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An investigation of “We” agency in co-operative joint actions

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Abstract

Sense of agency refers to the sense that I am controlling an action or outcome, and is associated with a perceived compression of the temporal interval between these events known as intentional binding (IB). Though most IB studies focus on individually performed actions, some reveal the existence of shared implicit agency among joint actors, suggesting the formation of a shared “we” identity that may be sensitive to the intentions and actions of all actors. While current understanding of this shared agentic identity is far from clear, the present study used variants of the IB paradigm involving truly co-operative actions to investigate (1) the relative strength of individual and joint agency, and (2) whether different complementary roles modulate the sense of agency among joint actors. Experiment 1 compared the strength of agency for actions performed alone or with a partner, by instructing pairs of participants to press a key simultaneously to produce an auditory tone. Here, binding was weaker when performing jointly, but this may have been influenced by the demands of temporally co-ordinating actions. Experiment 2 removed these task demands by implementing joint actions that were not identical but complementary, and assessed the impact of varying roles (moving versus clicking a mouse) on agency. Here, binding was similar for independent and joint actions, and across all roles. These results support the notion of a shared “we” identity, suggesting that the joint sense of agency is as strong as individual agency and represents the intentions and actions of all co-actors.

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Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated during and analysed during the current study are available from Harvard Dataverse repository, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RNL8KA.

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Funding

This work was not supported by any funding grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social Brain, Body and Action Lab, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Psychology Building (PC), Room 102, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4K1, Canada

    Michael Jenkins, Olisaemeka Esemezie, Vivian Lee, Merani Mensingh, Kien Nagales & Sukhvinder S. Obhi

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  1. Michael Jenkins
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  2. Olisaemeka Esemezie
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  3. Vivian Lee
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  4. Merani Mensingh
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  5. Kien Nagales
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  6. Sukhvinder S. Obhi
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Contributions

MJ was primary author of this manuscript, and performed all data analysis as well as data collection for Experiment 1B. OE and KN performed data collection for Experiment 1A. VL and MM performed data collection for Experiment 2. SSO was principal investigator and contributed to manuscript preparation.

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Correspondence to Michael Jenkins.

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The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

This work was approved by the McMaster Research Ethics Board (MREB), application # 1941.

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All participants in this study freely provided written, informed consent prior to participation.

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All participants in this study consented to publishing their data in aggregate form. No personally identifying participant information has been provided in this manuscript.

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Jenkins, M., Esemezie, O., Lee, V. et al. An investigation of “We” agency in co-operative joint actions. Psychological Research 85, 3167–3181 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-020-01462-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-020-01462-6

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