Depressive traits are associated with a reduced effect of choice on implicit sense of agency

Our everyday actions and their subsequent outcomes are accompanied by a feeling of control or agency. This sense of agency (SoA) is dependent on the contribution of both prospective factors (e.g., action choice), and retrospective factors (e.g., outcome valence) with considerable variation in the population. We manipulated freedom of choice and valence of outcome to assess the relationship between implicit SoA and subclinical depressive and psychosis-like traits in a cohort of healthy young adults. Participants (N=150) completed a Libet Clock task, in which they had either a free or forced choice of which of two buttons to press, and received either a positive or negative outcome (cash register or klaxon). Participants were required to judge the time on the clock the tone sounded. We measured outcome binding, the shift in the perceived time of the outcome back in time towards the moment of the action. Participants also completed questionnaires on both depressive and psychosis-like traits. Positive outcomes strongly increased intentional binding. The evidence favoured no effect of freedom of choice on average, but this was influenced by inter-individual differences. Individuals reporting more depressive traits had less of a difference in intentional binding between free and forced choice conditions. The findings show that implicit SoA is sensitive to outcome valence and differs across the subclinical depression continuum.