Acute psychosocial stress weakens the sense of agency in healthy adults

Abstract

The sense of agency (SoA) refers to the feeling of being in control of one’s actions and the subsequent consequence of these actions. Emotional context seems to alter the strength of sense of agency. The present study explored the influence of acute psychosocial stress on the SoA by means of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). Self-assessment manikin (SAM) and objective physiological indicators (e.g. heart rate, electrodermal activity, and salivary cortisol levels) were utilized to evaluate the effect of the TSST. We also employed the temporal binding effect as an implicit assessment of the participant’s SoA. The results indicated that the stress level of the experimental group after TSST was significantly higher than the control group, whilst the temporal binding scores of the experimental group decreased after TSST manipulation. In short, acute psychosocial stress with intense emotional arousal weakened the sense of agency.

Keywords:

• Sense of agency
• acute psychosocial stress
• the Trier Social Stress Test
• temporal binding effect
• emotional context
• self-awareness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All raw data obtained in this experiment including questionnaires, physiological measurements and time estimates, and data used for statistical analysis in the article (excluding excluded data), are publicly available on the figshare website: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21758537.v2.

Additional information

Funding

This research was financially supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (62061136001, 32071055).

Notes on contributors

Yayun Chu

Yayun Chu,Postgraduate students at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

Guanhua Huang

Guanhua Huang,Postgraduate students at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

Yunyun Li

Yunyun Li, PhD, Postdoctorat the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

Qin Chen

Qin Chen,Postgraduate students at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

Jiajia Liu

Jiajia Liu, Postgraduate students at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

Ke Zhao

Ke Zhao,PhD,Associate professor at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

Xiaolan Fu

Xiaolan Fu, PhD,Professor at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.