Doing what others see: visuomotor conversion to informational social influence.

The effects of other people's opinions on conscious perceptual judgments are pervasive and well studied. Although existing research is suggestive, less is known about how others' opinions affect nonconscious sensorimotor behavior. In the experiment, participants were shown figures containing a visual illusion, along with judgments made by experimental confederates, which conflicted with participants' previous perceptual reports. In this context, participants were asked to perform a simple motor behavior, for which the same illusion provided the target. We found that participants' precision while performing this behavior was affected by the group decision, even though conscious perceptual reports and movement efficiency were not. We discuss the consequences of these findings for cooperative behavior and for personal autonomy.