Feb 1, 2024

Agency is a Habit, not a Trait

Someone sent me this Twitter thread by George Mack recently, in which he gives examples of “high-agency” individuals. I enjoyed some parts of the thread, such as the example of Yukio Shige, a retired Japanese police officer who patrols the Tōjinbō cliffs to prevent suicides there. He and the non-profit he started have saved over 750 lives. 👏

But, overall, the thread rubbed me the wrong way. I initially thought it was just the influencer-ish style of writing (and the fact that it was posted on Twitter, where nuance often becomes a casualty to a 280-character limit), but after thinking about it for a couple days I realized it was something deeper—something that actually discourages the agency that Mack praises in the thread.

The problem? Labeling individuals as “high-agency” implicitly frames agency as a trait rather than a habit. That might not sound so bad, but hear me out: I believe most people see traits as much less changeable than habits. As such, framing agency in this way has the ironic effect of depicting it as something you either have or don’t have—which is not a very agentic way of viewing agency!

It reminds me of the famous marshmallow test conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel. Many people can give a description of the test involving kids waiting to eat marshmallows, followed by the researchers finding that the kids who waited longer had better outcomes later in life. The kids who “had” patience—as some mystical, hand-wavy substance that you either have or don’t—got further in life. But Mischel himself argued that the real discovery was the exact opposite of that:

The most important thing we learned is that self-control—and the ability to regulate one’s own emotions—involves a set of skills that can be taught, and learned. … They’re acquirable. Nothing is predetermined.

In other words, patience isn’t a trait. It’s a habit that can be learned.

Clinical psychologist Nick Wignall makes a similar argument about anxiety: the only direct cause of anxiety, he posits, is the mental habit of worrying:

If you want to be less anxious, you should focus primarily on reducing your habit of worry because that’s the only direct cause of your anxiety

These experts in psychology push to make this distinction clearer because it has real ramifications for our day-to-day lives. When we view something as a trait when it is actually a habit, we see it as more immutable than it actually is, implicitly giving in to the self-handcuffing of learned helplessness. We can read all day about “high-agency people” vs. “low-agency people,” but won’t be empowered to become high-agency. It’s like a modern version of Calvinist predestination theology: the neuron gods that govern your existence have decreed that thou art low-agency, and there’s nothing you can do about that.

To be clear: I don’t think that’s true. Patience can be learned. Calmness can be learned. And, most importantly for the purposes of this blog, being “high-agency” can be learned.

That’s why I’m focusing on agency thinking rather than just agency—because agency comes from how you habitually think. It’s a habit, not a trait.