Because the finish line is a shifty thing

Am I the only person who thinks that "gourmet cupcakes" don't look any more or less appetizing than the ones they sell at Jewel?

So, it was several years ago, in the first psychology class I ever took during my senior year of high school, that I learned about Rotter’s theory of Locus of Control. I still remember the theory to this day, despite the fact that it wasn’t touched on much, if at all, in my subsequent psych courses. (This isn’t a testament to the earth-shatteringness of the theory, but rather a product of my high school test preparation tactics. While studying for the final exam that year, I used the mnemonic device of rotting and locusts to remember Rotter and locus—creating a mental picture gross enough that it stuck with me ever since.)

Anyway. “Locus of control” is all about whether you believe that you have full control over your life, actions, and environment (internal locus), or if you are powerless like Odysseus in your non-epic life (external locus). Rotter theorized that everyone falls somewhere on the spectrum between the two. Like most spectrum-oriented theories, there are pros and cons of living at either side—e.g., people with high internal loci are prone to being extremely motivated but also jerks; people with high external loci are prone to being laid-back but also clinically depressed.

The underlying assumption here is we’re all control freaks. Where we place our sense of control shapes our personalities.

Supporting this idea: when you look across the wide world of abnormal psychology, control ranks just under "my mother" as the hottest topic in mental problems; it factors into OCD (the need to control everything), depression (the feeling of lost control), dependence (never having control), anxiety and paranoia (the worry of losing or having lost control). Eating disorders are often explained as a displaced control issue. Control is apparently kind of a big deal to our brains.

(And the point is…?)

I’ve been following the news, and thus I’ve been inevitably flooded with stories about the political flailing surrounding raising the debt ceiling. It seems like everyone is frustrated and annoyed by it… with the exception of the people in charge, who might be annoyed, but are presumably more annoyed by things like The Super Evil Other Political Side Maybe Winning Kind Of.

If I’m frustrated, I like knowing why, and I suspect it has to do with control. I, like many people, desire control the most when it comes to important decisions, and the fact that I’m forced to passively observe weeks of bureaucratic inanity on such a significant issue understandably invokes a palm-twitchy, punch-a-congressperson level of annoyance in my brain.

You can’t help but feel like if you had control, you would behave more responsibly (and by "responsibly," I'm invoking the kind of cognitive sense that keeps most of us, after the age of 11, from playing chicken on the railroad tracks).