Pressure, Performance, and Sense of Agency: An Investigation of Sense of Agency and Task Accuracy Under High Stakes
Abstract
In this novel study we characterize factors that modulate sense of agency (SoA), defined as the feeling of control over one's voluntary actions and their outcomes. We assessed individuals' trait locus of control and state anxiety and manipulated task difficulty to evaluate whether internal traits are stronger modulators of SoA versus external performance pressure. We employed a novel task where participants press a button to stop a moving dot on a target. We manipulated the dot speed, time pressure to complete the task, and incentivized performance. We found that manipulating difficulty (faster dot speed) produced more failures and was predictive of lower explicit SoA ratings. Furthermore, SoA scores were boosted by receiving a high reward on success trials. This suggests a postdictive evaluation – increasing post-hoc feelings of control (not performance) when incentivized for success. Increasing anxiety was negatively correlated with SoA rating for failure in all manipulations. Keywords: Sense of Agency; Explicit Measures; Performance Pressure.