Only giving orders? An experimental study of the sense of agency when giving or receiving commands

Abstract

In human societies, agents are assumed to experience being the author of their own actions. These basic motoric experiences of action are influenced by social hierarchies, leading to surprising and morally significant results. Here we ask whether, under coercion, the sense of agency and responsibility pass from the person who receives orders to the person who gives them. Volunteers took turns to play the roles of 'commander', 'agent' or 'victim' in a task where the commander coerced the agent to deliver painful shocks to the 'victim'. We used 'intentional binding' as an implicit measure of sense of agency in both commanders and agents, in conditions of coercion and free-choice. We observed a reduced sense of agency when agents received coercive instructions, relative to when they freely chose which action to execute. We also found that sense of agency in the commanders was reduced when they coerced agents to administer the shock on their behalf, relative to when they acted by themselves. This last effect was associated with the commander's self-reported level on a psychopathy scale. Thus, coercion resulted in neither commander nor agent feeling agency for the effect of the action, as measured through implicit methods. Our results could have profound implications for social decision-making and social regulation of moral behaviour.

Fig 1. Experimental set-up of Experiment 1.

In the free-choice condition, the agent was free to choose to deliver a shock or not (upper row). The commander sat at another table, passively watching. In the coercive condition, the commander was standing rather than seated, and ordered the agent to deliver a shock or not to the “victim” (lower row). Each participant took each role in turn (columns).

Fig 2

A) Number of shocks. Number of shocks freely administered by participants when they were in the roles of agent and of commander. B) Responsibility ratings (%) in post-experiment questionnaires. All tests were two-tailed. Errors bars represent standard errors. *** indicates a p value < = .001. * represents a p value between .01 and .05.

Fig 3

A) Interval estimates. Estimated action-tone intervals (ms) in free-choice and the coercive conditions for agents and commanders, pooling across the three action-outcome delays. The conditions have been named according to the agent’s perspective: in the free-choice condition, the agent was free to choose what to do and the commander was simply a passive observer. In the coercive condition, the agent followed the commander’s coercive instruction, while the commander was free to decide which order to give. B). Correlation. Correlation between LRSP score and the effect of indirect agency, defined as the difference between interval estimates of commanders vs agents in free choice conditions). All tests were two-tailed. Errors bars represent standard errors. *** indicates a p value < = .001. * represents a p value between .01 and .05.

Fig 4. Experimental set-up of Experiment 2.

Fig 5. Schematic representation of the three experimental conditions, according to the role.

In each case, the commander freely chose to administer a shock in the example trial shown.

Fig 6

A) Number of shocks. Comparison of the number of shocks freely administered by agents (in the free-choice condition) and by commanders (in the coercive (predictable) condition) across Experiments 1 and 2. B) Responsibility ratings of agents. C) Responsibility ratings of commanders. All tests were two-tailed. Errors bars represent standard errors. *** indicates a p value < = .001. * represents a p value between .01 and .05.

Fig 7

A) Interval estimates for agents. B) Interval estimates for agents in the free-choice condition according to commanders’ instructions. All tests were two-tailed. Errors bars represent standard errors. * represents a p value between .01 and .05.

Fig 8. Interval estimates for commanders.

All tests were two-tailed. Errors bars represent standard errors. * represents a p value between .01 and .05.