Agency (External) (AGEX)

1. Abstract

The Agency (External) Scale (AGEX) is a psychometric instrument designed to evaluate the extent to which an individual perceives their life circumstances, personal outcomes, and experiential states to be determined by, governed by, and under the explicit causal responsibility of an external entity. Developed by Joshua T. Beck, Ryan Rahinel, and Alexander Bleier (2020) within the discipline of consumer psychology and behavioral decision-making, the AGEX scale addresses a critical theoretical gap in the assessment of perceived control: whereas traditional locus of control inventories conceptualize external attribution as a generalized, diffuse, or fatalistic force (e.g., luck, chance, or broad societal fate), the AGEX operationalizes external agency as directed toward a specific, contextually salient entity—such as a commercial brand, an institution, a corporate organization, a political actor, an algorithmic system, or a personalized abstract force.

The AGEX is a unidimensional, three-item self-report questionnaire configured with flexible, modular target placeholders (e.g., “[Target Agent]”), enabling researchers to manipulate or measure perceived agency across diverse experimental and naturalistic targets. Items are rated on seven-point Likert-type response scales anchored from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree.” Empirically validated in conjunction with its sister instrument, the Personal Agency Scale, the AGEX exhibits robust psychometric properties across multiple investigations, consistently demonstrating high internal consistency reliability (α typically exceeding .85 to .92), solid composite reliability, clear factor loadings (> .80), and pronounced convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity in contexts governed by compensatory control theory, consumer brand attachment, and institutional trust dynamics.

2. Keywords

External Agency, Perceived Control, Compensatory Control Theory, AGEX Scale, Consumer Psychology, Locus of Control, Brand Agency, Entity Attribution, Instrumental Control, Psychometrics

3. Authors

The Agency (External) Scale was formulated, validated, and published by a team of researchers specializing in consumer behavior, marketing strategy, and social cognition:

• Joshua T. Beck – Assistant Professor of Marketing, Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, United States. Contact: [email protected].
• Ryan Rahinel – Associate Professor of Marketing, Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. Contact: [email protected].
• Alexander Bleier – Associate Professor of Marketing, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Contact: [email protected].

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Agency (External) (AGEX) scale is to quantify an individual’s perception of an external entity’s causal efficacy, outcome determination, and behavioral responsibility relative to the self. Rooted in foundational research on psychological control, social cognition, and motivated reasoning, the scale was engineered to move beyond traditional, static conceptualizations of control attribution that treat external forces as indiscriminate noise or passive deterministic environments.

Within consumer psychology and behavioral science, scholars frequently study how consumers respond when their internal sense of personal mastery, autonomy, or self-efficacy is threatened or diminished. A central tenet of modern compensatory control theory (Compensatory Control) is that human beings possess a fundamental psychological need to view the world as orderly, structured, and predictable rather than random or chaotic. When individuals experience an acute or chronic erosion of personal agency, they engage in adaptive compensatory strategies to restore perceived order. One of the most potent mechanisms for restoring structure is delegating control to, or seeking affiliation with, powerful external agents that possess the perceived capacity to impose structure and dictate outcomes.

The AGEX fulfills several distinct clinical, experimental, and applied research functions:

• Experimental Manipulation Checks: In laboratory paradigms examining psychological threat, vulnerability, or institutional reliance, researchers frequently manipulate the perceived competence, warmth, or power of an external agent (e.g., a commercial brand, an AI algorithm, a government body). The AGEX provides an efficient, highly sensitive manipulation check to verify whether respondents actively project outcome-determining capability onto the target agent.
• Investigation of Brand Personification and Anthropomorphism: Modern marketing often strives to endow corporate entities with human-like intentionality, moral responsibility, and proactive agency. The AGEX allows researchers to quantify the degree to which consumers experience a brand not merely as an inanimate commercial tool, but as an active agent capable of producing tangible impacts on the consumer’s welfare.
• Delineation of Dyadic Agency Dynamics: Used alongside the Personal Agency scale, the AGEX enables a granular, non-zero-sum examination of control. Traditional locus of control inventories often model personal and external control as strictly bipolar opposites along a single continuum. In contrast, the AGEX treats external attribution as an independent orthogonal construct: an individual can perceive both themselves and an external entity as simultaneous co-agents, or perceive external dominance alongside personal abdication.
• Organizational and Public Health Applications: Beyond consumer goods, the AGEX can be adapted to evaluate patient perceptions of medical institutions, citizen perceptions of regulatory authorities, or employee perceptions of executive leadership during organizational crises or technological disruptions.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct captured by the Agency (External) (AGEX) scale is perceived external agency. In cognitive and social psychology, agency refers to the capacity of an entity to act intentionally, exert willpower, formulate plans, execute goal-directed actions, and exercise causal control over outcomes in the physical and social environment. Historically, psychological science has distinguished between two fundamental dimensions of mental state attribution: experience (the capacity for feeling, emotion, pain, and pleasure) and agency (the capacity for self-control, moral judgment, planning, and intentional causality; see Gray, Gray, & Wegner, 2007).

The AGEX specifically focuses on the attribution of external causal potency over the respondent’s personal outcomes. Unlike diffuse fatalism or metaphysical determinism, perceived external agency represents a focused, agentic attribution. It comprises three core psychological facets:

1. External Determination of Outcomes

This facet assesses the belief that one’s successes, failures, comfort, safety, or functional results do not originate solely in personal volition, but are actively shaped, mediated, or finalized by the designated target. For example, when evaluating a technology brand (e.g., Apple or Google) or a healthcare system, an individual high on external agency perceives that their digital security, productivity, or physical recovery is fundamentally governed by the structural efficacy of that entity.

2. Ascription of Responsibility

The second facet reflects normative and functional attribution: the conviction that the external entity holds the duty, causal accountability, and proactive burden for resolving dilemmas, ensuring performance, or preventing adverse events. Rather than viewing the external agent as an incidental backdrop, the respondent conceptualizes the agent as a responsible guardian or executive force.

3. Perceived External Control and Power

The third facet captures the perceived asymmetry of power, mastery, and behavioral control. It reflects the degree to which the external entity possesses the tangible resources, systemic authority, or functional competence necessary to steer circumstances that the individual cannot or chooses not to steer alone.

Consider the conceptual contrast illustrated below between diffuse locus of control and focused external agency:

• Diffuse External Locus (Traditional): “Whether I succeed in life is mostly a matter of good fortune or unpredictable luck.” (Passive, chaotic, unguided).
• Focused External Agency (AGEX): “Whether I achieve a secure financial future is determined by and under the control of [Name of Financial Institution].” (Active, structured, identifiable, intentional).

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the AGEX scale integrates multiple foundational theories from psychological, sociological, and consumer science:

Compensatory Control Theory (CCT)

Formulated primarily by Aaron C. Kay and colleagues (Kay et al., 2008, 2009), Compensatory Control Theory posits that individuals have an innate, non-negotiable aversion to viewing their personal world as random, chaotic, or haphazard. When subjective personal control is threatened—whether by economic turbulence, illness, psychological stress, or experimental induction of powerlessness—people experience an uncomfortable state of psychological disequilibrium. To alleviate this distress, individuals recruit compensatory psychological defenses that reaffirm the presence of order. Crucially, CCT demonstrates that order can be affirmed either through personal agency or through reliance on external systems of control (e.g., God, stable governments, regulatory institutions, or authoritative corporations).

Beck, Rahinel, and Bleier (2020) extended CCT to the domain of marketplace behavior. They demonstrated that consumers lacking personal control actively seek out entities that exhibit high external agency. In their seminal experiments, consumers experiencing personal control deficits exhibited heightened preferences for established, powerful brand-name products over generic equivalents precisely because brand-name products are perceived as possessing external agency—functioning as an external source of control capable of ensuring positive outcomes.

Locus of Control and Attribution Theory

Julian Rotter’s (1966) foundational formulation of Locus of Control posited a generalized expectancy concerning whether reinforcers are contingent upon one’s own behaviors (internal locus) or forces outside oneself (external locus). Later extensions by Bernard Weiner (1985) in Attribution Theory differentiated control into three causal dimensions: locus (internal vs. external), stability (stable vs. unstable), and controllability (controllable vs. uncontrollable). The AGEX operates within Weiner’s paradigm by measuring an external, stable, and highly controllable locus situated within a defined entity.

Anthropomorphism and Social Cognitive Agency

According to social cognitive perspectives on mind perception (Gray et al., 2007; Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007), humans routinely project mental capacities onto non-human agents. When consumers ascribe agency to a brand, corporation, or algorithm, they engage in a socio-cognitive transformation: the target is elevated from a transactional utility to an active partner in goal attainment. The AGEX operationalizes the functional consequence of this transformation by measuring perceived outcome dependency.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the AGEX scale has been rigorously established across multiple independent consumer behavior studies, laboratory experiments, and cross-sectional survey administrations.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity denotes the degree to which an instrument truly measures the theoretical construct it purports to measure. In the empirical studies conducted by Beck et al. (2020), the AGEX was subjected to confirmatory factor models alongside measures of generalized personal control, perceived brand quality, brand familiarity, and generalized self-efficacy. The scale demonstrated strong convergent validity, displaying high, statistically significant standardized factor loadings (λ ≥ .82, p < .001) on the latent external agency factor. Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values routinely exceeded the standard .50 threshold, establishing that the variance captured by the construct exceeds the variance attributable to measurement error.

Discriminant Validity

Crucially, Beck et al. (2020) demonstrated that perceived external agency is empirically and conceptually distinct from related marketing and psychological constructs:

• Distinct from Brand Quality / Brand Prestige: Although high-quality brands are often viewed favorably, empirical testing confirmed that perceived external agency accounted for distinct variance in consumer choice beyond functional quality ratings. The correlation between AGEX and perceived quality remained within moderate ranges (r ≈ .38 to .52), satisfying the Fornell-Larcker criterion (AVE > shared variance).
• Distinct from Personal Agency: When modeled simultaneously, the AGEX and the Personal Agency Scale formed a two-factor structure rather than collapsing into a single bipolar factor. The latent correlation between personal and external agency was weak-to-moderate and context-dependent (r between −.12 and −.31), proving that low personal agency is not merely the mathematical inverse of high external agency.

Predictive and Nomological Validity

Predictive validity has been repeatedly demonstrated in experimental behavioral economics and consumer choice settings:

• In Studies 1 through 5 of Beck et al. (2020), experimentally lowering participants’ personal control (e.g., via recalling an event where they lacked control) directly increased their valuation of external agency. When presented with choice tasks, participants with lowered control chose brand-name products over generic products at significantly higher rates.
• Statistical mediation analyses (using bootstrap mediation models) established that scores on the AGEX successfully mediated the causal relationship between personal control threats and willingness-to-pay for premium, branded consumer goods.
• When the focal external entity was framed as lacking agency or when the participant’s internal agency was restored via experimental affirmation, the predictive influence of AGEX on consumer choice systematically dissipated, confirming the precise boundary conditions predicted by compensatory control theory.

8. Reliability

The internal consistency and measurement precision of the AGEX scale have been documented across both undergraduate participant pools and heterogeneous online panels (e.g., Amazon Mechanical Turk, Prolific Academic).

Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha & McDonald’s Omega)

Across the diverse experimental conditions reported by Beck, Rahinel, and Bleier (2020), the three-item AGEX scale consistently demonstrated exceptional internal consistency reliability:

• Study Testing Commercial Brands: In experimental paradigms assessing external agency across leading consumer brands (e.g., Duracell vs. generic batteries, Tylenol vs. generic acetaminophen), the scale yielded Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging between α = .87 and α = .93.
• Composite Reliability: Confirmatory factor analytic specifications indicated Composite Reliability (CR) values ranging from .88 to .94, well above the recommended .70 benchmark for psychometric adequacy.
• McDonald’s Omega (ω): In secondary and follow-up psychometric assessments where tau-equivalence cannot be assumed, McDonald’s hierarchical and total omega coefficients consistently mirror alpha values (ω > .89), confirming that the three items act as a tightly coordinated reflective indicator set.

Item-Total Correlations and Inter-Item Correlations

Inter-item correlations among the three indicators typically range between r = .68 and r = .84, indicating high mutual coherence without excessive collinear redundancy. Corrected item-total correlations uniformly exceed .72, indicating that each individual item contributes robustly to the measurement of the underlying latent dimension.

9. Factor Analysis

The internal structural integrity of the AGEX scale has been validated through both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

When the three items of the AGEX are entered into exploratory factor analyses (utilizing principal axis factoring or maximum likelihood extraction with oblique Promax rotation), Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measures of sampling adequacy consistently exceed .78, and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity is highly significant (p < .001). A single dominant factor emerges with an eigenvalue well in excess of 2.2, explaining over 75% to 83% of the total item variance. Scree plots display an unmistakable, sharp inflection immediately following the first factor, confirming clear unidimensionality.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

In structural equation modeling and CFA evaluations, the unidimensional AGEX model exhibits outstanding goodness-of-fit indices across sample sizes varying from N = 150 to N = 600+:

• Model Chi-Square: Non-significant or minor relative chi-square (χ²/df < 2.0).
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Typically > .99.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Typically > .98.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): ≤ .04 (90% CI [.00, .08]).
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): ≤ .02.

Standardized factor loadings (λ) for the individual items across diverse experimental applications generally conform to the following ranges:

• Item 1 (Outcome determination): λ = .83 – .89
• Item 2 (Responsibility for outcomes): λ = .81 – .88
• Item 3 (Control over outcomes): λ = .85 – .92

When evaluated in a two-factor CFA alongside the three-item Personal Agency scale, a two-factor oblique model (χ²/df = 1.45, CFI = .996, RMSEA = .028) demonstrates a vastly superior fit compared to a single-factor unidimensional model forcing all six items onto a solitary control factor (χ²/df > 8.50, CFI < .80, RMSEA > .14). This provides definitive structural evidence that perceived external agency and personal agency represent distinct latent constructs rather than opposite ends of a unitary continuum.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Agency (External) (AGEX) instrument is formatted as an adaptable, brief self-report inventory. The structural specifications of the tool are detailed below:

• Instrument Name: Agency (External) Scale (AGEX)
• Instrument Type: Self-report psychometric rating scale
• Construct Measured: Perceived external agency and outcome determination ascribed to a designated focal entity
• Number of Items: 3 items
• Target Adaptability: Contains an open placeholder ([Target Agent]) that is replaced by the investigator with the specific entity under study (e.g., “Duracell,” “Brand X,” “The Federal Reserve,” “My Healthcare Provider,” “Artificial Intelligence”)
• Response Format: 7-point Likert-type scale
• Anchor Labels:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Somewhat Disagree
  • 4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree
  • 5 = Somewhat Agree
  • 6 = Agree
  • 7 = Strongly Agree
• Scoring Procedure:
  • All three items are positively keyed (no reverse-scored items).
  • A composite index of External Agency is calculated by computing the unweighted arithmetic mean of the three items: External Agency = (Item 1 + Item 2 + Item 3) / 3.
  • Alternatively, for structural equation modeling, latent factor scores can be extracted using standardized loadings.
  • Higher mean scores (ranging from 1.0 to 7.0) indicate a higher degree of perceived outcome determination and control attributed to the external agent.
• Administration Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Publication Year: 2020.

Original Publication: Journal of Marketing Research, Volume 57, Issue 5, Pages 874–891.

Copyright Holder & Intellectual Property: The original academic article is copyrighted by the American Marketing Association (AMA) and published by SAGE Publications. The conceptual scale formulation was authored by Joshua T. Beck, Ryan Rahinel, and Alexander Bleier.

Permissions & Accessibility: The scale was published directly in the methodology and appendix sections of the 2020 Journal of Marketing Research paper for academic research and educational dissemination. In accordance with standard fair-use academic practices, scholars and university researchers may use and adapt the scale for non-commercial scientific research without paying licensing fees, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution is given to Beck, Rahinel, and Bleier (2020). For proprietary commercial market research, enterprise analytics, or publication in commercial testing batteries, formal permission requests should be directed to the American Marketing Association or SAGE Publications RightsLink permissions portal.

12. References

• Beck, J. T., Rahinel, R., & Bleier, A. (2020). Company worth keeping: Personal control and preferences for brand-name and generic products. Journal of Marketing Research, 57(5), 874–891. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022243720932537
• Epley, N., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2007). On seeing human: A three-factor theory of anthropomorphism. Psychological Review, 114(4), 864–886. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.864
• Gray, H. M., Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2007). Dimensions of mind perception. Science, 315(5812), 619–619. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1134475
• Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Napier, J. L., Callan, M. J., & Laurin, K. (2008). God and the government: Testing a compensatory control mechanism for the support of external systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(1), 18–35. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.95.1.18
• Kay, A. C., Whitson, J. A., Gaucher, D., & Galinsky, A. D. (2009). Compensatory control: Achieving order through the mind, our institutions, and the heavens. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(5), 264–268. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01649.x
• Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(1), 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0092976
• Weiner, B. (1985). An attributional theory of achievement motivation and emotion. Psychological Review, 92(4), 548–573. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.92.4.548

13. Items of the Scale