When asked about the majority of the successes in your life, which statement are you more likely to agree with?
- I just got lucky – right place, right time.
- My success is the result of my hard work and the decisions I’ve made.
When I took Management & Human Resources, one topic in the course that piqued my interest was locus of control. In the 1960s, Julian Rotter investigated the implications of our tendency to attribute successes and failure to internal forces (those we have control over), or to external forces (those outside of our influence). We fall into one of two camps – Internals “do things” and Externals “have things happen to them.”
I took Rotter’s test, and (big shocker here) I have a strong internal locus of control. While this might serve me well in the long run, it’s been hard for me to accept that certain things really are out of my control. I can’t tell you how much time I spent wondering what more I could do or what I should have done differently during the job hunt last year. Other students had no problem blaming their their lack of job prospects on the economy; I, on the other hand, lost sleep, was generally unhappy, and an anxiety level that probably rivaled Christian Siriano’s on the final episode of Project Runway.
The economic environment of the past few years has put a damper on the moods of many in Generation Y. However, you might be surprised to find that even during the tech boom of the 1990s, young people weren’t as happy as their parents had been at their age. In fact, the happiness of young people has been declining since the 1950s, while our levels of depression and anxiety have been on the uptick.
So, what does all of this happiness stuff have to do with our locus of control?
After analyzing the results of studies using Rotter’s Scale with young people, Jean Twenge of San Diego State University found that from 1960 to 2002, “average scores shifted dramatically…for college students–away from the Internal toward the External end of the scale. In fact, the shift was so great that the average young person in 2002 was more External than were 80% of young people in the 1960s. The rise in Externality on Rotter’s scale over the 42-year period showed the same linear trend as did the rise in depression and anxiety.”
A shift toward an external locus of control means that many of us believe we no longer have control over our destinies. In spite of the abundance of educational opportunities, a level of global interconnectedness never before seen, and the power to share our ideas with the world with the click of a button, Twenge’s research shows that we feel our fate is “out of our hands.” If we truly believe that the events of our lives are often completely out of our control, it’s easy to see why we feel anxious and unhappy. While having an external locus of control isn’t all bad, “internals” are more likely to succeed, strive to achieve, and take advantage of opportunities to develop their abilities and skills.
Twenge surmises that the change in our locus of control is correlated to the changing nature of the goals we set out to achieve. Intrinsic goals relate to personal growth and development; extrinsic goals often include money, power, status, or image. She notes that for many young people, success means being financially well-off or attractive. After reading her study, I realize that the goals I was striving for were nearly all external, while I remained stubbornly rooted in my internal locus. I wanted the prestige of launching a career with one of Fortune’s top companies, a great studio apartment in some big city, and a nice paycheck. Learning to cede some degree of control to outside forces is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but it’s allowed me to live a life that doesn’t involve “what-ifing” myself into misery. I’ve realized that succeeding in opportunities I find personally fulfilling is much more satisfying than accumulating “stuff.”
If Twenge is right, and our Generation has adopted the view that our fate is out of our hands…well, being able to roll with the punches is great, but at some point, we have to punch back. We’re not floating helplessly through the universe, subject to the mercy of the tides and the arrangements of the stars. We have control over our destinies. If the outside world isn’t presenting the right opportunities, we can take the initiative to create opportunities for ourselves. We can stop focusing on the American ideal of success and define success on our own terms.
Let’s not wait for life to happen to us.
Where do you fall on Rotter’s Locus of Control? Do you think it impacts your motivation to tackle challenging situations in your life?
