Abstract
When people observe others performing actions similar to their own while dancing or playing musical instruments, they sometimes feel as if their actions were subsumed into others’ actions or others’ actions led their own actions. Many studies have been conducted to investigate agency attribution. However, these studies have mainly examined agency attribution in cases where people do not know the true agent. Few studies have focused on how people attribute agency to others despite knowing that they themselves are actual agents. This study investigates agency attribution to others performing actions similar to one’s own when one knows who the actual agent is. We evaluated agency attribution when participants manipulated a mouse to control a cursor while observing another person performing similar actions. Our findings demonstrated that participants could attribute agency to others despite knowing that they themselves were actual agents. We refer to this illusory sense as “illusory agency attribution to others.” We suggest that illusory agency attribution to others is determined by multiple factors including a bottom-up process with a subjective feeling of agency in addition to a top-down process with an interpretative judgement of agency.
Highlights
In daily life, people often have opportunities to interact with others while observing others performing actions similar to their own
The results showed that the participants could attribute the button press to the experimenter in the incongruent tone and temporal delay conditions
The point of subjective equality (PSE)[10], which is a criterion of subjective feeling, could not be calculated when all answers were identical
Summary
People often have opportunities to interact with others while observing others performing actions similar to their own. The results showed that the participants answered “other” for the highest biases while answering “self ” for the lowest angular biases and “bias” for intermediate biases in the spatial condition These studies showed that participants could attribute agency to others when the presence of another possible agent was suggested and participants did not know the true agent. We aim to investigate agency attribution in the condition where people clearly know that they themselves are the true agents but are in the presence of others performing similar actions. Our goals are as follows: First, we address the question of whether people attribute agency to themselves based on their prior knowledge as agents or can attribute their agency to others performing similar actions, as in the condition in previous studies where the true agent was unknown. Our final goal is to examine whether agency attribution to oneself and to others while observing the actions of others is a simple combination of agency attribution to oneself while working alone and agency attribution to others while merely observing the actions of others
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