{
  "term": "The Four Traps",
  "slug": "four-traps",
  "concept_id": "AGS:0001",
  "tile_type": "pattern",
  "version": "6.9",
  "updated": "2026-07-02",
  "url": "https://agencyscience.org/lexicon/four-traps/",
  "in_brief": "Automatic behavior (the autopilot) can override what you intend in four ways: you stop seeing the pattern, you can't start, you can't stop, you can't steer. The Four Traps is the diagnostic map of those four failures.",
  "glossary_definition": "The Four Traps is a behavioral-failure typology of how the Autopilot Operating System (AOS), the mind's neutral system for automatic behavior, comes to override a person's own declared intentions. It sorts that override into one enabling meta-trap and three operational failure traps, each paired with a candidate repair capacity in the Agency Science model.",
  "license": "CC BY-ND 4.0",
  "definedTermSet": "The Lexicon of Agency Science",
  "publisher": "The Institute of Agency Science",
  "author": "Steven J. Martel",
  "copyrightHolder": "Martel IP Holdings, Inc.",
  "related": []
}