Recall a classic love story between two people that you have read

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� 2014 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc. ● Vol. 41 ● October 2014
All rights reserved. 0093-5301/2014/4103-0011$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/677315

Social Defaults: Observed Choices
Become Choice Defaults

YOUNG EUN HUH
JOACHIM VOSGERAU
CAREY K. MOREWEDGE

Defaults effects can be created by social contexts. The observed choices of others
can become social defaults, increasing their choice share. Social default effects
are a novel form of social influence not due to normative or informational influence:
participants were more likely to mimic observed choices when choosing in private
than in public (experiment 1) and when stakes were low rather than high (exper-
iment 2). Like other default effects, social default effects were greater for uncertain
rather than certain choices (experiment 3) and were weaker when choices required
justification (experiment 4). Social default effects appear to occur automatically as
they become stronger when cognitive resources are constrained by time pressure
or load, and they can be sufficiently strong to induce preference reversals (ex-
periments 5 and 6).

D ecisions often occur in a social context. Whether in alocal hardware store or a foreign restaurant, people
routinely make choices in the presence of other people.
Many of the processes and influences on choices made in
isolation should apply to choices made in social contexts,
but social contexts (even when only inferred) can have po-
tent and unique influences on perception and behavior. We
suggest that when a person is deciding between options for
which her preferences are not well formed, observing the

Young Eun Huh ([email protected]) is assistant professor of marketing
at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay,
Kowloon, Hong Kong. Joachim Vosgerau ( [email protected]) is professor
of marketing at the School of Economics and Management at Tilburg
University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, Netherlands. Carey K. More-
wedge ([email protected]) is associate professor of marketing at the
School of Management, Boston University, 595 Commonwealth Avenue,
Boston, MA 02215. Correspondence: Young Eun Huh. This research was
supported in part by the seed grant from the Center for Behavioral and
Decision Research at Carnegie Mellon University provided to the first
author. The authors thank the editor, associate editor, and reviewers for
their helpful comments and Rik Pieters for help with model specifications.
In addition, the authors thank Leandra Mosca, Tina Aliprando, Kamya
Khanna, Marcel Christian, Emily Schlossman, April Jianto, Mei Kuo, Lisa
Kwon, Joshua Chang, Christine Pak, Sung Jin Hong, Vivian Chang, and
the Center for Behavioral and Decision Research summer interns in 2009,
2010, and 2011 for help with data collection.

Ann McGill served as editor and Joel Huber served as associate editor
for this article.

Electronically published July 11, 2014

choice of another person makes the option chosen by the
other person a social default. Consequently, the social de-
fault option is more likely to be chosen, leading to choice
mimicry unless the default is perceived as inappropriate or
the chooser has sufficient cognitive resources and motivation
to diverge from the social default before choosing.

Our theory draws from three normally disparate streams
of research: social influence, behavioral mimicry, and de-
fault effects. The social influence literature has shown that
people conform to the behavior of others as a result of
deliberative processes (e.g., Asch 1956; Bearden and Etzel
1982; Campbell and Fairey 1989; Childers and Rao 1992;
Cialdini 2001; Deutsch and Gerard 1955; Sherif 1936). Peo-
ple deliberately conform because they believe that the be-
havior of others provides diagnostic information (i.e., in-
formational influence) and because they explicitly desire to
adhere to the expectations of their in-group (i.e., normative
influence; Deutsch and Gerard 1955). People also auto-
matically imitate the behaviors of others, as they mimic each
other’s facial expressions and mannerisms, for example,
without being aware that they are mirroring those expres-
sions and mannerisms (Chartrand and Bargh 1999; Char-
trand and van Baaren 2009).

We suggest that just as another person’s expressions and
mannerism can influence a person’s expressions and man-
nerisms, observing another person’s choices can create so-
cial default options that lead a person to mimic the other’s
choices. In six experiments, we present evidence for social
default effects. The observed choices of others become de-
fault options that engender choice mimicry, from which

HUH, VOSGERAU, AND MOREWEDGE 747

consumers diverge only when they perceive the default to
be inappropriate to adopt or when they have sufficient cog-
nitive resources and motivation to deliberate when choosing.
In what follows, we review the literature on social influence,
behavioral mimicry, and default effects. We then develop
and test specific hypotheses about the conditions under
which social defaults engender choice mimicry.

SOCIAL INFLUENCE

Conformity as a Deliberate Process

Social conformity has been conceptualized as a deliberate,
conscious process. People conform to the behavior of others
to achieve explicit goals (Cialdini and Goldstein 2004; Cial-
dini and Trost 1998). Deliberate social conformity has been
shown to play an important role in decision making (Bearden
and Etzel 1982; Campbell and Fairey 1989; Childers and
Rao 1992), judgment and evaluation (e.g., Asch 1956; Sherif
1936), charity donations (e.g., Reingen 1982), littering (e.g.,
Cialdini, Reno, and Kallgren 1990), and purchase decisions
(e.g., Bearden and Etzel 1982; Childers and Rao 1992; Co-
hen 1983).

Deutsch and Gerard (1955) suggest two types of social
influence based on the motivation to conform: informational
influence and normative influence. Informational influence
is “influence to accept information obtained from another
as evidence about reality” (Deutsch and Gerard 1955, 629).
It is based on the desire to be accurate (Campbell and Fairey
1989; Cialdini and Goldstein 2004; Deutsch and Gerard
1955). The behavior of others is perceived as a source of
information concerning the accuracy or value of options.
Accordingly, people conform to the behavior of others be-
cause they believe that others may be accurate (Burnkrant
and Cousineau 1975; Kelley 1967). Since consumers con-
form out of a belief that the behavior of others provides
diagnostic information, informational influence often leads
to private acceptance as well as public compliance (Cialdini
2001). Likewise, when consumers are uncertain about what
behavior is acceptable or accurate, they often follow a “so-
cial proof ” heuristic (Cialdini 2001). Consumers conform
because they believe that others’ interpretation of an am-
biguous situation is more accurate than their own and will
help them choose an appropriate course of action (Aronson,
Wilson, and Akert 2005). Because informational influence
is believed to provide diagnostic information, it is generally
more powerful under conditions of uncertainty than certainty
(Campbell and Fairey 1989; Deutsch and Gerard 1955).

Normative influence is “influence to conform to the pos-
itive expectations of another” (Deutsch and Gerard 1955,
629). It is based on the desire to behave appropriately in a
social setting (Campbell and Fairey 1989; Cialdini and
Goldstein 2004; Deutsch and Gerard 1955). For example,
consumers reuse towels more often when reusing towels
appears to be a social norm (Goldstein, Cialdini, and Gris-
kevicius 2008). Because normative influence is stronger
when the consumer perceives there is pressure to conform
to the judgment of others, it often leads to public compliance

but not necessarily to private acceptance (Deutsch and Ge-
rard 1955).

Social influence can also produce divergent behavior. Peo-
ple are often concerned about how other people perceive
them and thus behave in ways that will form specific im-
pressions in others (Leary and Kowalski 1990; Sengupta,
Dahl, and Gorn 2002). They desire to be unique (Cialdini
2001; Cialdini and Goldstein 2004; Snyder and Fromkin
1977) and thus sometimes deliberately diverge from others’
choices to communicate their desired identities (Berger and
Health 2007, 2008). Importantly, this occurs when the be-
havior is performed in public (i.e., observed by others) but
not when the behavior is performed in private (Ariely and
Levav 2000; Berger and Health 2008).

Imitation as an Automatic Process:
Behavioral Mimicry

Behavior imitation also results from unconscious auto-
matic processes. People mimic the behaviors of their inter-
action partners, including facial expressions, speech pat-
terns, accents, speech rate, postures, gestures, mannerisms,
motor movements, and emotions (see Chartrand and van
Baaren 2009, for a review). In contrast to informational
social influence in which others’ behavior is interpreted as
diagnostic or accurate, behavioral mimicry denotes the au-
tomatic, passive, and unintentional mimicking of others’
behaviors. Consumers are typically unaware of their mim-
icry (Chartrand and Bargh 1999). Behavioral mimicry can
increase affiliation between interacting individuals and lead
to more rapport, empathy, and liking between interacting
partners (Chartrand, Maddux, and Lakin 2005; Lakin and
Chartrand 2003; Lakin et al. 2003; van Baaren et al. 2003).
It can also affect consumption. People consume more of a
food concurrently consumed by another person, but they are
unaware that their consumption is influenced by this social
context (Tanner et al. 2008). Likewise, people anchor on
the quantity of food that is consumed in their social context
(McFerran et al. 2010) when that consumption behavior
appears appropriate or denotes behavior that would be de-
sirable to emulate. Such behavioral mimicry, however, does
not occur when deliberation suggests that others constitute
inappropriate standards or their behavior is perceived to be
inappropriate (e.g., when those observed eating are obese).

We suggest that just as observing others’ behavior can
induce behavioral mimicry, observing others’ choices can
induce choice mimicry. Observing others’ choices may
cause their choices to become default options, which are
automatically adopted unless consumers believe it is inap-
propriate to imitate those choices or have sufficiently strong
preferences, cognitive resources, and motivation to diverge
before choosing. Following the existing nomenclature, we
define choice imitation resulting from social default effects
choice mimicry because (like behavioral mimicry) it occurs
automatically when consumers do not engage in further de-
liberation. We define choice imitation resulting from delib-
erate processes choice conformity, and we use the term

748 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

choice imitation as a general term encompassing mimicry
and conformity without reference to automatic or deliberate
processes. Because consumers are hypothesized to perceive
the option that they observed others having chosen as a default
option, choice mimicry should be observed under the same
circumstances in which default effects are observed.

DEFAULT EFFECTS

Defaults Defined by Choice Architecture

A default is the choice option that consumers consider
first and adopt as the status quo before considering other
choice options. Defaults are typically created through choice
architecture, for example, by making one option the opt-out
option (the default) and all other options opt-in (e.g., John-
son and Goldstein 2003), presenting participants with a
“base model” (a default configuration) to which they can
add or from which they can subtract features (e.g., Park,
Jun, and MacInnis 2000), or telling participants that they
can choose between two options but presenting them with
only one (the default) and requiring that they request the
other option to receive it (McKenzie, Liersch, and Finkel-
stein 2006). Such exogenously defined default options can
have dramatic effects on consumer choice (Johnson, Bell-
man, and Lohse 2002; Johnson and Goldstein 2003, 2004;
Thaler and Sunstein 2008), although consumers are not nec-
essarily aware of this influence (Smith, Goldstein, and John-
son 2013). Consent rates for organ donation, for example,
are substantially higher when the default is to be a donor
(an opt-out policy) than when the default is not to be a
donor (an opt-in policy; Johnson and Goldstein 2003). Sim-
ilar default effects have been demonstrated for participation
in 401(k) retirement plans (Choi et al. 2002; Madrian and
Shea 2001), choice of insurance plans (Johnson et al. 1993),
and consumer product choices (Brown and Krishna 2004;
Dinner et al. 2011; Park et al. 2000).

Several explanations have been offered for why defaults
created by the choice architecture affect choices. First, de-
fault options may be perceived as the option implicitly en-
dorsed by the choice architect (e.g., public policy makers
or marketers; Brown and Krishna 2004; McKenzie et al.
2006). Second, because default options act as reference
points, loss aversion leads people to stick with defaults rather
than switch to other options (Dinner et al. 2011; Park et al.
2000). Third, no physical effort is required when accepting
a default option, whereas switching to an alternative option
requires effort. Hence, physical laziness might produce de-
fault effects. However, in experiments in which choosing to
keep or abandon the default differed only by one click,
Johnson and Goldstein (2003) still found the same differ-
ences in organ donation enrollment as in the real world.
Thus, physical effort is unlikely to be a primary cause for
default effects to occur.

Endogenously Defined Defaults

In some contexts, a choice option becomes a default be-
cause of preexisting preferences or norms rather than as a

result of choice architecture. Such endogenously determined
defaults evoke greater intuitive confidence (Simmons and
Nelson 2006) and are processed more efficiently (Epstein
1994). Consumers bet too much on favorites to win NFL
games, because the favorite is perceived as the default even
though the chances of favorites and underdogs are equalized
by point spreads (Simmons and Nelson 2006). Similarly,
Danziger, Levav, and Avnaim-Pesso (2011) found that in
the Israeli judiciary system the default is to deny a prisoner’s
parole request. The majority of parole decisions were de-
nials, it took judges less time to arrive at denial decisions,
and denial decisions were less wordy than acceptance de-
cisions.

One explanation that can account for both exogenous and
endogenous default effects is that consumers are “cognitive
misers” trying to expend the least effort necessary to make
decisions (Fiske and Taylor 1984; Samuelson and Zeck-
hauser 1988; Thaler and Sunstein 2008). Indeed, consumers
are more likely to choose default options if they can be
adopted with less cognitive effort than their alternatives
(Brown and Krishna 2004; Camerer et al. 2003; Johnson et
al. 2002), when consumers are tired (Levav et al. 2010),
and when their self-control resources are depleted (Evans
et al. 2011). Likewise, judges are more likely to deny a
prisoner parole (the default option) when they have made
numerous parole decisions beforehand on the day of that
hearing (Danziger et al. 2011). In the same vein, it has been
suggested that when it is difficult to distinguish between
options, people should be more likely to accept a default
option. In other words, uncertainty about one’s own pref-
erences or the choice options should increase default effects
(Thaler and Sunstein 2008).

Social Defaults

We suggest that—like choice architecture—social context
can exogenously create default options. Observing another
consumer’s choice may lead to that option being perceived
as the default option. Like defaults in general, social defaults
should be more likely to be adopted when decision makers
are uncertain about their preferences and when they are
unable or unwilling to engage in deliberation before choos-
ing.

We hypothesize that social defaults (like behavioral mim-
icry) engender choice mimicry through the automatic adop-
tion of the default. Automaticity is defined by three aspects
(Bargh 1994): (a) unawareness of the stimulus or its impact
on behavior; (b) efficiency, that is, automatic processes are
more efficient than deliberate processes (i.e., they free up
resources for simultaneously processing other stimuli); and
(c) controllability, that is, automatic processes can be dis-
rupted when consumers are willing and capable of exerting
cognitive effort. In accordance with these three aspects, be-
havioral mimicry has been shown to occur outside conscious
awareness. It does not interfere with other demanding tasks.
People, for example, are perfectly capable of engaging in
deep conversations while automatically mimicking the facial
expressions and mannerisms of their interaction partners (Char-

HUH, VOSGERAU, AND MOREWEDGE 749

trand and Bargh 1999; Chartrand and van Baaren 2009). Fi-
nally, automatic processes can be disrupted when consumers
have sufficient cognitive and motivational resources to de-
liberate about their behavior (Bargh 1994; Fiske 1998).

Disruption means that the stimulus is still automatically
perceived outside awareness, but in a second deliberate stage
the resulting behavior is modified (Gilbert and Gill 2000;
Wegener and Petty 1995). It may happen when a deliberate
analysis of the situation results in alternative behaviors being
judged as more desirable, rational, or appropriate than the
automatically activated behavior. As an example of disrup-
tion, McFerran et al. (2010) found that consumers under
cognitive load anchored on the amount of food that they
observed others eating, whether those others were obese or
not obese. In contrast, consumers not under load (who were
able to consciously deliberate) only anchored on the amount
others ate when those others were not obese, and hence the
observed behavior was appropriate to emulate. When the
observed others were obese, participants not under load ad-
justed the amount of food they ate. They no longer anchored
on the amount consumed by the obese persons they ob-
served.

Concluding, we hypothesize that social default effects
should be observed under the same circumstances as tra-
ditional default effects are observed. These boundary con-
ditions will allow us to distinguish the effect of social de-
faults from deliberate social influence effects. We report six
experiments designed to test for the existence of social de-
faults and to pit the social default account against normative
and informational social influence explanations. Experi-
ments 1 and 2 tested whether social default effects are due
to deliberative forms of social influence (normative and in-
formational). Experiments 3 and 4 examined whether social
defaults are adopted under the same conditions in which
traditional defaults are adopted. Finally, experiments 5 and
6 tested the automatic nature of social default effects and
whether social defaults can lead to preference reversals.

EXPERIMENT 1
In experiment 1, non-Korean participants chose one of

two Korean teas (labeled in Korean, hence, uncertain prod-
ucts). In a control condition, participants simply chose one
of the two Korean teas in private. In a social default private
choice condition, participants observed a confederate’s
choice and, after the confederate had left the room, chose
one of the two Korean teas. Finally, in a social default public
choice condition, the confederate stayed in the room after
making her choice and observed participants while they
chose one of the two Korean teas.

This design allowed us to test two aspects of our social
default theory. First, we tested our prediction that choice
mimicry should occur for choice options for which partic-
ipants do not have well-formed preferences. Specifically,
choice share of the tea chosen by the confederate should be
higher in the social default private choice condition than the
control condition. Second, we tested whether choice mim-
icry, if observed, is due to normative social influence. If

choice imitation is caused by normative influence, it should
increase when choices are made in public (i.e., the social
default public choice condition) because it is in public when
consumers want to conform to social norms (Deutsch and
Gerard 1955). In contrast, if choice imitation is due to an
automatic adoption of the social default, as we suggest,
choice divergence may occur when choices are made in
public because consumers may perceive it to be inappro-
priate to imitate another’s choice in her presence (Ariely
and Levav 2000; Berger and Health 2008; White and Argo
2011).

Method

Participants, Design, and Procedure. Fifty-four students
at Carnegie Mellon University (28 males and 26 females;
Mage p 22.61, SD p 3.80) participated in exchange for
monetary compensation. Two Korean teas (two different
brands of the same tea) were used as uncertain products; all
information on the packages was printed in Korean (figs.
1A and 1B).

Participants were run individually. In all conditions, each
participant was greeted by a research assistant and entered
a room where a confederate (female Caucasian) was already
seated near the door. Both the participant and the confederate
were told that the purpose of the experiment was to study
how people evaluate products. Participants were told that in
an adjacent room there were two teas, from which they
should choose one. They would then keep their preferred
tea bag as remuneration for participating in the study.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three
experimental conditions. In the social default private choice
condition, the participant and the confederate were asked to
go to the next room and make their choices. Since the con-
federate was seated near the door, she went first. When both
entered the next room, the confederate chose a target brand
from the two teas (the social default) and left the room. The
participant was thus alone while making her choice. After
making her choice, the participant and confederate returned
to the original room and completed a brief questionnaire.
In the social default public choice condition, the participant
and confederate went to the next room, the confederate chose
first, and then the participant chose while the confederate
observed her choice. Finally, in the control condition, the
participant went alone to the next room and made her choice
without having observed the confederate’s choice.

The position (left or right) of the teas was counterbalanced
in all three conditions. After their choice, all participants
indicated whether they could read Korean. The position of
the social default brand did not affect the dependent variable
of participants’ choice in this and all subsequent studies and
thus will not be discussed further. None of the participants
in this and all subsequent studies (except experiment 5)
indicated that they could read Korean. To exclude the pos-
sibility of direct communication between the participant and
the confederate during the experiment, they were instructed
not to talk to each other. Experimental sessions were spaced
out with 10-minute gaps in between participants to ensure

750 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

FIGURE 1

CHOICE OPTIONS IN EXPERIMENTS 1 (A AND B ), 2 (E AND F ), 3 (A–D), 4 (A–D), AND 6 (G AND H )

NOTE.—Experiment number below an option indicates the social default.

FIGURE 2

SOCIAL DEFAULT EFFECTS AS A FUNCTION OF PRESENCE/
ABSENCE OF CONFEDERATE IN EXPERIMENT 1

that participants would not discover that the confederate had
already participated in a previous session.

Results

Choice shares of the social default brand differed signif-
icantly across the three experimental conditions (x2(2) p
13.22, p ! .01). A majority of participants (80.0%) in the
social default private choice condition chose the social de-
fault (i.e., the brand chosen by the confederate), compared
to 47.6% in the control condition (x2(1) p 3.86, p p .05).
In contrast, only 16.7% of participants in the social default
public choice condition chose the social default brand, sig-
nificantly fewer than in the control condition (x2(1) p 4.18,
p p .04; see fig. 2).

Discussion

Defaults have a substantial impact on choices, especially
when consumers do not have clear preferences (Thaler and
Sunstein 2008). Consistent with our hypothesis that ob-
served choices become social defaults, we found that par-
ticipants imitated the choice of a confederate when choosing
in private from products of uncertain quality and flavor (Ko-
rean teas). In contrast, participants in the social default pub-
lic choice condition diverged from the social default. This

HUH, VOSGERAU, AND MOREWEDGE 751

preference reversal cannot be explained by normative influ-
ence. If choice imitation as observed in the social default
private choice condition was caused by normative influence,
that choice imitation should have been stronger when the
confederate observed their choice because it is in public that
consumers want to conform to social norms (Argyle 1957;
Deutsch and Gerard 1955).

The most likely cause of their choice divergence is im-
pression management (Leary and Kowalski 1990). People
are concerned about how other people perceive them and
thus behave in ways that they believe will form positive
impressions (Leary and Kowalski 1990; Leigh and Gabel
1992; Schlenker 1980; Sengupta et al. 2002). Participants
in experiment 1 might have felt embarrassed to copy the
confederate’s choice and diverged to avoid being perceived
as a “follower.” Choice divergence is typical when people
desire to be unique (Cialdini 2001; Cialdini and Goldstein
2004) and to communicate their desired identities (Berger
and Health 2007, 2008). In accordance with this line of
reasoning, choice divergence has been observed when be-
havior is public but not when it is private (Ariely and Levav
2000; Berger and Health 2008).

EXPERIMENT 2

Experiment 2 examined whether the choice imitation ob-
served in experiment 1 might have been caused by infor-
mational influence. Participants chose between two different
types of Korean crackers (figs. 1E and 1F ). Participants in
the low-stake condition were told that they could take a
package of the chosen brand home with them at the end of
the study. Participants in the high-stake condition were told
that they would have to eat an entire package of the chosen
brand in the laboratory before they completed the experi-
ment. If choice imitation occurs as a result of deliberate
informational influence, higher stakes should lead to more
imitation, as participants should be more likely to use in-
formation gleaned from the observed choice in a high-stake
decision (Baron, Vandello, and Brunsman 1996). In contrast,
our social default account predicts that higher stakes should
lead to less imitation because participants should exert more
cognitive effort when determining which option to choose
and thus be less influenced by the social default.

Method

Pretest. To ensure that our manipulation was effective,
we conducted a pretest with 55 participants from a different
sample (32 males and 23 females; Mage p 22.11, SD p
6.78). Pretest participants saw the two packages of Korean
crackers and imagined choosing between them. Half were
told that they would receive a package of their chosen brand
to take home, whereas the other half were told that they
would have to eat an entire package of their chosen brand
before leaving the laboratory. They then rated how important
it was to choose the better cracker on a 7-point scale with
endpoints not at all important (1) and very important (7).
As expected, participants reported that their choice would

be more important if they had to eat a package of crackers
before concluding the experiment (M p 3.70, SD p 1.75)
than if they could simply take them home at the end of the
experiment (M p 2.64, SD p 1.64; F(1, 53) p 5.39, p p
.02).

Participants, Design, and Procedure. One hundred and
ten people at Carnegie Mellon University (61 males and 48
females, and one did not indicate gender; Mage p 21.64, SD
p 4.42) participated for class credit or $3. The experiment
employed a 2 (social default vs. control) # 2 (stakes: low
vs. high) between-subjects design.

The procedures for the social default and control condi-
tions were similar to the procedure in experiment 1, with
the exception of different stimuli (i.e., crackers rather than
teas) and the manipulation of stakes (i.e., low and high).
Participants in the low-stake condition were told that they
could take their choice of crackers home with them as re-
muneration for participating in the study. Participants in the
high-stake condition were told that they had to eat their
choice of crackers during the experimental session.

Results

To test the predicted choice pattern that participants would
be more likely to follow the confederate’s choice only when
the stakes were low, we estimated a logit model with the
dependent variable (DV) choice (1 p social default chosen,
0 p other brand chosen) and the dummy-coded interaction
of default and stakes as the independent variable (IV; low
stake # default coded as 1, all other cells coded as 0). As
we did not hypothesize any main effects, none were specified
in the model. This way, the interaction term estimates
whether choice share in the low-stake default condition is
higher than in the other three experimental conditions. The
interaction was significant (b p 1.471, SE p 0.513; …