In this chapter we leave the problems of the market's influence on cognitive complexity and turn to the second of our criteria for human development, self-attribution. Because this concept refers to the sources of “control” of events, it is often called “personal control,” or “internal locus of control,” the latter abbreviated as internality. Internal locus of control is the belief by an individual that when he or she acts the environment responds; it is a powerful feature of personality, contributing to feelings of effectiveness, autonomy, subjective well-being, and to cognitive complexity. Self-attribution, like all attributions, is a form of cognition, the topic presented in Part II.

The thesis of this chapter is that there is a powerful causal connection between the emphasis on exchange in a market economy and the belief among market participants that they are endowed with an internal locus of control. The connection is both direct and indirect, the indirect route running from exchange through contingency, that is, a situation where benefits (or punishments) are contingent on the prior acts of the benefited (punished) person – to internality. There is also a partially independent route from ideas about the market (doctrine and ideology) to internality that is not wholly congruent with practices of exchange and contingency. The internality induced by exchange, contingency, and market ideology, in turn, offers strong support for cognitive complexity.

I first explain the character of internality, and follow with three kinds of market influences on this internality: exchange, contingency, and doctrine.