Negative Emotional Outcomes Attenuate Sense of Agency over Voluntary Actions

Abstract

Sense of agency (SoA) refers to the feeling that one’s voluntary actions produce external sensory events [1Haggard P. Clark S. Kalogeras J. Voluntary action and conscious awareness.Nat. Neurosci. 2002; 5: 382-385Crossref PubMed Scopus (1010) Google Scholar, 2Moore J.W. Obhi S.S. Intentional binding and the sense of agency: a review.Conscious. Cogn. 2012; 21: 546-561Crossref PubMed Scopus (323) Google Scholar]. Several psychological theories hypothesized links between SoA and affective evaluation [3Bradley G.W. Self-serving biases in attribution process: re-examination of fact or fiction question.J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 1978; 36: 56-71Crossref Scopus (698) Google Scholar, 4Greenberg J. Pyszczynski T. Burling J. Tibbs K. Depression, self-focused attention, and the self-serving attributional bias.Pers. Individ. Dif. 1992; 13: 959-965Crossref Scopus (36) Google Scholar, 5Bandura A. Social cognitive theory: an agentic perspective.Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2001; 52: 1-26Crossref PubMed Scopus (6687) Google Scholar, 6Bandura A. Selective moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency.J. Moral Educ. 2002; 31: 101-119Crossref Scopus (989) Google Scholar]. For example, people tend to attribute positive outcomes to their own actions, perhaps reflecting high-level narrative processes that enhance self-esteem [3Bradley G.W. Self-serving biases in attribution process: re-examination of fact or fiction question.J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 1978; 36: 56-71Crossref Scopus (698) Google Scholar]. Here we provide the first evidence that such emotional modulations also involve changes in the low-level sensorimotor basis of agency. The intentional binding paradigm [1Haggard P. Clark S. Kalogeras J. Voluntary action and conscious awareness.Nat. Neurosci. 2002; 5: 382-385Crossref PubMed Scopus (1010) Google Scholar] was used to quantify the subjective temporal compression between a voluntary action and its sensory consequences, providing an implicit measure of SoA. Emotional valence of action outcomes was manipulated by following participants’ key-press actions with negative or positive emotional vocalizations [7Sauter D.A. Eisner F. Calder A.J. Scott S.K. Perceptual cues in nonverbal vocal expressions of emotion.Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2010; 63: 2251-2272Crossref PubMed Scopus (196) Google Scholar], or neutral sounds. We found that intentional binding was reduced for negative compared to positive or neutral outcomes. Discriminant analyses identified a change in time perception of both actions and their negative outcomes, demonstrating that the experience of action itself is subject to affective modulation. A small binding benefit was also found for positive action outcomes. Emotional modulation of SoA may contribute to regulating social behavior. Correctly tracking the valenced effects of one’s voluntary actions on other people could underlie successful social interactions.