The enhancement of temporal binding effect after negative social feedback

ABSTRACT

The present study investigated the effect of social feedback on the experiences of our actions and the outcomes (e.g. temporal binding between an action and its outcome, reflecting individuals’ causal beliefs modulated by their agency judgments). In Experiment 1a, participants freely decided (voluntary action) their action timing to cause an outcome, which was followed by social feedback. A larger temporal binding (TB) following negative vs. positive events was found. This effect appeared neither in the random context where the causal belief between the action and outcome was absent (Experiment 1b) nor in the involuntary action context where participants’ action timing was instructed (Experiment 1c). Experiments 2a and 2b examined the effect when the action-outcome was occluded, including reversing the order of outcome and feedback in Experiment 2b. Experiments 3a and 3b investigated the effect with only social feedback or only action-outcome presented. Results revealed that the effect found in Experiment 1 was driven by social feedback and independent of the availability of the action-outcome and the position of social feedback. Our findings demonstrate a stronger temporal integration of the action and its outcome following negative social feedback, reflecting fluctuations in sense of agency when faced with social feedback.

KEYWORDS:

• Temporal binding
• action
• social feedback
• sense of agency
• outcome valence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The participants’ estimated intervals were regressed onto the actual intervals and those participants whose regression data did not show a significant slope value would be excluded.

2 The interactions with interval in all the experiments were reported in the Supplementary Material because we were not interested in the temporal dynamics of the PEAB and CEAB effects.

3 Data analysis of the eight participants was reported in the Supplementary Material.

Additional information

Funding

The work was funded by STI 2030–the major projects (grant number: 2021ZD0200500) & STI2030-Major Projects (grant number: 2021ZD0204300), the General Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number: 31271083], and the Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number: 61632014].