Something from nothing: Agency for deliberate nonactions

Several law systems punish nonactions such as failures to render assistance, although it is unknown if people spontaneously experience a sense of authorship for the consequences of their not acting. Here we provide evidence that events caused by deliberate choices not to act can indeed give rise to a vivid sense of agency. In three experiments, participants reported a sense of agency for events following nonactions and, crucially, temporal binding between nonactions and subsequent consequences suggested a sense of agency for nonactions even at an implicit level. These findings indicate that a sense of agency is not confined to overt body movements. At the same time, agency was more pronounced when the same event resulted from an action rather than being the consequence of a nonaction, highlighting the importance of ascribing different degrees of responsibility for the consequences of acting and not acting.