(Dis)Embodied Joint Agency in Human-Virtual Agents Interactions

The sense of agency is a fundamental feature of the human mind and deeply connected with its embodied roots. Recent advances in artificial agents such as robots and Virtual Reality (VR) lead to the rapid emergence of new types of embodied interactions and joint agencies. While it is well established that humans readily assign human-like attributes to artificial others, less is known how the human embodiment affects human-artificial agents interactions. We conducted a study (n°43) looking at the relationship between Depersonalisation (DP) experiences and joint agency in human-virtual agent interactions. DP is condition that makes people feel detached from their self and body, with atypical sense of agency over one’s own actions, and distressing subjective feelings of "being a robot” or an “automatic pilot”. Specifically, we have created a VR environment where participants with low versus high levels of DP experiences perform the classic Joint Simon Task while embodying either a human or a humanoid robot avatar in tandem with either another human avatar or robotic avatar. Our findings suggest a significant effect of the DP experiences on the sense of joint agency as measured by the Joint Simon task. Specifically, participants with high levels of DP experiences displayed faster reaction times (RTs) when they embody the Human avatar as compared to when they embodied the robotic avatar. In addition, using the classic Intentional Binding task, we found that time estimations were shorter in high DP participants (but not in Low DP participants) when they embodied a robotic avatar as compared to a human avatar. Our study provides for the first time evidence that the human embodiment matters too in joint agency tasks in addition to the artificial embodiment. Our results pave the way towards more human-body centred design in creating interactions with artificial others, especially when these interactions permeate our daily lives.