Menu
MapConnectionsTopicsBulgariaThe Night (K-TRIO)Marie Skłodowska-CurieFor studentsFor teachersMethodologySurprise me
HEIndividual fellowship2023–2025

JAIG · Joint Agency in Groups

Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2023-10-01 → 2025-09-30
EU contribution
€173,847
Participants
1
Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.

Results in brief

Joint Agency in Groups

The sense of agency, the experience of being in control of one’s actions and their consequences, is a core component of human cognition and social life. While research has examined agency in individuals and dyads, much less is known about how it operates in larger groups or in interactions with mere objects. This is a critical gap at a time when collective action, both human–human and human–object, is increasingly central to work, governance, and everyday life. The JAIG project set out to fill this gap by addressing three objectives: 1. Determine how joint agency changes with group size. 2. Test whether these effects differ for social agents (human-like) versus mere objects. 3. Identify how social role, leading vs. following influences, joint agency. Across a series of controlled experiments, the project measured both implicit and explicit indicators of agency to capture multiple dimensions of the phenomenon. The results demonstrate that the sense of agency scales with group size, particularly when interacting with social agents, and that leadership enhances agency while following reduces it.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

The sense of agency refers to the underlying feeling of control over our voluntary actions and the outcome(s) of those actions. Joint agency refers to the sense of agency when we perform voluntary actions with other people. This is the feeling we experience when we move a couch with a friend, build a Lego tower with our younger family members, play sports with friends, or even perform music with a band. Despite its essential role in social life, joint agency has received much less attention than work on individual sense of agency. Furthermore, extant work has primarily focused on dyads. Yet, actions are not done solely by individuals or pairs; indeed, the ability to work together in large groups and perform similar and complementary actions to achieve some goal (e.g., building a large house) undoubtedly played an essential role in the flourishing of human societies. As such, the aim of this research proposal is to fill this gap in the literature by investigating if and how joint agency changes in groups. To tackle this important issue, my work will involve a series of experiments, implemented in a Virtual Reality (VR) setting, featuring both behavioural and neural indices of the sense of agency.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITAET ZU BERLIN · BerlinCoordinatorGermany

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union