{"pk":50026,"title":"Agency vs. Guan: The role of parental beliefs in shaping children's agency","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Agency is an important yet elusive concept in cognitive development. In China, parents commonly hold the traditional belief of Guan, which literally means control but aims to cultivate agency—being self-disciplined and proactive in learning. To understand how these two opposite notions coexist, Study 1 developed a questionnaire to assess both in parents and revealed a U-shaped relationship: moderate Guan beliefs align with lowest agency beliefs, while high and low Guan beliefs are associated with greater agency beliefs. Study 2 used a vignette-based task to test how these beliefs shape children's perceived agency in decision-making. In learning contexts, control-oriented Guan belief negatively predicts children's perceived agency, while agency beliefs positively predict it. Additionally, children's perception of agency in low-agency scenario predicts their strategic responses to maternal control. These findings highlight children's active meaning-making role and suggest that shifting from control to agency beliefs may better support children's agency development.\n\nKeywords: children's agency; Guan beliefs; agency beliefs;\nChinese parenting; daily decision-making","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Psychology; Decision making; Social cognition; Qualitative Analysis; Survey"}],"section":"Abstracts with Poster Presentation (accepted as Abstracts)","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/85m3r2fd","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Weiwei","middle_name":"","last_name":"Fan","name_suffix":"","institution":"Tsinghua Laboratory of Brain and Intelligence, Child Cognition Center","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/50026/galley/37988/download/"}]}