Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Self-agency, also known as the phenomenal will, is the sense that actions are self-generated. Scientist Benjamin Libet was the first to study it, concluding that brain activity predicts the action before one even has conscious awareness of his or her intention to act upon that action (see Neuroscience of free will ).
Agency has also been defined in the American Journal of Sociology as a temporally embedded process that encompasses three different constitutive elements: iteration, projectivity and practical evaluation. [3] Each of these elements is a component of agency as a whole.
Agency is the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment. It is independent of the moral dimension, which is called moral agency. In sociology, an agent is an individual engaging with the social structure. Notably, though, the primacy of social structure vs. individual capacity with regard to persons' actions is debated within sociology.
The concept of agency implies an active organism, one who desires, makes plans, and carries out actions. [5] The sense of agency plays a pivotal role in cognitive development, including the first stage of self-awareness (or pre-theoretical experience of one's own mentality), which scaffolds theory of mind capacities.
In psychology, agency signifies the concept of a person's ability to initiate and control their actions, and the feeling they have of being in charge of their actions. The topic of agency can be divided into two topical domains. The first half of the topic of agency deals with the behavioral sense, or outward expressive evidence thereof.
In the social sciences there is a standing debate over the primacy of structure or agency in shaping human behaviour. Structure is the recurrent patterned arrangements which influence or limit the choices and opportunities available. [1] Agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. [1]
Attribution theory is the original parent theory with Harold Kelley's covariation model and Bernard Weiner's three-dimensional model branching from Attribution theory. Attribution theory also influenced several other theories as well such as Heider's Perceived Locus of Causality which eventually led to Deci and Ryan's Theory of Self-determination.
Harold Kelley's covariation model (1967, 1971, 1972, 1973) [1] is an attribution theory in which people make causal inferences to explain why other people and ourselves behave in a certain way. It is concerned with both social perception and self-perception (Kelley, 1973).