Both first-hand and vicarious social ostracism reduces sense of agency and body ownership: evidence from explicit and implicit measures.

Abstract

Previous findings revealed that social ostracism reduces people's sense of agency and body ownership, and vicarious ostracism reduces agency. Given theoretical claims that other's and own behavior may be cognitively represented similarly, we compared the impact of first-hand and vicarious social ostracism on agency and ownership, using both explicit and implicit measures. Participants were separated into target group and observer group, to experience first-hand or vicarious ostracism or inclusion. We used a virtual Cyberball game to induce social ostracism or inclusion; and virtual hand illusion, where participants could freely control a virtual hand by moving their real hands, for agency and ownership measurements. Findings show that, both first-hand and vicarious ostracism reduced agency and ownership in both explicit and implicit measures. While the implicit measures were affected by first-hand and vicarious experience equally, the explicit measures showed a stronger reduction of agency and ownership for first-hand than for vicarious experience.