CONCEPT
Agentic Capacity
Bandura 's term for the uniquely human capacity to intentionally influence one's functioning and life circumstances — the foundation on which self-efficacy operates and the quality that the AI amplifier either expands or diminishes depending on what it amplifies.
Human agency, in Bandura's framework, is the capacity to intentionally make things happen by one's actions. It encompasses forethought (projecting future states), self-reactiveness (regulating one's behavior), self-reflectiveness (evaluating one's thoughts and actions), and intentionality (committing to a course of action). Agentic capacity is what self-efficacy operates on: the belief "I can" is only meaningful if one is the kind of creature that can act intentionally in the first place. The AI amplifier interacts with agentic capacity in specific ways — the person with clear intentions and strong self-efficacy produces amplified agency; the person with vague intentions and weak self-efficacy produces amplified passivity.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Bandura's agentic framework was a deliberate counter to both behaviorist and purely cognitive models of human action. Behaviorism treated humans as reactive organisms shaped by reinforcement histories; purely cognitive models treated thought as epiphenomenal. Agency theory held that humans are neither merely reactive nor merely computational —