Sense of Agency during Group Control

Previous work has shown that the sense of agency increases when commanding other people. However, such work has primarily been limited to dyads, and little is known about how the sense of agency changes when the number of followers increases. Furthermore, it is unclear if commanding social agents vs. mere physical events changes one's sense of agency. Three experiments, involving making virtual agents clap their hands and/or streetlamps turning on, explore this topic. All three experiments reveal a robust linear increase in explicit agency judgments with follower count. Interestingly, experiments 2 and 3 show that this effect is amplified with human-like avatars (relative to streetlamps), suggesting that there may be something special about commanding a group of human-like social agents. This research provides further insight to our understanding of the sense of agency in group dynamics.