Understanding Internal vs. External Attribution
Yesterday I watched the amazing YT essay, “How Souls Games Save You”, by YouTuber Daryl talks games. The core of the video is a discussion of a concept referred to in scientific literature as your loci of attribution; your loci determines whether you blame/attribute things to external events or personal choices and actions. You probably know a couple of fairly contented stoners your age who always blame their life misfortune on bad luck; this represents one extreme of the loci, that of identifying external events and objects as the cause of what occurs in your own personal life. The other extreme might be said to be a slight form of megalomania, where one blames everything on themselves even though certain events very much so appear to be beyond their ability to effect. I see these type of people as a variant of those who “took too many red pills” and completely fixated on a philosophy of radical personal responsibility.
I’m not sure if there has been direct research done on this, but I have noticed that significantly more of the “it’s my fault” people are highly successful… while the “it’s everyone/thing else's fault” people seem to be happier. I knew a double olympian at uni and they were completely obsessed with getting better at any cost… they were so lean year round that their skin looked like parchment and they also happened to be a top student. This person ended up becoming a doctor, but as far as I am aware they are actually trying to become an astronaut and the medical degree was in pursuit of that. That might be, like, the most extreme possible example, but I think it serves to illustrate the type of person who has a self-focused loci of attribution… I have a different friend who also became a doctor who is one of the most relaxed and pleasant people I’ve ever met, the kind of person who makes new friends instantly and puts everyone around them at ease; I suspect if such a thing could be tested this second person’s loci would be more externally oriented than the first. Now, neither of these orientations is bad in and of itself, as Daryl points out; each can be more or less correct depending on the situation it is applied to. However, an even more important point is not addressed, namely that one needs to master the skill of “flipping” from an internal to external loci or vice versa as the situation warrants.
This is what athletes call having a short memory; when you make a bad shot, you don’t let it affect your self-perception in even the slightest degree, because you’re bound to make a few bad shots every now and then. This skill is part of what is required for inhabiting “the zone” or a flow state; if one integrated the negativity feedback from failure into oneself in real time during a difficult task, it could lower one’s focus and decrease the chances of successfully completing the task, whether it be dog fighting (of the planes variety, not Mike Vick), surgery, or trying to make a contested three pointer. Now, this is a really, really tricky skill to master and involves a large degree of “compartmentalization”, keeping mental concepts separate from one another; for example, you must be able to apply an internal locus to the thought, “I am skilled at my sport/profession/hobby/whatever the thing in question is”, and an external locus to questions of failure. That is, your success is your own, but when a truly difficult setback occurs you have some wiggle room to not undermine your own self-image. And, truthfully, this is a lot what life is like; most of the things in a person’s day are at least slightly under their control, but there are larger outside forces that intrude every now and again and which can overpower the individual. These forces might be cosmological, political, or simply unpleasant chance encounters; a car crash or similar accident. But if someone completely blamed them on themselves it could inflict crushing resentment or guilt; when your spouse dies or your child is severely ill, you need an out other than “damn I should have been nicer to everyone at the office”.
Frequently I see Youtube videos where the maker is addressing this set of issues, but only rarely does what I just mentioned (loci flipping) get mentioned; most people in the self-improvement/red pilled community are fixated on keeping an internal loci of attribution at all times even though this can be markedly personally detrimental. For example, let’s assume you just transferred to a new job and are going to be working with an entirely new set of coworkers. On your first day at the new workplace, you get kind of a bad feeling about your compatibility with the office; you have a few awkward interactions and no positive ones. As the days go by you realize you hate the atmosphere of your new job; you had thought it would be an improvement, or maybe lead to more career opportunities, but you actually find it unbearable. Is this your fault? Did you not properly research your destination? The truth is, complicated personal decisions like this one go wrong all the time, and it’s not immediately apparent what the person who is experiencing failure/stress could have done better. One needs to be able to simply go “not my fault” in this type of situation and move on as quickly as possible, which unfortunately is impossible for people with a 100% internal loci of attribution. You may have noticed that a lot of “successful” types are like this and have no problem making excuses for themselves when it counts; you can’t let excuse making get in the way of the mundane 99% of the work/training you do, but when a truly unforeseeable disaster occurs you must bend, and not break.
Comments