The Sense of Agency in Social Interactions

Li Yunyun; Gu Jingjin; Zhao Ke; Fu Xiaolan

doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240319

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2024, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (3) : 664-670. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240319

Social，Personality & Organizational Psychology

The Sense of Agency in Social Interactions

Li Yunyun^1,2, Gu Jingjin^1,2, Zhao Ke^1,2, Fu Xiaolan^1,2

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Abstract

The Sense of agency refers to the experience of controlling one's own acts and external events. It is an important part of self-consciousness and arises not only in individual situations, but also in social interactions. Previous studies on the sense of agency in social interactions showed inconsistent findings, which might be attributed to the confusion of social interaction types.
Here, we distinguished three types of social interactions, including competition, cooperation, and hierarchical situations, and further differentiated several sub-types in each situation. Then we systematically reviewed the literature investigating the sense of agency in these situations. Studies have shown that, in the competitive situation, individuals’ sense of agency over their own and others' actions and outcomes is reduced. In the cooperative situation where each participant contributes to the consequence equally, they may experience a sense of joint agency as well as a sense of agency over partners' actions. However, the sense of agency over one’s own action depends on the similarity between participants’ actions. Participants have stronger agency over their own actions when their actions are distinguishable and complementary in accomplishing the joint goal, while they would lose control over their own actions when their actions are similar and hard to be distinguished. In the hierarchical interaction situation where individuals contribute to the consequence unequally, the leader and the follower have comparable levels of sense of joint agency when their actions are unrelated to each other. Surprisingly, the leader has lower sense of joint agency than the follower when the leader induces the follower's action. With respect to the sense of agency over individual’s actions, leaders experience a stronger sense of agency over their own and followers’ actions than followers. However, leaders will lose sense of agency when they coerce others to give the victim an electric shock.
The fronto-parietal network is involved in the processing of the sense of agency in social interactions. It is proposed that the supplementary motor area (SMA) may subserve the generation of action intention and the understanding of other's action intention. Angular gyrus (AG) and insula are associated with the comparison between the internal expectations and the sensory feedbacks of actions. The temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) are involved in distinguishing between self and others in social interactions. The precuneus may be a node that connects the processing of action control to the processing of social context.
The sense of agency is closely related to the generation of the social responsibility. The reduction of the sense of agency might be the cause of the bystander effect in the competitive situation, the responsibility diffusion effect in the cooperation situation, and the lack of the sense of responsibility for followers in the hierarchical joint action. According to the types and sub-types of the social interactions, a reasonable organization of the social interactive activities may help to enhance individual’s sense of agency and avoid adverse social effects.
Some issues need to be examined in future studies, such as the difference in the sense of agency across different interaction situations, the sense of agency in a multi-person interactive situation, and the neural mechanisms underlying the sense of agency in the cooperative and hierarchical interaction situations.

Key words

sense of agency / social interaction situations / fronto-parietal network / responsibility

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Li Yunyun, Gu Jingjin, Zhao Ke, Fu Xiaolan. The Sense of Agency in Social Interactions[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2024, 47(3): 664-670 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240319

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