Social Agency as a continuum

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Social Psychology
• Philosophy of Mind

Background:

• Sense of Agency (SoA) is fundamental to human experience, referring to the feeling of causing one's actions and their effects.
• Social Agency extends SoA to interactions with conspecifics, encompassing reactions to actions, joint actions, and social presence.
• Current conceptualizations of Social Agency are oversimplified and underresearched, lacking clear links to nonsocial SoA.

Purpose of the Study:

• To conceptualize Social Agency and its relationship with nonsocial Sense of Agency.
• To review empirical evidence and identify commonalities and differences across Social Agency instantiations.
• To propose a new framework for understanding Social Agency.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of empirical evidence on Social Agency.
• Analysis of commonalities and differences in Social Agency paradigms.
• Conceptual analysis integrating Social Agency with nonsocial SoA.

Main Results:

• Social Agency can be conceptualized as a continuum, with the degree of cooperation as the critical dimension.
• This continuum framework clarifies the relationship between Social Agency and nonsocial Sense of Agency.
• Identified factors influencing SoA also affect Social Agency, with outstanding empirical questions highlighted.

Conclusions:

• The proposed continuum model offers a unified perspective on Social Agency.
• Highlights the importance of cooperation in modulating the Sense of Agency in social contexts.
• Recommends future research directions and methodological improvements for ecological validity in Social Agency studies.