Project description
A closer look teamwork dynamics to understand joint agency
In social interactions, our sense of agency – our feeling of control over actions and outcomes – plays a crucial role. Yet, joint agency – the sense of control when acting with others – remains understudied. Joint agency is the feeling of control we have when doing things with others, like moving furniture, playing sports, or making music together. Despite its importance, it has been studied less than individual agency. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) programme, the JAIG project delves into how joint agency operates in group settings. Through experiments in Virtual Reality, the project aims to uncover how our sense of control shifts when collaborating in larger groups.
Objective
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.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
10117 Berlin
Germany