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Updated: Sep 1, 2025

Characterization of the Sense of Agency over the Actions of Neural-machine Interface-operated Prostheses
Published on: January 7, 2019
Human-likeness and attribution of intentionality predict vicarious sense of agency over humanoid robot actions
Cecilia Roselli1, Francesca Ciardo1, Davide De Tommaso1
1Social Cognition in Human Robot Interaction, Center for Human Technologies, Italian Institute of Technology, Via Enrico Melen 83, 16152, Genova, Italy.
Abstract:
Sense of Agency (SoA) is the feeling of being in control of one's actions and their outcomes. In a social context, people can experience a "vicarious" SoA over another human's actions; however, it is still controversial whether the same occurs in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). The present study aimed at understanding whether humanoid robots may elicit vicarious SoA in humans, and whether the emergence of this phenomenon depends on the attribution of intentionality towards robots. We asked adult participants to perform an Intentional Binding (IB) task alone and with the humanoid iCub robot, reporting the time of occurrence of both self- and iCub-generated actions. Before the experiment, participants' degree of attribution of intentionality towards robots was assessed. Results showed that participants experienced vicarious SoA over iCub-generated actions. Moreover, intentionality attribution positively predicted the magnitude of vicarious SoA. In conclusion, our results highlight the importance of factors such as human-likeness and attribution of intentionality for the emergence of vicarious SoA towards robots.
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