Do (We Think That) Plants Have Agency?

People are highly sensitive to agents in their environment-individuals who can move, make choices, and cause things to happen. Cross-cultural and developmental research suggests that humans have evolved to expect an environment with agents. But just how broad is the agent category that enjoys this privileged role in cognition? Most research has focused on humans as possible agents, but many other entities can also be conceptualized as having agency. These include not only animals but also plants (e.g., a vine wedging itself between two pieces of wood), natural entities (e.g., a volcano erupting), and robots (a large language model being able to carry on a conversation). In this paper, I review the state of the literature concerning whether people conceptualize plants as having agency. While previous research demonstrates substantial cross-cultural and cross-linguistic variation regarding whether agency is extended to plants, it remains unknown whether these behaviors are shaped by universal biases. I sketch several pathways for cognitive scientists to address this critical gap in our understanding of ecological cognition.