agent definitions — psychology
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overview
psychological accounts focus on how individuals perceive control, regulate behavior, and relate to authority. agency emerges as a cognitive and motivational construct, sensitive to self-regulation, efficacy beliefs, and social influence.
signature traits
- self-regulation: bandura’s social cognitive theory positions agency around intentionality, forethought, and self-reactiveness.
- perceived control: agentic state (milgram) and related constructs explore when individuals surrender versus assert control.
- motivational framing: agency often linked to concepts like self-efficacy, communion vs. agency (bakan), and internal attribution.
illustrative definitions
- 1966 — david bakan, duality of human existence: introduces agency vs. communion as fundamental modes of relating.
- 1974 — stanley milgram, obedience to authority: the agentic state highlights the psychological shift toward instrumentality under authority.
- 1989 — albert bandura, “human agency in social cognitive theory”: codifies agentic properties of intentionality and self-reflection.
relation to other dimensions
- autonomy spectrum: psychology spans low (agentic state) to moderate/high (self-regulating human); transitions hinge on perceived control.
- entity frames: firmly human-centered but informative for hybrid systems modeling human supervisors or teammates.
- goal dynamics: highlights adaptation—individuals negotiate personal and imposed goals through self-regulatory processes.
- persistence & embodiment: lived bodies and experiences matter; agency is persistent because it reflects enduring cognitive capacities.
open questions
- how can human sense-of-agency measures inform evaluation of ai assistants that share control with users?
- what psychological safeguards prevent “automation complacency” when humans delegate to machine agents?
- can constructs like self-efficacy be meaningfully transferred to synthetic agents, or do they remain uniquely human?