Joint Agency in Groups

The sense of agency refers to the underlying feeling of control over our voluntary actions and the outcome(s) of those actions. Joint agency refers to the sense of agency when we perform voluntary actions with other people.

This is the feeling we experience when we move a couch with a friend, build a Lego tower with our younger family members, play sports with friends, or even perform music with a band.

Despite its essential role in social life, joint agency has received much less attention than work on individual sense of agency. Furthermore, extant work has primarily focused on dyads.

Yet, actions are not done solely by individuals or pairs; indeed, the ability to work together in large groups and perform similar and complementary actions to achieve some goal (e.g., building a large house) undoubtedly played an essential role in the flourishing of human societies.

As such, the aim of this research proposal is to fill this gap in the literature by investigating if and how joint agency changes in groups.

To tackle this important issue, my work will involve a series of experiments, implemented in a Virtual Reality (VR) setting, featuring both behavioural and neural indices of the sense of agency.