Disentangling the sense of agency and the sense of ownership in the virtual hand illusion paradigm

We used the virtual hand illusion paradigm to study the relationship between two aspects of the minimal self: the sense of agency and the sense of (body) ownership. Converging evidence for the (at least) partial independence of agency and ownership was found. For instance, sense of agency was a better predictor of individual anxiety levels than sense of ownership, and males showed stronger effects related to agency, presumably due to gender-specific attribution styles and empathy skills. Taken together, our findings suggest that the sense of agency and the sense of ownership are driven by different kinds of information and related to different psychological functions.