People intentionally engage in goal-directed actions—i.e., set goals, create plans, and execute volitional control, which are fundamental for our understanding of ourselves, others, and events. In three experiments we created a novel sentence unscrambling task that was used to prime the self-as-agent (i.e., sentences that contain the pronoun “I”), the self-as-patient (i.e., sentences that contain the pronoun “me”), or no prime (i.e., sentences that contain proper names only), and tested whether that priming would influence the interpretation of causal, spatial, and temporal events. Results demonstrated that the self-as-agent primed participants were more likely to attribute causal influence to a kayaker in a river (Study 1), to assign spatial directionality consistent with an agent moving through space (Study 2), and to assign temporal directionality consistent with an agent moving through time (Study 3). Taken together, these three studies demonstrate that situated conceptualizations of the self as an agent can be a springboard for relevant empirical and theoretical contributions to a broad range of ideas and approaches—from theories of agency to embodied cognition, from language systems to metaphoric representation frameworks, with some potentials even in the clinical and mental health field. Along these lines, implications for animacy, cultural differences, and clinical settings are discussed.

人们有意识地参与以目标为导向的行动——即设定目标、制定计划和执行意志控制，这对于我们了解自己、他人和事件至关重要。在三个实验中，我们创建了一个新的句子解读任务，用于启动作为代理的自我（即包含代词“I”的句子）、作为患者的自我（即包含代词“me”的句子”），或没有启动（即，仅包含专有名称的句子），并测试启动是否会影响对因果、空间和时间事件的解释。结果表明，自我作为代理启动的参与者更有可能将因果影响归因于河流中的皮划艇运动员（研究 1），分配与在空间中移动的代理一致的空间方向性（研究 2），并分配与随时间移动的代理一致的时间方向性（研究 3）。综上所述，这三项研究表明，将自我作为代理人的情境化概念化可以成为相关经验和理论贡献的跳板，从而对广泛的思想和方法做出相关的贡献——从代理理论到具身认知，从语言系统到隐喻表征框架，即使在临床和心理健康领域也具有一定的潜力。沿着这些思路，讨论了对活力、文化差异和临床环境的影响。这三项研究表明，将自我作为代理人的情境化概念化可以成为相关经验和理论贡献的跳板，对广泛的思想和方法——从代理理论到具身认知，从语言系统到隐喻表征框架，以及一些甚至在临床和心理健康领域的潜力。沿着这些思路，讨论了对活力、文化差异和临床环境的影响。这三项研究表明，将自我作为代理人的情境化概念化可以成为相关经验和理论贡献的跳板，对广泛的思想和方法——从代理理论到具身认知，从语言系统到隐喻表征框架，以及一些甚至在临床和心理健康领域的潜力。沿着这些思路，讨论了对活力、文化差异和临床环境的影响。