We all have career tran­si­tions through­out our lives—some by choice, some not. By inter­view­ing work­ers from Aus­tria, Ser­bia, Spain, China and the U.S., researchers have deter­mined some cul­tural dif­fer­ences in how peo­ple per­ceive career tran­si­tions, and why they occur.

Work­ers in the United States didn’t ever attribute a career tran­si­tion to an exter­nal cause, such as con­flict with a boss. Not once. Instead they tended to men­tion inter­nal fac­tors, such as their desire for a fresh chal­lenge. By con­trast, work­ers in China almost exclu­sively stressed the role played by exter­nal fac­tors. Mean­while, work­ers in the Euro­pean nations were more of a mix, attribut­ing their career tran­si­tions to both inter­nal and exter­nal factors. […]

Generally-speaking, peo­ple are known to be biased towards attribut­ing pos­i­tive events to them­selves, and so it’s per­haps lit­tle won­der that many work­ers attrib­uted all these pos­i­tive career tran­si­tions to inter­nal causes. “In addi­tion,” the researchers said, “in many cul­tures ‘being in charge’ of one’s life is pos­i­tively val­ued. Con­versely, recon­struct­ing cru­cial career tran­si­tions as purely trig­gered by exter­nal cir­cum­stances does not con­vey a great amount of competence.”