If you could bestow(授予，给予) any quality on your children, which one would you pick? Great intelligence? Empathy for humanity? Much greater respect for their parents? The ability to pass a fridge without opening it?(路过冰箱而不打开的能力？)
如果你能赋予孩子任何一种品质，你会选择什么？极高的智力？对人类的同理心？对父母更多的尊重？还是路过冰箱而不打开的能力？
Deborah Cobb-Clark, an economist at the University of Sydney, has a different answer: an internal locus(位置，核心) of control. The concept of a locus of control(控制点（心理学术语）) was developed in the 1960s by a psychologist with the tremendous(极大的，惊人的) name of Julian Rotter. It is closely linked to the idea of agency(能动性，自主性). People with an internal locus of control believe that they are able to shape the world around them; those with an external locus of control tend to think that luck, destiny or other people determine their fate.(内控者相信能塑造世界，外控者认为命运由外部决定。)
悉尼大学经济学家黛博拉·科布-克拉克给出了不同的答案：内控点。内控点这一概念由心理学家朱利安·罗特于20世纪60年代提出，他的名字非常响亮。内控点与“能动性”的概念密切相关。拥有内控点的人相信自己能够塑造周围的世界；而拥有外控点的人则倾向于认为运气、命运或他人决定了他们的命运。
It turns out that being an internal is pretty useful. It motivates effort: one study by Ms Cobb-Clark and her co-authors looked at a cohort(一群，一批) of newly unemployed people in Germany, and found that people with a more external locus of control searched less intensively(密集地，深入地) for work than internals. Why spend time hunting for jobs, after all, if outcomes are disconnected from actions?(如果结果与行动无关，何必花时间找工作？) Externals also had lower reservation wage(保留工资)s, the minimum pay they were prepared to accept for a job.
事实证明，成为内控者非常有用。它能激发努力：科布-克拉克女士及其合著者的一项研究观察了德国一群新失业的人，发现外控倾向较强的人比内控者求职的积极性更低。毕竟，如果结果与行动无关，何必花时间找工作呢？外控者的保留工资也更低，即他们愿意接受一份工作的最低薪酬。