The obedient mind and the volitional brain: A neural basis for preserved sense of agency and sense of responsibility under coercion.

Milgram's classical studies famously suggested a widespread willingness to obey authority, even to the point of inflicting harm. Important situational factors supporting obedience, such as proximity with the victim, have been established. Relatively little work has focused on how coercion affec...

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Autores principales: Emilie A Caspar, Frederike Beyer, Axel Cleeremans, Patrick Haggard
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Publicado: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/1874f2de70a04098b34467b4d62b56b8
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spelling oai:doaj.org-article:1874f2de70a04098b34467b4d62b56b82021-12-02T20:16:28ZThe obedient mind and the volitional brain: A neural basis for preserved sense of agency and sense of responsibility under coercion.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0258884https://doaj.org/article/1874f2de70a04098b34467b4d62b56b82021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258884https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203Milgram's classical studies famously suggested a widespread willingness to obey authority, even to the point of inflicting harm. Important situational factors supporting obedience, such as proximity with the victim, have been established. Relatively little work has focused on how coercion affects individual cognition, or on identifying the cognitive factors that underlie inter-individual differences in the tendency to yield to coercion. Here, we used fMRI to investigate the neural systems associated with changes in volitional processes associated with sense of agency and sense of responsibility under coercion. Participants either freely chose, or were instructed by the experimenter, to give mildly painful electric shocks to another participant, or to refrain from doing so. We have previously shown that coercion reduces temporal binding, which has been proposed as an implicit proxy measure of sense of agency. We tested how reduced agency under coercion related to differences in neural activity between free choice and coercion. In contrast to previous studies and to participants performing the task outside the MRI scanner, on average there was no effect of coercion on agency for participants in the scanner. However, greater activity in the medial frontal gyrus was reliably associated with greater agency under coercion. A similar association was found using explicit responsibility ratings. Our findings suggest that medial frontal processes, perhaps related to volition during action planning and execution, may help to preserve a sense of accountability under coercion. Further, participants who administered more shocks under free choice showed reduced activity during free choice trials in brain areas associated with social cognition. Possibly, this might reflect participants cognitively distancing themselves from the recipient of the shocks under free choice, whereas this was not observed under coercion.Emilie A CasparFrederike BeyerAxel CleeremansPatrick HaggardPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 10, p e0258884 (2021)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
topic Medicine
R
Science
Q
spellingShingle Medicine
R
Science
Q
Emilie A Caspar
Frederike Beyer
Axel Cleeremans
Patrick Haggard
The obedient mind and the volitional brain: A neural basis for preserved sense of agency and sense of responsibility under coercion.
description Milgram's classical studies famously suggested a widespread willingness to obey authority, even to the point of inflicting harm. Important situational factors supporting obedience, such as proximity with the victim, have been established. Relatively little work has focused on how coercion affects individual cognition, or on identifying the cognitive factors that underlie inter-individual differences in the tendency to yield to coercion. Here, we used fMRI to investigate the neural systems associated with changes in volitional processes associated with sense of agency and sense of responsibility under coercion. Participants either freely chose, or were instructed by the experimenter, to give mildly painful electric shocks to another participant, or to refrain from doing so. We have previously shown that coercion reduces temporal binding, which has been proposed as an implicit proxy measure of sense of agency. We tested how reduced agency under coercion related to differences in neural activity between free choice and coercion. In contrast to previous studies and to participants performing the task outside the MRI scanner, on average there was no effect of coercion on agency for participants in the scanner. However, greater activity in the medial frontal gyrus was reliably associated with greater agency under coercion. A similar association was found using explicit responsibility ratings. Our findings suggest that medial frontal processes, perhaps related to volition during action planning and execution, may help to preserve a sense of accountability under coercion. Further, participants who administered more shocks under free choice showed reduced activity during free choice trials in brain areas associated with social cognition. Possibly, this might reflect participants cognitively distancing themselves from the recipient of the shocks under free choice, whereas this was not observed under coercion.
format article
author Emilie A Caspar
Frederike Beyer
Axel Cleeremans
Patrick Haggard
author_facet Emilie A Caspar
Frederike Beyer
Axel Cleeremans
Patrick Haggard
author_sort Emilie A Caspar
title The obedient mind and the volitional brain: A neural basis for preserved sense of agency and sense of responsibility under coercion.
title_short The obedient mind and the volitional brain: A neural basis for preserved sense of agency and sense of responsibility under coercion.
title_full The obedient mind and the volitional brain: A neural basis for preserved sense of agency and sense of responsibility under coercion.
title_fullStr The obedient mind and the volitional brain: A neural basis for preserved sense of agency and sense of responsibility under coercion.
title_full_unstemmed The obedient mind and the volitional brain: A neural basis for preserved sense of agency and sense of responsibility under coercion.
title_sort obedient mind and the volitional brain: a neural basis for preserved sense of agency and sense of responsibility under coercion.
publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate 2021
url https://doaj.org/article/1874f2de70a04098b34467b4d62b56b8
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