"Internal locus of control" means that a person sees themselves as both being responsible for what happens to them and having power over it, and "external locus of control" means that they view outside forces (luck, fate,'talent', family connections, other people) as having greater power and agency than they do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_controlEdit: I think others must have posted this link soon after I started this reply. Didn't mean to add little or nothing to the discussion.
To remedy that defect, I'll expand a bit. I think (and this thought is supported by quite a bit of research) that a child developing a strong internal locus of control is not really dependent on whether a parent "pushes" or doesn't "push", but rather on how parents, teachers, and other family members respond to success and failure, and what they attribute these to. A child who hears "You did really well. It is clear that you worked really hard." is far more likely to feel that they were in control of the outcome than one who hears "You did really well. You must be smart." or "You did really well. I bet you're the teacher's favorite." A child who hears "You didn't do so well, but you didn't really work very hard. Next time, start practicing sooner, and I'm sure you'll do better." gets very different messages about their responsibility, power, and control than one who hears "You didn't do so well. I guess you just don't have a talent for ________. " or "You didn't do so well. I guess it wasn't your lucky day."
A strong internal locus of control is associated with success and resiliency. To the extent that Asian parents communicate that their children's success in within their control, they are helping them to develop that internal locus of control. But when the pushing is taken to an extreme, when failure is never an option, something very interesting, and, IMO, more than a little sad, happens: the children don't know when to quit, don't know how to deal with failure, and have a hard time recognizing when it is appropriate to stop trying. I can't find the link right now, but I know there was a study done that compared high-performing students from Asia with high-performing American students, and presented both groups with a set of very difficult math challenges to solve. For some of the problems, in fact, no solution was possible. Both groups of students worked diligently, but the American students were able to recognize that no solution was possible to some of the problems much earlier than the Asian students, many of whom refused to stop working even when it should have been clear that all reasonable approaches to the problems had been exhausted. There is such a thing as having too strong an internal locus of control.
