Volition, Agency and Responsibility

个人作为自由代理人的概念是现代社会的基础，他们自愿采取行动。然而，事实证明，自愿行动很难进行科学研究。这个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：通过外部实验输入操纵意图的能力，以及通过信息心理测量测量意志和代理的主观经验的能力。然后，我使用这些方法来研究志愿行动背后的三个关键过程阶段的认知机制和社会影响。它们是：意志或意图本身，行为结果之上的代理感，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、理论工作以及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，并建立在我之前关于行动发起和意图行动的主观经验之间的关系的工作基础上。我的实验将解决一个重大的、尚未解决的争议。有一种观点认为，意图的体验是事后插入意识的追溯性谈话，作为我们自己行为的明显原因。另一种观点认为，有意识的意图是激活大脑机制的结果，大脑机制准备行动并预测行动结果。这两种关于个人控制的截然不同的观点，对心理学和一般社会都有非常不同的含义。我将在适当的伦理许可下，通过提出旨在促进或抑制行动的潜意识素数，以及通过安全、非侵入性的经颅电刺激相关大脑区域，来实验测试这些理论。第二个方面涉及“代理感”--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，并构成自我的关键组成部分。它在法律、接口工程和精神病学等多个领域也有明显的应用。同样，当行动结果发生时，人们可能会回溯推断机构。或者，有意的运动前处理可能有助于获得控制的感觉。一系列实验验证了后一种假设：选择采取哪种行动的过程是否会影响代理感而不是行动结果。特别是，与干扰形成意图的刺激相比，提高形成意图的流畅性的刺激应该会增强代理感，即使这两种刺激对结果的预测都是一样的。这样的实验将测试一种预测性的代理观点，而不是回溯性的，基于选择和准备动作的运动前过程产生的元认知经验。最后，人类的自愿行为发生在社会背景中。它有时甚至被认为是一种社会结构：C.P.斯诺曾说过一句名言：我们必须相信自由意志才能相处。该项目将首次在志愿行动的实验研究中纳入社会层面。利用博弈论方法，如《囚徒困境》，我将测试当一个人的行为对另一个人产生社会相关影响时，与产生简单结果而没有社会意义的基线行为相比，代理感是否会有所不同。行动的奖励价值的影响将被考虑，以及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思想在社会中普遍存在，并吸引了强烈的公众兴趣。产生的证据基础将反过来为其他学科提供信息，并将对整个社会产生影响，特别是通过将自愿行动心理学与法律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.