How agency shapes the perception of time

When we perform an action that is followed closely by an event, we often have a sense of personal agency ("I caused that"). Though extensive research has examined the inferential process that gives rise to the conscious experience of agency (Wegner, 2002), little is known about the phenomenological aspects of this experience. Preliminary evidence suggests that intentional binding, a perceptual illusion in which one's action and a subsequent event seem closer in time than they really are (Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002), may be a part of this experience--a hypothesis that the present research tested in four experiments. On each trial of a novel paradigm, subjects performed an action that, after a brief delay, was followed by an event. Then they were asked to estimate the length of this delay and to report the degree to which it felt as though their action had caused the event. Critically, situational cues to agency, such as whether or not an event was consistent with the subject's action, were manipulated to see whether they would affect self-reported agency and binding in similar ways. Also of interest was whether certain individual difference variables involving a distorted sense of agency, such as depression and narcissism, would moderate any effects found on binding. Overall, the results supported the hypothesis that binding is a part of the experience of agency, while confirming the importance of several situational and individual difference variables to this experience. When the mind makes an inference of personal agency, it temporally binds action and event together, shaping the perception of time.