Internal-External Attitudes, Personal Initiative, and the Labor Market Experience of Black and White Men

Abstract

Internal-external attitudes tap the perceived payoffs to initiative and have therefore received considerable attention in the psychological literature as a generator of initiative. The National Longitudinal Surveys data for young and middle-aged men used in this study provide considerable support for the hypothesis that internal-external attitudes are strongly related to a number of aspects of labor market experience. Confidence in these findings is strengthened by the fact that the observed relationships were independent of individual differences in a wide range of skills, abilities, and demographic characteristics, and were supported by longitudinal data as well. Not only does initiative appear to have considerable payoffs for both young and middle-aged men, it also appears to pay off for blacks as well as whites, especially among the young.

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