Personality Traits, Locus of Control, and Susceptibility to Social Influence in Agency Judgments
Abstract
It has been suggested that sense of agency might be jointly affected by situational and inter-individual factors. In this study, we examine if personality traits and locus of control beliefs can explain inter-individual differences in both (1) sense of agency and (2) how susceptible people are to social influence in relation to their agency judgments.. To test this, we employ measures for the Big Five Personality Traits and Levenson's Locus of Control in combination with a task based on an interactive computer game. We manipulate sensorimotor agency cues related to action control as well as the social information communicated to participants. Our findings show that while locus of control beliefs are related to differences in sense of agency, neither big five personality traits nor locus of control beliefs can account for participants' interpersonal variance in susceptibility to social influence.