Agency is a chosen self-definition that becomes virtually irreversible under authority.

Evidence

From a subjective standpoint, a person is in a state of agency when he defines himself in a social situation in a manner that renders him open to regulation by a person of higher status. In this condition the individual no longer views himself as responsible for his own actions but defines himself as an instrument for carrying out the wishes of others…. … An element of free choice determines whether the person defines himself in this way or not, but given the presence of certain critical releasers, the propensity to do so is exceedingly strong, and the shift is not freely reversible. (p. 134)11 Still I find this construction overly dichotomous, and by its reference to releasers, a term borrowed from a now somewhat outmoded notion of physiological reflexes, overly pseudobiological. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3935