Effect of Congruency between Subliminally Primed Representation of Event and Observed Event on Subjective Feeling of Authorship and Experience of Conscious Will

Abstract

The present study examined whether mere subliminal priming of potential action consequences enhanced actors' feeling of intentionally causing the consequences. Under a subliminal priming paradigm, 26 university students performed one of two actions, which were followed by one of two visual stimuli. Immediately before each action, a masked prime-stimulus was presented, which was either congruent, incongruent, or unrelated to the post-action stimulus. Results showed that subjective feeling of authorship and experience of conscious will for “the consequence” depended on the congruency between the primed representation before and the actual stimulus following the action, even when the primed representation remained completely unconscious for the actor.