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An internal locus of control gives you better outcomes, regardless of how valid a particular complaint is. Even if it is insanity, it's a useful insanity.
I have no idea if the particular woman in the example above actually faced unfairness or not (she probably has; at some point we all have). But I do know she'd be in a better position, financially and psychologically, if she spent less time introspecting about how mean and terrible and unjust the world is to her and more time embracing her agency.
I can't speak for others. But in my experience, blaming myself for my problems makes me very depressed.
-> And that’s your fault and you need to overcome it because no one else can do that for you.
Just gotta take it one level deeper.
Of course, there’s depression and then there’s depression, and seeking necessary external help is part of taking responsibly.
(I have not fully embraced radical self-ownership, but I think there’s a lot of merit to it.)
Seeking external help is not having an internal locus of control. And I agree that my depression is my own fault, and evidence that I am a bad person.
What no.
Blaming external forces or only relying on external assistance is a lack of an internal locus of control. That can lead to learned helplessness.
Accurately perceiving one needs external support for something and seeking it is being agentic. Not seeking external help when it is needed is an unhelpful avoidance pattern and rarely leads to good outcomes.
Well, we've come around from 'seeking external help is always bad' to 'sometimes seeking external help is good and sometimes it's not'. I guess I can't argue with that.
I think you don’t understand what the posters above meant by “internal locus of control” and you are not distinguishing blaming external factors vs. seeking external assistance.
“The whole world is against me.”
Vs.
“I need help to overcome a challenge.”
No, that's just negative versus positive framing. Of course positive framing sounds better - it always does. Internal versus external would be more like 'the whole world is against me' versus 'i am to blame for everything bad in my life'. Both are negative, but one is internal loc and one is external. Or 'I need help to overcome a challenge' versus 'I need to overcome this challenge without help' or even 'other people cannot help me'.
The difference you’re failing to understand is that “I need to overcome this challenge without help” can be utterly self-defeating if, in fact, assistance is needed to make progress.
No one I’m aware of is advocating “go it alone.”
If you think the advocates of radical self-responsibility and an internal locus of control are preaching an avoidance of seeking external help when sensible, then I think you’re misunderstanding the message.
The point is to avoid blaming external things and to take maximum control of one’s life, not to only use one’s own capacities ever.
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How positive can we be about the correlation/causation here? For reasons described elsewhere in this thread, people who succeed attribute it to their own agency, while people who fail blame circumstances. The
cross-sectionalcohort studies I see with a quick search don't impress me with their rigor in dismissing that explanation of LoC/outcome correlations. They seem to assume that if a 4th grader has internal LoC and experiences better outcomes later, then internal LoC was the cause; as opposed to that 4th grader having developed an internal LoC by age 10 due to having more friends, a likeable personality, having demonstrated demonstrated competency in the past, etc. The studies might include a line about controlling for IQ, but that's about it.I dislike psychology as a field and this always sounded like one of those "just so" stories, to my biased ears.
EDIT: Scott wrote a lot about a related topic, the growth mindset, and my views against it are probably more eloquently argued by him.
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