1. Agency and social psychology
Kari Mikko Vesala/ 2012
UHEL/Department of Social Research

2. Three lines of theorizing agency in social psychology
January 31th
Three lines of theorizing agency in social psychology

3. social cognitive theory
symbolic interaction theory
rhetorical/dramaturgical theory

4. social cognitive theory
Did you find society in Bandura’s article?
If, in what form/sense?

5. Bandura 2006
“To be an agent is to influence intentionally one’s functioning and life circumstances.”
Four core properties: intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, self-reflectiveness.

6. About the background
Social learning theories (e.g. Rotter 1954; cognitive interpretation of instrumental learning; freedom of movement as a description of generalized ”learning attitude”; internal locus of control)
Bandura: observational learning (vicarious learning, modelling)
”They most likely begin to learn about action causation through repeated observation of contingent occurrences in which the actions of other people make things happen.” (p.169)

7. Bandura 2006
“As infants begin to develop some behavioral capabilities, they not only observe but also directly experience that their actions make things happen. We can greatly enhance their learning that actions produce certain outcomes by linking outcomes closely to actions, by using aids that channel their attention to the outcomes they are producing, and by heightening the salience and functional value of the outcomes (Millar, 1972; Millar & Schaffer, 1972;Watson, 1979).With the development of representational capabilities, infants can begin to learn from probabilistic and delayed outcomes brought about by personal actions.” (p.169)

8. Bandura 2006
“Development of a sense of personal agency requires more than simply producing effects by actions. Infants acquire a sense of personal agency when they recognize that they can make things happen and they regard themselves as agents of their actions. This additional understanding extends the perception of agency from action causality to personal causality.”
” If stubbing one’s toe brings pain, but seeing other people stub their toes brings no personal pain, one’s own activity becomes distinguished from that of other persons.”

9. “On the basis of growing personal and social experiences, an infant eventually forms a symbolic representation of him- or herself as a distinct self capable of making things happen.”
-> personal agency is learned (i.e. acquired) (”The newborn arrives without any sense of selfhood and personal agency.”)

10. Self-efficacy
“Among the mechanisms of human agency, none is more central or pervasive than belief of personal efficacy (Bandura, 1997). This core belief is the foundation of human agency. Unless people believe they can produce desired effects by their actions, they have little incentive to act, or to persevere in the face of difficulties. Whatever other factors serve as guides and motivators, they are rooted in the core belief that one has the power to effect changes by one’s actions.”

11. Self-efficacy
Efficacy beliefs also shape people’s outcome expectations—whether they expect their efforts to produce favorable outcomes or adverse ones. In addition, efficacy beliefs determine how opportunities and impediments are viewed. People of low efficacy are easily convinced of the futility of effort in the face of difficulties. They quickly give up trying. Those of high efficacy view impediments as surmountable by improvement of self-regulatory skills and perseverant effort. They stay the course in the face of difficulties and remain resilient to adversity. Moreover, efficacy beliefs affect the quality of emotional life and vulnerability to stress and depression.” (171)

12. -> self-efficacy: ”a foundation of agency”;
determinant of agency?

13. Bandura framing agency?
Executive; individualistic?
Rejects extreme substantialist self-action:
“There is no absolute agency” (164); “People do not live their lives in individual autonomy” (165); . “It is not a matter of ‘‘free will,’’ which is a throwback to medieval theology (165)

14. Instead, presents agency as a contribution to causal structure:
“People do not operate as autonomous agents. Nor is their behavior wholly determined by situational influences. Rather, human functioning is a product of a reciprocal interplay of intrapersonal, behavioral, and environmental determinants (Bandura, 1986). This triadic interaction includes the exercise of self-influence as part of the causal structure.”

15. “in acting as an agent, an individual makes causal contributions to the course of events. The relative magnitude of the personal contribution to the codetermination varies depending on the level of agentic personal resources, types of activities, and situational circumstances. Social cognitive theory rejects a duality of human agency and a disembodied social structure.”

16. Bandura 2001
The manner in which human agency operates has been conceptualized in at least three different ways--as either autonomous agency, mechanical agency, or emergent interactive agency. The notion that humans serve as entirely independent agents of their own actions has few, if any, serious advocates. However, environmental determinists sometimes invoke the view of autonomous agency in arguments designed to repudiate any role of self-influence in causal processes.
Social cognitive theory subscribes to a model of emergent interactive agency (Bandura, 1986). Persons are neither autonomous agents nor simply mechanical conveyers of animating environmental influences. Rather, they make causal contribution to their own motivation and action within a system of triadic reciprocal causation. In this model of reciprocal causation, action, cognitive, affective, and other personal factors, and environmental events all operate as interacting determinants.

17. However, this contribution is heavily underlined, and brought to the forefront, by Bandura:
“A theory of human agency raises the issue of freedom and determinism. When viewed from a social cognitive perspective, freedom is conceived not just passively as the absence of constraints, but also proactively as the exercise of self-influence in the service of selected goals and desired outcomes. For example, people have the freedom to vote, but whether they get themselves to vote, and the level and form of their political engagement, depends, in large part, on the self-influence they bring to bear. In addition to regulating their actions, people live in a psychic environment largely of their own making. The self management of inner life is also part of the agentic process.

18. Because self-influence is an interacting part of the determining conditions, human agency is not incompatible with the principle of regulative causality. Given that individuals are producers as well as products of their life circumstances, they are partial authors of the past conditions that developed them, as well as the future courses their lives take.” (165)

19. AGENTIC MANAGEMENT OF FORTUITY !!!

20. Agentic resources within the individual? !!!
The cultivation of agentic capabilities adds concrete substance to abstract metaphysical discourses about freedom and determinism. People who develop their competencies, self-regulatory skills, and enabling beliefs in their efficacy can generate a wider array of options that expand their freedom of action, and are more successful in realizing desired futures, than those with less developed agentic resources (Bandura, 1986, 1997; Meichenbaum, 1984; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1994).

21. Personal agency as an evolutionary outcome,
“The evolutionary emergence of language and abstract and deliberative cognitive capacities provided the neuronal structure for supplanting aimless environmental selection with cognitive agency. Human forebears evolved into a sentient agentic species. Their advanced symbolizing capacity enabled humans to transcend the dictates of their immediate environment and made them unique in their power to shape their life circumstances and the course of their lives.” (164)

22. “prime players in the coevolution process”
“Although not limitless, malleability and agentic capability are the hallmark of human nature” (173)”
“They devise ways to transcend their biological limitations”
“Agentic inventiveness trumped biological design in getting them airborne.”
“Were Darwin writing today, he would be documenting the overwhelming human domination of the environment.”

23. “Some of the global applications of social cognitive theory are aimed at abating this most urgent global problem,”
“They inform, enable, and motivate people to take control of their reproductive life, to visualize a better future, and to take the steps to realize it. These types of changes help people break the cycle of poverty, improve their lives, and adopt reproductive and environmental practices that support ecological sustainability.” (174)

24. Strong belief in the power of personal agency of individuals:
“In the educational field, students can now exercise greater personal control over their own learning. …They are agents of their own learning, not just recipients of information.”
“Health is another sphere of functioning in which the exercise of personal agency is gaining prominence.”
“Employees have to take charge of their self-development to meet the challenges of evolving positions and careers over the full course of their work lives. … The development of new business ventures and the renewal of established ones depend heavily on innovativeness and entrepreneurship.”

25. Relationalistic framing?
“The newborn arrives without any sense of selfhood and personal agency. The self must be socially constructed through transactional experiences with the environment.”
“Most human functioning is socially situated. Consequently, psychological concepts are socially embedded. For example, in an interpersonal transaction, in which people are each other’s environments, a given action can be an agentic influence, a response, or an environmental outcome, depending arbitrarily on different entry points in the ongoing exchange between the people involved.” (165)

26. Proxy control
“In personal agency exercised individually, people bring their influence to bear on their own functioning and on environmental events. In many spheres of functioning, however, people do not have direct control over conditions that affect their lives. They exercise socially mediated agency, or proxy agency. They do so by influencing others who have the resources, knowledge, and means to act on their behalf to secure the outcomes they desire”

27. Agent-principal? Proxy agency: using others as agents for oneself
-> acting as principal?
Does this work also other way around? What follows?

28. Starting point: agent for oneself (the outcomes they desire; to secure valued outcomes and override environmental influences)
Individual interests problematized? “Individuals wrestle with conflicting goals and courses of action. However, given but a single body, the choices finally made and the actions taken at a given time require unity of agency”
“Hence, people vary in how heavily they invest their personal identity in sociocultural, political, familial, and occupational aspects of life.”

29. Differing interests? Comp. Edwards:
“Most human pursuits involve other participating agents, so there is no absolute agency. Individuals have to accommodate their self-interests if they are to achieve unity of effort within diversity. “
Comp. Edwards:
“relational agency i.e. a capacity to align one’s thought and actions with those of others in order to interpret problems of practice and to respond to those interpretations. (Edwards 2005,169)

30. Moral agency
“In the development of moral agency, individuals adopt standards of right and wrong that serve as guides and deterrents for conduct.”
“Moral agents commit themselves to social obligations and righteous causes, consider the moral implications of the choices they face, and accept some measure of responsibility for their actions and the consequences of their actions for other people.”

31. Serving …?
“When individuals strongly invest their self-worth in certain principles and values, they will sacrifice their self-interest and submit to prolonged maltreatment rather than accede to what they regard as unjust or immoral (Bandura, 1999b; Oliner & Oliner, 1988).”

32. Serving …?
“If people’s actions are the product of the nonconscious workings of their neuronal machinery, and their conscious states are simply the epiphenomenal outputs of lowerlevel brain processes, it is pointless to hold people responsible for the choices they make and what they do.”

33. Problems?
“However, hard-driving competitiveness raises value issues concerning the purposes to which human talent, advanced technologies, and resources are put. Some intense market activities promote lavish consumption that neither uses our finite resources wisely nor leads to a better quality of life. Many of these practices may be profitable in the short run, but, as previously noted, they are environmentally unsustainable in the long run.”
“But human agency does not come with a built in value system. The Internet is a double-edged tool. Internet freelancers can use this unfiltered and unfettered forum to propagate hate and to mobilize support for detrimental social practices.”

34. “These transformative changes are placing a premium on the exercise of human agency to shape personal destinies and the national life of societies.”
-> education, health, work: individual and nation state as principals of personal agency. Modern governance?

35. symbolic interaction theory

36. Martin & Gillespie 2010
A Neo-Meadian Approach to Human Agency: Relating the Social and the Psychological in the Ontogenesis of Perspective-Coordinating Persons
Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science Vol 44 3,

37. Martin & Gillespie 2010
“George Herbert Mead (1932, 1934, 1938) developed an approach to the social psychological development of persons as agents that emphasized the holistic acting of persons within their biophysical and sociocultural world. In both phylogeny and ontogeny, it is the activity and interactivity of persons in the world that drives evolutionary and developmental processes through which biological human beings emerge as social persons with social and psychological identity, rational and moral agency, and complex capabilities and understandings of perspective coordination, culture capability, language, and self-determination.”

38. Martin & Gillespie 2010
“All organisms are in a perspectival relation to their environment (Mead, 1932). Mead describes how grass is food in relation to the stomach of the cow, how places reverberate with the smell of recent goings on in relation to the finely tuned olfactory capability of a dog, and how a wooden table is food in relation to the woodworm. In each such case, the organism is not only in a perspectival relation to the world, but, trapped in such a relation. The cow cannot see the grass as anything but food. Humans, on the other hand, are at the intersection of more perspectives and accordingly are more able to distanciate from any one perspective. Indeed, humans, are unique in the extent to which they can distanciate from any one perspectival relation to the world, and this, Mead argues, is the basis of human agency.”

39. Martin & Gillespie 2010
“In the present article, we articulate a recently developed neo-Meadian approach to the ontogenetic emergence of persons as self-determining agents that is directly relevant to the kinds of theorizing just considered. This is an approach based on the social-psychological theorizing of George Herbert Mead during the early part of the twentieth century (Mead, 1932, 1934, 1938), and extended during the past few years by each of us, working mostly independently (Gillespie, 2005; 2006a, 2006b, in press; Martin 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, in press). What we understand as unique to Mead’s approach and our extension of it are two features of direct relevance to human agency understood as the self-determination of persons. First, despite some contentions to the contrary, this is an approach that explains the emergence of both selfhood and agency in ways that do not assume the prior existence of either or both selfhood or agentive capability. Secondly, this approach offers a reasonably detailed account of a specific developmental trajectory that explains how participation in social acts and practices results in more abstracted, psychological capabilities of perspective taking and perspectival consideration and reasoning that are among the most important conditions for agentive, self-determining persons.”

40. symbolic interaction theory
Gillespie (2012) Position exchange: The social development of agency
“Human agency can be defined as the degree to which an agent can act independently of the immediate situation. This sociocultural definition, which stems from Dewey and Mead, emphasises not only the power to act, but the degree to which an action is motivated by concerns originating outside of the immediate situation.”

41. Gillespie (2012)
“The immediate situation is the here-and-now perceptual and experiential situation which arises as a function of the agent’s immediate impulses combined with situational affordances, demands and constraints. The organism without agency is compelled to act by stimuli in the immediate situation. But, the organism with a degree of agency stands apart from the immediate situation and can be motivated by concerns beyond the situation, such as a distant goal, an abstract principle, or concern for someone else.”

42. Gillespie (2012)
“.. studies of addiction and habit clearly demonstrate that humans are often enslaved by situational stimuli. Situations for humans are often social. Classic research in social psychology demonstrates the surprising extent to which human behaviour can be determined by immediate social demands, such as authority (Milgram, 1969), conformity (Asch, 1951) and role expectation (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973).”

43. “Consider the subjects in Milgram’s (1969) experiments on obedience to authority who believed that their actions were causing distress. The fact that the majority continued to obey the authority demonstrates the power of the situation, and in this sense we could say subjects lacked agency. Yet, close analysis of the transcripts and observations reveals that the subjects, despite carrying out the behaviour, resisted it, disagreed with it, and spoke out against it. Subjects made appeals on behalf of the seemingly distressed victim and they demanded that the experimenter take responsibility. In other words, while the subjects’ behaviour was perhaps trapped by the situation, the subjects’ thoughts were not. Their thoughts were filled with questions about their behaviour, reflecting upon it from external points of view, such as the perspective of the victim and experimenter, but also from ethical and religious points of view. And the subjects’ thoughts were also with the victim, feeling for and identifying with the victim’s apparent distress.”

44. Gillespie
While subjects’ behaviour was bound by the situation, their thoughts were moving between the perspectives of the victim, the experimenter, and more general potential audiences. For the purpose of this paper, these movements of thought beyond the immediate situation are assumed to be the basis of agency. That is to say, human agency is conceptualised as a form of psychological distancing (Sigel, 2002). Building on this conceptualisation, the paper will advance a theory of how human agency develops.

45. Distancing and identification
Identification, as a dimension of agency, in clearly evident in Milgram’s research mentioned above. The subjects who resisted the authority of the experimenter and refused to continue, did so by appealing to the situation of the victim. Even the subjects who did obey made regular protests to the experimenter about the situation of the victim. These appeals reveal a degree of identification with the victim. The subjects felt for the victim and were motivated to act on behalf of the victim. In terms of our definition of agency, such action is particularly agentic because not only does it demonstrate a significant degree of independence from ones’ own immediate situation (i.e., the demand of authority) but it reveals a motivation to act on the basis of someone else’s immediate situation, even when that situation conflicts with the demands of one’s own situation (i.e., the demand of authority).

46. Altruism?
“Identification as a dynamic of agency is closely related to altruism and brings to the foreground one of the etymological roots of agency, namely, to be an agent for someone and to act on their behalf. Ironically, although agents may seem to have little agency, because they act according to the wishes of another, they actually reveal the utmost agency by virtue of subordinating their own impulses and situational demands to the wishes and situational demands of another. Acting for another entails an intersubjective understanding of the perspective of the other.”

47. Intersubjectivity
The correspondence problem (how are perspectives intergrated? Compare Bandura observational learning)
“Indeed, there are often situations in which both actors confront perceptually identical stimuli, yet they are in completely different roles and thus situations. Consider the case of a face-to-face interaction between a buyer and seller. At many levels, both perceive the same perceptual stimuli, such as their immediate surrounding, the item to be purchased, the money, and the other. Yet each is in a completely different social situation with different motivations and goals. The difference is less about perception and more about role. In such a social situation there is ‘a differentiation problem’, namely how do the actors know they are in different roles despite being in the same perceptual situation? Intersubjective understanding is necessary if the exchange is to pass successfully.”

48. Position exchange
Position exchange (Gillespie, 2005, 2006; Martin, 2006a, 2006b) is a novel possible solution to the correspondence problem. The idea assumes that social life is structured in terms of distinct yet complementary social positions. Social positions arise in social interaction by virtue of the different positions participants take vis-à-vis each other. Interactions from smiling at someone to the negotiation of a peace treaty entail social positions. Smiling at someone is an interaction which creates the social positions of smiling and being smiled at. Slightly more complex examples of social positions include talking/listening, buying/selling and commanding/obeying. In each social interaction, the social positions cannot be defined in isolation, rather they are always defined in part by the complementary social position. Observing the smile is the complementary social position to smiling and acquiescing or resisting are the complementary social positions for demanding.

49. Position exchange
“Each social position sustains a distinctive motor and/or perceptual perspective and also often a social role, that is a set of expectations about what each partner in the interaction should do. Observing a smile often entails the role expectation of reciprocating the smile, and buying entails the role expectation of paying, and so on. Thus social positions actually contribute to the correspondence problem by virtue of creating and sustaining divergent perspectives. But in so far as social positions contribute to the problem of divergent perspectives, so movement of actors between these social positions overcomes the problem..” (41)

50. Position exchange: not a mental act but a social act.
“Position exchange assumes that social positions are relatively stable. Thus although actors cannot ‘mind read’ they can, by exchanging social position, come to experience the same perspectives. .. Consider normal conversation and the alteration between speaking and listening. Within one conversational exchange, these positions will be exchanged numerous times. These complementary positions become further elaborated in school, where children learn to both listen and present. According to the idea of position exchange this movement between the position of speaking and listening could integrate perspectives creating intersubjectivity and thus agency.”

51. Position exchange leads to a conceptualisation of agency as highly contextual and gradually learned, not an abstract or absolute ability.

52. Gillespie
“Intersubjectivity, as an integration of perspectives, is what lies between position exchange and agency. Position exchange weaves the integration of perspectives that is intersubjectivity, and intersubjectivity enables distanciation and identification which are the basis of agency. Intersubjectivity enables the actor embedded in a situation to transcend their own immediate embeddedness and to either take the perspective of others upon themselves, thus mediating their own activity, or to identify with others, and thus act on their behalf. “ (44)

53. Gillespie
The model of agency presented is highly social, in the sense of arising out of social interaction, but it does not collapse the individual’s agency into the social as so often occurs with social constructionist theories (Martin & Sugarman, 1999). Indeed, although actors gain agency through social interaction, they subsequently posses agency to the extent that they manage to extricate themselves from those same interactions. The mechanism for this liberation is intersubjectivity and the basis of intersubjectivity, I have argued, is position exchange. (44)

54. Hitlin & Elder
We adopt the perspective, following the social behaviorism found in Mead’s and Blumer’s work, that individuals’ actions are oriented toward meeting the conditions of social life (Swanson 1992). People’s actions do not occur in a vacuum. This statement advances the sociologically banal observation that individual action is inextricably social yet not fully determined (though a strict structuralist might quibble with this assertion). We view agentic action as those actions whose ostensible origin begins within the actor, in the sense that, as Giddens (1984) maintains, the actor might have done otherwise. This covers behavior ranging from automatic (throwing a ball) to carefully considered (solving a math problem) to long term (enrolling in a particular university). All of these sorts of behaviors implicate individual action, effort, and intention. Incorporating the self, however, allows for the understanding of what these actions share beyond being self-initiated, and provides the opportunity to anchor discussions of agency within empirical research traditions. (Hitlin & Elder 2009, 175

55. Comparing Bandura & Gillespie (sc & si)?
View on principal?
Executive?

56. rhetorical/dramaturgical theory
Will added later