Power to the will: how exerting physical effort boosts the sense of agency.

Demanet J; Muhle-Karbe PS; Lynn MT; Blotenberg I; Brass M

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2013.08.020

Abstract

The sense of agency refers to the experience of being in control of one's actions and their consequences. The 19th century French philosopher Maine de Biran proposed that the sensation of effort might provide an internal cue for distinguishing self-caused from other changes in the environment. The present study is the first to empirically test the philosophical idea that effort promotes self-agency. We used intentional binding, which refers to the subjective temporal attraction between an action and its sensory consequences, as an implicit measure of the sense of agency. Effort was manipulated independent of the primary task by requiring participants to pull stretch bands of varying resistance levels. We found that intentional binding was enhanced under conditions of increased effort. This suggests not only that the experience of effort directly contributes to the sense of agency, but also that the integration of effort as an agency cue is non-specific to the effort requirement of the action itself.

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References

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Power to the will: how exerting physical effort boosts the sense of agency.

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References

On the foundations of beliefs in free will: intentional binding and unconscious priming in self-agency.

Title not supplied

Social cognitive theory: an agentic perspective.

The four horsemen of automaticity: Awareness, efficiency, intention, and control in social cognition

Ego depletion: is the active self a limited resource?

Ego depletion: A resource model of volition, self-regulation, and controlled processing

Biran, M. d. (1805). Mémoire sur la décomposition de la pensée (Tome III). Vrin, Paris (1963).

Looking for the agent: an investigation into consciousness of action and self-consciousness in schizophrenic patients.

On the influence of causal beliefs on the feeling of agency.

Who is causing what? The sense of agency is relational and efferent-triggered.

Citations & impact

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Citations of article over time

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Smart citations by scite.ai
Explore citation contexts and check if this article has been supported or disputed.
https://scite.ai/reports/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.08.020

Article citations

The reliability of assistance systems modulates the sense of control and acceptability of human operators.

Induced feelings of external influence during instructed imaginations in healthy subjects.

Action prediction modulates self-other integration in joint action.

Examining the effect of Libet clock stimulus parameters on temporal binding.

How Digital Food Affects Our Analog Lives: The Impact of Food Photography on Healthy Eating Behavior.

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Search life-sciences literature (43,943,223 articles, preprints and more)

Power to the will: how exerting physical effort boosts the sense of agency.

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Title not supplied

The four horsemen of automaticity: Awareness, efficiency, intention, and control in social cognition

Ego depletion: A resource model of volition, self-regulation, and controlled processing

Biran, M. d. (1805). Mémoire sur la décomposition de la pensée (Tome III). Vrin, Paris (1963).

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