{"id":"mymindmine-knowledge-agency-v1","slug":"agency","domain":"psychology","title":"Agency","deck":"The capacity to initiate, select, and regulate action in relation to goals and conditions.","directAnswer":"Agency concerns an agent's capacity to act, influence outcomes, and participate in selecting or regulating behavior. In practice, agency is constrained by information, resources, social conditions, habits, perceived possibility, and available actions.","mechanism":["An action must first be represented as available enough to consider.","Perceived consequences alter whether an option feels selectable.","Repeated successful action can update perceived possibility and expand future action sets."],"whyItMatters":["Formal freedom can be larger than psychologically permitted action space.","CWI treats this gap as a decision-relevant mechanism."],"questions":["What makes an action feel possible?","How is agency constrained?","Can social proof expand agency?"],"related":["decision-making","free-will","motivation","perspective"],"sources":[{"label":"Stanford Encyclopedia: Free Will","url":"https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/","publisher":"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy"}],"brajology":["CWI: people often act within a behavioral corridor of familiar, socially legible actions.","PRS tracks how observed success and failure update possibility and risk perception."],"updated":"2026-09-20","canonicalUrl":"https://www.mymindmine.com/psychology/agency","author":{"name":"John Brajer","url":"https://www.mymindmine.com/people/john-brajer"},"publisher":"MyMindMine","knowledgeSystem":"MyMindMine Knowledge System v1","epistemicBoundary":{"externalSources":"Sources support the external factual orientation.","originalLayer":"Brajology and MyMindMine interpretations are original framework material and are not attributed to external sources."}}