Sense of agency and decision making

Agency is the sense that one has control over one's own actions and the consequences of those actions. A recent theory proposes that increases in agency disinhibit the dopamine system and thereby increase the number of tonically active dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area. The theory, called ADDS (Agency Disinhibits the Dopamine System), proposes a specific neural network that mediates these effects. ADDS successfully accounts for a variety of relevant neuroscience and behavioral results. This article extends ADDS to decision making by deriving many novel predictions about how the sense of agency affects many different components of the decision-making process. Specifically, it is shown that ADDS predicts that increases in agency should: 1) increase the value of positive outcomes but have relatively little effect on the value of negative outcomes; 2) increase risk taking; and 3) reduce temporal discounting, except in cases where endogenous DA levels are unusually high, in which case increases in agency should increase temporal discounting. More empirical work is needed to test these predictions rigorously. Even so, considerable existing evidence is reviewed that supports each of these predictions.