Action-control beliefs and agentic actions

Throughout their lifespan, agentic individuals consistently update their understandings of situational and environmental contexts and frequently deconstruct and reconstruct their actions as well as the consequences of their actions that arose within these contexts. Highly agentic persons display high aspirations, are motivated to engage the environment, and persist through difficulty. Individuals who are not agentic have lower aspirations, believe that actions have little effect on their outcomes, and are lacking in basic problem-solving skills. These non-agentic individuals typically accept failures and do not reflect on the actions which led to the failure. This chapter overviews action-control beliefs and Action-Control Theory. Actioncontrol beliefs involve three general beliefs that reflect the relationship between the three components of an action sequence: control expectancy, which refers to the relation between agent and ends, meaning that individual's expectancy about their capability to achieve a given goal or end; means-ends beliefs, which represent the relation between means and ends; and agency beliefs, refer to an individual's beliefs of what means they are capable of utilizing when the self acts as an agent.