Abstract

Coordinating actions with others – whether in group music-making, dancing, team sports, or other group activities – is often accompanied by a sense of joint agency, i.e., a sense that “we did that together”. Joint agency can range from a sense that control over coordinated actions is shared among co-performers to a powerful sense that co-performers are “acting as one,” i.e., as one unit with a singular body or mind. I will present a series of studies investigating the sensorimotor, cognitive, and socio-affective mechanisms that give rise to joint agency and discuss the ways these mechanisms might work together to produce strong experiences of joint agency. These studies employed a multi-methods approach: We examined behavioural and EEG correlates of joint agency through experimental manipulations of joint agency in simple laboratory-based tasks, such as coordinated finger tapping and novice music duet performance, and complex real-world tasks, such as orchestra performance. We also conducted qualitative investigations focused on the factors that facilitate joint agency and its phenomenology across a variety of activities, including team sports, group music-making, and ensemble theatre performance. Together, these studies shed light on the mechanisms underlying joint agency and illuminate the powerful positive impacts joint agency can have on social bonding, motivation, and sense of meaning. 

About the speaker

Janeen Loehr is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and Health Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. Her research investigates cognitive and neural mechanisms of interpersonal coordination, their impact on individuals’ and groups’ sense of agency, and how strong experiences of group agency contribute to health and well-being. She addresses these questions primarily in music-making contexts and uses a multi-methods approach that includes both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. She leads the University of Saskatchewan’s EEG Hyperscanning Laboratory and is a founding member of the interdisciplinary PICASSO (Promoting Interpersonal Connection and Alignment for Self and Society) research cluster, whose mission is to investigate how basic mechanisms of interpersonal coordination can be leveraged to address complex health and social challenges.

Free of charge - All are welcome