Mr. Robot is a great new show on USA channel. If you’re not watching yet, you need to start. Christian Slater plays Mr. Robot, the leader of a clandestine group of hackers named fSociety (think Anonymous) trying to take down a corporate giant named E Corp. While trying to recruit Elliot (Rami Malek), a brilliant young software engineer, Mr. Robot uses a metaphor designed to reach even the most reluctant programmer.

Mr. Robot: “Tell me one thing Elliot: are you a one, or a zero? That’s the question you have to ask yourself, are you a yes or a no? You gonna act, or not?”

Elliot: “You’ve been staring at a computer screen too long homie. Life’s not that binary.”

Mr. Robot: “Isn’t it? Sure, there are grays, when you come right down to it, at its core, beneath every choice there’s either a one or a zero. You either do something or you don’t.“

So Elliot has to decide if he’s a man of action or not. But this isn’t just the ramblings of an anarchistic megalomaniac. There is a whole body of behavioral science around the people who are the ‘ones’ and who are the ‘zeros’.

It’s called the Locus of Control.  Everyone has one, and yours is either internal or external. People with an internal locus believe that their actions control the outcomes in their lives. What happens to them in life, good or bad, is a consequence of their behavior. This puts them in control of their results, by taking ownership of what they can control, and letting go of what they can’t.

Conversely, people with an external Locus of Control believe that life happens to them. Their results are controlled by outside forces, so they really aren’t in control of their outcomes. They often place blame for where they are on the economy, the government, or those who control things because of the power they have acquired. People with an external locus of control do not attack their obstacles, they  surrender to them.

So where are you on this scale. Are you an internal or an external? Are you a One or a Zero?

More importantly, what will Elliot do? Will he take action, join fSociety and help start the revolution that will change the world for the better? Or will he walk away and not be our hero? I can’t wait to find out. I’ll be tuning in to the third episode. If you know what’s good for you, you will too…