the true value of options (Baron, Vandello, & Brunsman, 1996; Levine, Higgins, & Choi, 2000). Indeed, cross-cultural re￾search documented conformity as a dominant coordination pattern, in particular in collectivistic (vs. individualistic) societies (Bond & Smith, 1996; Kim & Markus, 1999; Markus & Kitayama, 1991). However, social influence does not always take the form of conformity, and under some circumstances, conformity— or more generally, behavioral matching—might actually signal a lack of response to social influence (e.g., simultaneous speech or mutual periods of silence). In fact, social influence could result in different yet complementary actions, defined as actions that add to, rather than follow (mimic), what another person chooses (Fiske, 2000). Such motivation for complementarity in actions is evident, for example, when teammates coordinate to work on different seg￾ments of a project (i.e., the division of labor; Becker & Murphy, 1992; Sinha & Cusumano, 1991), couples coordinate by mastering complementary information (Wegner, Erber, & Raymond, 1991), and group members coordinate regulatory modes (Mauro, Pierro, Mannetti, Higgins, & Kruglanski, 2009). Beyond these examples, individuals are often motivated to pursue different actions, con￾sume different products, or acquire different knowledge because they want to complement what others already do, possess, or know. Mentally Sharing Others’ Preferences and Actions Beyond normative and informational influence, people are in￾fluenced by others because they mentally share what close others say and do. Indeed, the self– other boundary is often less than clear-cut (Aron, Aron, Tudor, & Nelson, 1991; Brewer & Gardner, 1996; Burger, Messian, Patel, del Prado, & Anderson, 2004; Cial￾dini, Brown, Lewis, Luce, & Neuberg, 1997; Kelley & Thibaut, 1978), and individuals can experience others’ emotions, evalua￾tions, and actions, as well as the consequences of these actions, as their own (Maner et al., 2002; Monin, Norton, Cooper, & Hogg, 2004). For example, people feel lonely upon seeing another person being socially excluded (i.e., vicarious ostracism; Wesselmann, Bagg, & Williams, 2009), and fall prey to others’ sunk costs (i.e., vicarious entrapment; Gunia, Sivanathan, & Galinsky, 2009). Fur￾ther, people experience cognitive dissonance from others’ incon￾sistencies (Norton, Monin, Cooper, & Hogg, 2003), feel depleted by others’ efforts (Ackerman, Goldstein, Shapiro, & Bargh, 2009), satiated by others’ goal completion (McCulloch, Fitzsimons, Chua, & Albarracín, 2011), and experience others’ moral credentials as their own (Kouchaki, 2011). In addition, another form of mental sharing refers to “shared-reality”; people are motivated to share their reality with close others, by taking on close others’ views of the world. For example, people incorporate their close others’ perspective when forming a memory of an event such that they remember what they said about the event to their close others (i.e., their close others’ memory of the event) more than what actually happened (Echterhoff, Higgins, & Levine, 2009; Thompson & Fine, 1999). We suggest that people mentally share both others’ preferences and actions. When sharing a preference, individuals adopt others’ preferences as their own. When sharing an action, individuals adopt others’ underlying preferences for the action, while also feeling they, in a way, acted, too. For example, information on others’ actions, including what others own (e.g., furniture), have eaten (e.g., food), viewed (e.g., online videos), or listened to (e.g., music), leads individuals to develop a preference for these items, as well as feel they have had some vicarious experience with them. Mental sharing implies that when people learn about others’ preferences, they will like the target items more, but when they learn about others’ actions, they will feel less compelled to per￾form the same actions “again.” This response occurs because the expression of different preferences results in (undesirable) internal inconsistency, whereas the expression of different actions results in (desirable) variety. Consequently, mentally sharing others’ ac￾tions would lead people to do something different to complement and enrich their own experiences; they would be less likely to conform to what others have materially consumed (e.g., owned) and experienced (e.g., watched, eaten). In other words, when others’ actions are mentally shared, social influence is less likely to take the form of conformity and more likely to induce comple￾mentary decisions. Research Hypotheses Our main hypothesis is that individuals conform less to infor￾mation on others’ choices when these choices convey action, or are accompanied by action, than when these choices only convey preference. We limit our investigation to freely chosen actions, such that an action always implies a preference (i.e., no mandatory, imposed actions). In essence, we compare a choice that implies preference with a choice that implies preference plus action. We study situations in which minimal objective difference ex￾ists between a choice to express a preference and a choice to act. In addition, neither preferences nor actions are normatively a better source of information, because neither provides a more reliable measure of the “wisdom of the crowd.” For example, action information could cover a large sample (e.g., sales data), whereas preference information could come from a small and potentially biased sample of people who expressed their evaluation (e.g., people who rate products tend to have extreme views; Anderson, 1998; Bowman & Narayandas, 2001), and action could involve This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 194 TU AND FISHBACH