Volition, Agency and Responsibility

个人作为自由行为者的概念是现代社会的基础。然而，志愿行动已经证明很难进行科学研究。该项目首先开发了一些可以为自愿行动提供证据基础的关键方法：利用外部实验输入操纵意图的能力，以及利用信息心理测量方法测量意志和代理的主观体验的能力。然后，我使用这些方法来研究的认知机制和三个关键阶段的处理，自愿行动的基础的社会影响。它们是：意志或意图本身，对行动结果的能动性，以及意志和社会责任之间的联系。该奖学金通过心理学实验，理论工作和跨学科和更广泛的参与来实现这些目标。该项目的第一部分涉及意志，并建立在我以前关于行动开始和意图行动的主观体验之间关系的工作基础上。我的实验将解决一个重大的，悬而未决的争议。一种观点认为，意图的经验是回溯性的虚构，作为我们自己行为的明显原因被插入意识中。另一种观点认为，有意识的意图是激活大脑机制的结果，这些机制准备行动并预测行动结果。这两种截然不同的关于个体控制的观点，对心理学和整个社会都有着截然不同的影响。我将在适当的伦理许可下，通过呈现旨在促进或抑制行为的阈下启动，以及通过安全、非侵入性的经颅电刺激相关脑区，对这些理论进行实验测试。第二个方面涉及“能动感”--一个人的行为引起或控制外部世界事件的感觉。这种无处不在但难以捉摸的感觉对正常的精神生活至关重要，并形成了自我的关键组成部分。它在法律、界面工程和精神病学等不同领域也有明显的应用。同样，当行动结果发生时，人们可能会追溯性地推断出能动性。或者，有意的运动前区加工可能有助于控制的感觉。一系列实验检验了后一个假设：选择采取哪一个行动的过程是否会影响行动结果的代理感。特别是，与干扰形成意图的刺激相比，增强形成意图的流畅性的刺激应该增强代理感，即使这两种刺激都同样预测结果。这样的实验将测试一种预测性的观点，而不是回顾性的，基于元认知经验的机构，由前运动过程产生的选择和准备行动。它有时甚至被认为是一种社会建构：C. P.斯诺有一句名言：“我们必须相信自由意志才能沿着”。该项目将首次将社会层面纳入志愿行动的实验研究。使用博弈论的方法，如囚徒困境，我将测试是否代理感变化时，一个人的行动对另一个人的社会相关的影响，相比，基线行动，产生简单的结果，没有社会意义。行动的奖励价值的影响将被考虑，因为将两个人之间的合作程度。这些数据将为关于意志和责任在人类文化中的作用的理论提供信息。意志和个人自我控制的观念在社会中无处不在，并引起了公众的强烈兴趣。所产生的证据基础将反过来为其他学科提供信息，并将对社会产生普遍影响，特别是通过一个将志愿行动心理学与法律的责任联系起来的跨学科讲习班。

The concept of individuals as free agents, who make voluntary actions, is the basis of modern societies. Yet voluntary action has proved difficult to study scientifically. This project first develops some key methods which can provide an evidence base for voluntary action: the ability to manipulate intentions with external experimental inputs, and the ability to measure the subjective experiences of volition and agency with informative psychometric measures. I then use these methods to study the cognitive mechanisms and the social impact of three key stages of processing that underlie voluntary action. These are: volition or intention itself, the sense of agency over action outcomes, and the link between volition and social responsibility. The fellowship achieves these objectives by a mixture of psychological experiments, theoretical work and interdisciplinary and wider engagement.The first part of the project deals with volition, and builds on my previous work on the relation between initiation of action and subjective experience of intending to act. My experiments will address a major, unresolved controversy. On one view, experiences of intention are retrospective confabulations, inserted post hoc into consciousness, as apparent causes for our own actions. On another view, conscious intentions are the consequence of activating brain mechanisms that prepare actions and predict action outcomes. These two very different views of individual control, have very different implications both for psychology, and for society generally. I will test these theories experimentally, with appropriate ethical permission, by presenting subliminal primes designed to promote or inhibit action and also by safe, non-invasive transcranial electrical stimulation of relevant brain areas.A second aspect deals with the "sense of agency" - the feeling that one's actions cause or control events in the outside world. This ubiquitous but elusive feeling is crucial to normal mental life, and forms a key component of the self. It also has obvious application to fields as diverse as law, interface engineering, and psychiatry. Again, people might infer agency retrospectively when action outcomes occur. Alternatively, intentional premotor processing might contribute to the feeling of being in control. A series of experiments test the latter hypothesis: does the process of selecting which action to make influence the sense of agency over action outcomes. In particular, stimuli that enhance fluency of forming intentions should boost sense of agency compared to stimuli that interfere with forming intentions, even when both stimuli are equally predictive of outcomes. Such experiments will test a predictive, as opposed to retrospective, view of agency, based on metacognitive experience generated by premotor processes that select and prepare actions.Finally, human voluntary action occurs in a social context. It is sometimes even thought to be a social construct: C.P. Snow famously said "We have to believe in free will to get along". This project will include the social dimension in experimental studies of voluntary action for the first time. Using game-theoretic methods such as Prisoner's Dilemma, I will test whether the sense of agency varies when an individual's action has socially-relevant effects on another person, compared to a baseline actions that produce simple outcomes without social meaning. The influence of action's reward value will be considered, as will the degree of co-operation between the two individuals. The data will inform theories on the roles of volition and responsibility in human culture.Ideas of volition and individual self-control are pervasive in society, and attract strong public interest. The evidence base generated will in turn inform other disciplines and will impact society generally, notably through an interdisciplinary workshop linking psychology of voluntary action and legal responsibility.