Never run a changing system: Action-effect contingency shapes prospective agency
Schwarz KA, Klaffehn AL, Hauke-Forman N, Muth F, Pfister R (2022)
Publication Type: Journal article
Publication year: 2022
Journal
Book Volume: 229
Article Number: 105250
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105250
Abstract
Human action control is highly sensitive to action-effect contingencies in the agent's environment. Here we show that the subjective sense of agency (SoA) contributes to this sensitivity as a subjective counterpart to instru-mental action decisions. Participants (N = 556) experienced varying reward probabilities and were prompted to give summary evaluations of their SoA after a series of action-effect episodes. Results first revealed a quadratic relation of contingency and SoA, driven by a disproportionally strong impact of perfect action-effect contin-gencies. In addition to this strong situational determinant of SoA, we observed small but reliable interindividual differences as a function of gender, assertiveness, and neuroticism that applied especially at imperfect action -effect contingencies. Crucially, SoA not only reflected the reward structure of the environment but was also associated with the agent's future action decisions across situational and personal factors. These findings call for a paradigm shift in research on perceived agency, away from the retrospective assessment of single behavioral episodes and towards a prospective view that draws on statistical regularities of an agent's environment.
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Germany (DE)How to cite
APA:
Schwarz, K.A., Klaffehn, A.L., Hauke-Forman, N., Muth, F., & Pfister, R. (2022). Never run a changing system: Action-effect contingency shapes prospective agency. Cognition, 229. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105250
MLA:
Schwarz, Katharina A., et al. "Never run a changing system: Action-effect contingency shapes prospective agency." Cognition 229 (2022).
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