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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 affects in...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2021
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8553174/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34710149 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258884 |
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author | Caspar, Emilie A. Beyer, Frederike Cleeremans, Axel Haggard, Patrick |
author_facet | Caspar, Emilie A. Beyer, Frederike Cleeremans, Axel Haggard, Patrick |
author_sort | Caspar, Emilie A. |
collection | PubMed |
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 | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8553174 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-85531742021-10-29 The obedient mind and the volitional brain: A neural basis for preserved sense of agency and sense of responsibility under coercion Caspar, Emilie A. Beyer, Frederike Cleeremans, Axel Haggard, Patrick PLoS One Research Article 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. Public Library of Science 2021-10-28 /pmc/articles/PMC8553174/ /pubmed/34710149 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258884 Text en © 2021 Caspar et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Caspar, Emilie A. Beyer, Frederike Cleeremans, Axel Haggard, Patrick The obedient mind and the volitional brain: A neural basis for preserved sense of agency and sense of responsibility under coercion |
title | 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_short | 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 |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8553174/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34710149 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258884 |
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