Communicated priors tune the perception of control

Abstract

Action allows us to shape the world around us. But to act effectively we need to accurately sense what we can and cannot control. Classic theories across cognitive science suppose that this ‘sense of agency’ is constructed from the sensorimotor signals we experience as we interact with our surroundings. But these sensorimotor signals are inherently ambiguous, and can provide us with a distorted picture of what we can and cannot influence. Here we investigate one way that agents like us might overcome the inherent ambiguity of these signals: by combining noisy sensorimotor evidence with prior beliefs about control acquired through explicit communication with others. Using novel tools to measure and model control decisions, we find that explicit beliefs about the controllability of the environment alter both the sensitivity and bias of agentic choices; meaning that we are both better at detecting and more biased to feel control when we are told to expect it. These seemingly paradoxical effects on agentic choices can be captured by a computational model where expecting to be in control exaggerates the sensitivity or ‘gain’ of the mechanisms we use to detect our influence over our surroundings – making us increasingly sensitised to both true and illusory signs of agency. In combination, these results reveal a cognitive and computational mechanism that allows public communication about what we can and cannot influence to reshape our private sense of control.