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How does it feel to act together?

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Abstract

This paper on the phenomenology of joint agency proposes a foray into a little explored territory at the intersection of two very active domains of research: joint action and sense of agency. I explore two ways in which our experience of joint agency may differ from our experience of individual agency. First, the mechanisms of action specification and control involved in joint action are typically more complex than those present in individual actions, since it is crucial for joint action that people coordinate their plans and actions. I discuss the implications that these coordination requirements might have for the strength of the sense of agency an agent may experience for a joint action. Second, engagement in joint action may involve a transformation of agentive identity and a partial or complete shift from a sense of self-agency to a sense of we-agency. I discuss several factors that may contribute to shaping our sense of agentive identity in joint action.

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Notes

  1. See, for instance, Moore and Fletcher (2012) for accessible examples of how Bayesian cue integration works.

  2. For an excellent survey of recent developments in the empirical study of joint action, see also the papers in the special issue on joint action, guest-edited by Sukhvinder S. Obhi and Natalie Sebanz, in Experimental Brain Research, vol. 211, issues 3–4, June 2011.

  3. Models of motor control are typically based on optimality principles (for a review, see Todorov 2004). Very roughly, skilled performance on a certain task is performance that minimizes the total energy cost to the system. It has been proposed that optimality is also what guides our assessment of actions performed by others. Thus, according to the teleological stance advocated by Csibra and Gergeley (2007), our evaluation of the quality of actions is based on an assessment of the relative efficiency of the action performed to achieve the goal within the situational constraints given.

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Acknowledgments

For comments on an earlier version of this paper, I thank participants at the second ENSO conference in Rome and two anonymous referees for this journal. This work was supported by ANR-11-0001-02 PSL* and ANR-10-LABX-0087. I completed this paper while a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Central European University in Budapest and am grateful to this institution for its support.

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  1. Institut Jean Nicod, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, Paris, France

    Elisabeth Pacherie

  2. CNRS UMR 8129, Institut d’Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 29, rue d’Ulm, 75005, Paris, France

    Elisabeth Pacherie

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Pacherie, E. How does it feel to act together?. Phenom Cogn Sci 13, 25–46 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-013-9329-8

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