The Schema-Driven Chameleon 1 Running Head: THE SCHEMA-DRIVEN CHAMELEON The Schema-Driven Chameleon: How Mimicry Affects Executive and Self-Regulatory Resources

We propose that behavioral mimicry is guided by schemas that enable efficient social coordination. If mimicry is schema-driven, then the operation of these schemas should be disrupted if partners behave in counternormative ways – such as mimicking people they generally would not or vice versa – rendering social interaction inefficient and demanding more executive and self-regulatory resources. To test this hypothesis, Experiments 1-3 used a resource depletion paradigm in which participants performed a resource-demanding task after interacting with a confederate who mimicked them or did not. Experiment 1 demonstrated impaired task performance among participants who were not mimicked by a peer. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated this effect and also demonstrated a significant reversal in social contexts where mimicry is counternormative, suggesting that inefficiency emerges from schema inconsistency, not from the absence of mimicry per se. Experiment 4 used a divided attention paradigm and found that resources are taxed throughout schema-inconsistent interactions. These findings suggest that much-needed resources are preserved when the amount of mimicry displayed by interacting individuals adheres to norms, while resources are depleted when mimicry norms are violated. Word count: 9,179