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Locus of control is a theory in personality psychology referring to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them. Understanding of the concept was developed by Julian B. Rotter in 1954, and has since become an aspect of personality studies. A person's "locus" (Latin for "place" or "location") is conceptualised as either internal (the person believes they can control their life) or external (meaning they believe that their decisions and life are controlled by environmental factors which they cannot influence).
Rotter J.B. Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs, 80:1-28, 1966.
Locus of control is a theory in personality psychology referring to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them. Understanding of the concept was developed by Julian B. Rotter in 1954, and has since become an aspect of personality studies. A person's "locus" (Latin for "place" or "location") is conceptualised as either internal (the person believes they can control their life) or external (meaning they believe that their decisions and life are controlled by environmental factors which they cannot influence).
Individuals with a high internal locus of control believe that events in their life derive primarily from their own actions; for example, if a person with an internal locus of control does not perform as well as they wanted to on a test, they would blame it on lack of preparedness on their part. If they performed well on a test, they would attribute this to ability to study.[1] In the test-performance example, if a person with a high external locus of control does poorly on a test, they might attribute this to the difficulty of the test questions. If they performed well on a test, they might think the teacher was lenient or that they were lucky.[1]
Those with a high internal locus of control exhibit better control of their behavior[citation needed], tend to be more politically involved[citation needed] and are more likely to attempt to influence others than are those with an external locus of control.[citation needed] They also assign greater likelihood to their efforts being successful, and more actively seek information concerning their situation.[citation needed]
Locus of control has generated much research in a variety of areas in psychology. The construct is applicable to fields such as educational psychology, health psychology or clinical psychology. There will probably continue to be debate about whether specific or more global measures of locus of control will prove to be more useful. Careful distinctions should also be made between locus of control (a concept linked with expectancies about the future) and attributional style (a concept linked with explanations for past outcomes), or between locus of control and concepts such as self-efficacy. The importance of locus of control as a topic in psychology is likely to remain quite central for many years.
Locus of control has also been included as one of four dimensions of core self-evaluations – one's fundamental appraisal of oneself – along with neuroticism, self-efficacy, and self-esteem. [2] In a followup study, Judge et al. (2002) argued the concepts of locus of control, neuroticism, self-efficacy and self-esteem measured the same, single factor. [3] The concept of core self-evaluations was first examined by Judge, Locke, and Durham (1997), and since has proven to have the ability to predict several work outcomes, specifically, job satisfaction and job performance. [4]
Locus of control is the framework of Rotter's (1954) social-learning theory of personality. In 1966 he published an article in Psychological Monographs which summarized over a decade of research (by Rotter and his students), much of it previously unpublished. In 1976, Herbert M. Lefcourt defined the perceived locus of control: "...a generalised expectancy for internal as opposed to external control of reinforcements".[5] Attempts have been made to trace the genesis of the concept to the work of Alfred Adler, but its immediate background lies in the work of Rotter and his students. Early work on the topic of expectations about control of reinforcement had been performed in the 1950s by James and Phares (prepared for unpublished doctoral dissertations supervised by Rotter at Ohio State University).[6]
Another Rotter student, William H. James (not to be confused with William James), studied two types of "expectancy shifts":
Weiners attribution theory as applied to student motivation
Perceived locus of control | ||
Internal |
External | |
Attributions of |
Ability |
Chance/luck |
Attributions of |
Effort |
Task Difficulty |
Additional research led to the hypothesis that typical expectancy shifts were displayed more often by those who attributed their outcomes to ability, whereas those who displayed atypical expectancy were more likely to attribute their outcomes to chance. This was interpreted that people could be divided into those who attribute to ability (an internal cause) versus those who attribute to luck (an external cause). Bernard Weiner argued that rather than ability-versus-luck, locus may relate to whether attributions are made to stable or unstable causes.
Rotter (1975, 1989) has discussed problems and misconceptions in others' use of the internal-versus-external construct.
Rotter (1975) cautioned that internality and externality represent two ends of a continuum, not an either/or typology. Internals tend to attribute outcomes of events to their own control. People who have internal locus of control believe that the outcomes of their actions are results of their own abilities. Internals believe that their hard work would lead them to obtain positive outcomes.[7] They also believe that every action has its consequence, which makes them accept the fact that things happen and it depends on them if they want to have control over it or not. Externals attribute outcomes of events to external circumstances. People that have external locus of control believe that many things happen in their lives is out of their control.[8] They believe that their own actions are a result of external factors that are beyond their control. Rotter in his study suggested that people that have external locus of control have four types of beliefs which include the following: powerful others such as doctors, nurses, fate, luck and a belief that the world is too complex to predict its outcomes. People that have external locus of control tend to blame others for the outcomes rather than themselves. It should not be thought, however, that internality is linked exclusively with attribution to effort and externality with attribution to luck (as Weiner's work —see below—makes clear). This has obvious implications for differences between internals and externals in terms of their achievement motivation, suggesting that internal locus is linked with higher levels of need for achievement. Due to their locating control outside themselves, externals tend to feel they have less control over their fate. People with an external locus of control tend to be more stressed and prone to clinical depression.[9]
Internals were believed by Rotter (1966) to exhibit two essential characteristics: high achievement motivation and low outer-directedness. This was the basis of the locus-of-control scale proposed by Rotter in 1966, although it was based on Rotter's belief that locus of control is a single construct. Since 1970, Rotter's assumption of uni-dimensionality has been challenged, with Levenson (for example) arguing that different dimensions of locus of control (such as beliefs that events in one's life are self-determined, or organized by powerful others and are chance-based) must be separated. Weiner's early work in the 1970s suggested that orthogonal to the internality-externality dimension, differences should be considered between those who attribute to stable and those who attribute to unstable causes.[10]
This new, dimensional theory meant that one could now attribute outcomes to ability (an internal stable cause), effort (an internal unstable cause), task difficulty (an external stable cause) or luck (an external, unstable cause). Although this was how Weiner originally saw these four causes, he has been challenged as to whether people see luck (for example) as an external cause, whether ability is always perceived as stable, and whether effort is always seen as changing. Indeed, in more recent publications (e.g. Weiner, 1980) he uses different terms for these four causes (such as "objective task characteristics" instead of "task difficulty" and "chance" instead of "luck"). Psychologists since Weiner have distinguished between stable and unstable effort, knowing that in some circumstances effort could be seen as a stable cause (especially given the presence of words such as "industrious" in English).
Regarding locus of control, there is another type of control that entails a mix among the internal and external types. People that have the combination of the two types of locus of control are often referred to as Bi-locals. People that have Bi-local characteristics are known to handle stress and cope with their diseases more efficiently by having the mixture of internal and external locus of control.[8] People that have this mix of locae of control can take personal responsibility for their actions and the consequences thereof while remaining capable of relying upon and having faith in outside resources; these characteristics correspond to the internal and external locae of control, respectively. An example of this mixed system would be an alcoholic who will accept the fact that he brought the disease upon himself while remaining open to treatment and/or acknowledging that there are people, mainly doctors and therapists, that are trying to cure his/her addiction, and on whom, he should rely.
The most widely used questionnaire to measure locus of control is the 23-item (plus six filler items), forced-choice scale of Rotter (1966). However, this is not the only questionnaire; Bialer's (1961) 23-item scale for children predates Rotter's work. Also relevant to the locus-of-control scale are the Crandall Intellectual Ascription of Responsibility Scale (Crandall, 1965) and the Nowicki-Strickland Scale.[11] One of the earliest psychometric scales to assess locus of control (using a Likert-type scale, in contrast to the forced-choice alternative measure in Rotter's scale) was that devised by W. H. James for his unpublished doctoral dissertation, supervised by Rotter at Ohio State University; however, this remains unpublished.[12]
Many measures of locus of control have appeared since Rotter's scale. These were reviewed by Furnham and Steele (1993) and include those related to health psychology, industrial and organizational psychology and those specifically for children (such as the Stanford Preschool Internal-External Control Index[13] for three- to six-year-olds). Furnham and Steele (1993) cite data suggesting that the most reliable, valid questionnaire for adults is the Duttweiler scale. For a review of the health questionnaires cited by these authors, see "Applications" below.
The Duttweiler (1984) Internal Control Index (ICI) addresses perceived problems with the Rotter scales, including their forced-choice format, susceptibility to social desirability and heterogeneity (as indicated by factor analysis). She also notes that, while other scales existed in 1984 to measure locus of control, "they appear to be subject to many of the same problems".[14] Unlike the forced-choice format used on Rotter's scale, Duttweiler's 28-item ICI uses a Likert-type scale in which people must state whether they would rarely, occasionally, sometimes, frequently or usually behave as specified in each of 28 statements. The ICI assess variables pertinent to internal locus: cognitive processing, autonomy, resistance to social influence, self-confidence and delay of gratification. A small (133 student-subject) validation study indicated that the scale had good internal reliability (a Cronbach's alpha of 0.85).
Attributional
style (or explanatory style) is a concept introduced by Lyn Yvonne
Abramson, Martin
Seligman and John D.
Teasdale;[15]
Buchanan and Seligman (1995) have edited a book-length review of the
topic. This concept goes a stage further than Weiner, stating that in
addition to the concepts of internality-externality and stability a
dimension of globality-specificity[clarific
The topic of attribution theory (introduced to psychology by Fritz Heider) has had an influence on locus-of-control theory, but differences exist between the history of these two models. Attribution theorists have been (largely speaking) social psychologists (concerned with the general processes characterizing how and why people make the attributions they do), whereas locus-of-control theorists have been more concerned with individual differences.
Significant to the history of both approaches were the contributions made by Bernard Weiner in the 1970s. Before this time, attribution theorists and locus-of-control theorists had been largely concerned with divisions into external and internal loci of causality. Weiner added the dimension of stability-instability (and later controllability), indicating how a cause could be perceived as having been internal to a person yet still beyond the person's control. The stability dimension added to the understanding of why people succeed or fail after such outcomes. Although not part of Weiner's model, a further dimension of attribution was added by Abramson, Seligman and Teasdale (globality-specificity).
Locus of control's best known application may have been in the area of health psychology, largely due to the work of Kenneth Wallston. Scales to measure locus of control in the health domain were reviewed by Furnham and Steele in 1993. The best-known are the Health Locus of Control Scale and the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale, or MHLC.[16] The latter scale is based on the idea (echoing Levenson's earlier work) that health may be attributed to three sources: internal factors (such as self-determination of a healthy lifestyle), powerful others (such as one's doctor) or luck (which is very dangerous as lifestyle advice will be ignored - these people are very difficult to help).
Some of the scales reviewed by Furnham and Steele (1993) relate to health in more specific domains, such as obesity (for example, Saltzer's (1982) Weight Locus of Control Scale or Stotland and Zuroff's (1990) Dieting Beliefs Scale), mental health (such as Wood and Letak's (1982) Mental Health Locus of Control Scale or the Depression Locus of Control Scale of Whiteman, Desmond and Price, 1987) and cancer (the Cancer Locus of Control Scale of Pruyn et al., 1988). In discussing applications of the concept to health psychology Furnham and Steele refer to Claire Bradley's work, linking locus of control to the management of diabetes mellitus. Empirical data on health locus of control in a number of fields was reviewed by Norman and Bennett in 1995; they note that data on whether certain health-related behaviors are related to internal health locus of control have been ambiguous. They note that some studies found that internal health locus of control is linked with increased exercise, but cite other studies which found a weak (or no) relationship between exercise behaviors (such as jogging) and internal health locus of control. A similar ambiguity is noted for data on the relationship between internal health locus of control and other health-related behaviors (such as breast self-examination, weight control and preventative-health behavior). Of particular interest are the data cited on the relationship between internal health locus of control and alcohol consumption.
Norman and Bennett note that some studies that compared alcoholics with non-alcoholics suggest alcoholism is linked to increased externality for health locus of control; however, other studies have linked alcoholism with increased internality. Similar ambiguity has been found in studies of alcohol consumption in the general, non-alcoholic population. They are more optimistic in reviewing the literature on the relationship between internal health locus of control and smoking cessation, although they also point out that there are grounds for supposing that powerful-others and internal-health loci of control may be linked with this behavior.
They argue that a stronger relationship is found when health locus of control is assessed for specific domains than when general measures are taken. Overall, studies using behavior-specific health locus scales have tended to produce more positive results.[17] These scales have been found to be more predictive of general behavior than more general scales, such as the MHLC scale.[18] Norman and Bennett cite several studies that used health-related locus-of-control scales in specific domains (including smoking cessation),[19] diabetes,[20] tablet-treated diabetes,[21] hypertension,[22] arthritis,[23] cancer,[24] and heart and lung disease.[25]
They also argue that health locus of control is better at predicting health-related behavior if studied in conjunction with health value (the value people attach to their health), suggesting that health value is an important moderator variable in the health locus of control relationship. For example, Weiss and Larsen (1990) found an increased relationship between internal health locus of control and health when health value was assessed.[26] Despite the importance Norman and Bennett attach to specific measures of locus of control, there are general textbooks on personality which cite studies linking internal locus of control with improved physical health, mental health and quality of life in people with diverse conditions: HIV, migraines, diabetes, kidney disease and epilepsy.[27]
During the 1970s and 1980s, Whyte correlated locus of control with the academic success of students enrolled in higher-education courses. Students who were more internally controlled believed that hard work and focus would result in successful academic progress, and they performed better academically. Those students who were identified as more externally controlled (believing that their future depended upon luck or fate) tended to have lower academic-performance levels. Cassandra B. Whyte researched how control tendency influenced behavioral outcomes in the academic realm by examining the effects of various modes of counseling on grade improvements and the locus of control of high-risk college students.[28][29]
Other fields to which the concept has been applied include industrial and organizational psychology, sports psychology, educational psychology and the psychology of religion. Richard Kahoe has published work in the latter field, suggesting that intrinsic religious orientation correlates positively (and extrinsic religious orientation correlates negatively) with internal locus.[30] Of relevance to both health psychology and the psychology of religion is the work of Holt, Clark, Kreuter and Rubio (2003) on a questionnaire to assess spiritual-health locus of control. The authors distinguished between an active spiritual-health locus of control (in which "God empowers the individual to take healthy actions"[31]) and a more passive spiritual-health locus of control (where health is left up to God). In industrial and organizational psychology, it has been found that internals are more likely to take positive action to change their jobs (rather than merely talk about occupational change) than externals.[32]
Locus of control has also been applied to the field of consumer research. For example, Martin, Veer and Pervan (2007) examined how the weight locus of control of women (i.e., beliefs about the control of body weight) influence how they react to female models in advertising of different body shapes. They found that women who believe they can control their weight ("internals"), respond most favorably to slim models in advertising, and this favorable response is mediated by self-referencing. In contrast, women who feel powerless about their weight ("externals"), self-reference larger-sized models, but only prefer larger-sized models when the advertisement is for a non-fattening product. For fattening products, they exhibit a similar preference for larger-sized models and slim models. The weight locus of control measure was also found to be correlated with measures for weight control beliefs and willpower.[33]
The development of locus of control is associated with family style and resources, cultural stability and experiences with effort leading to reward.[citation needed] Many internals have grown up with families modeling typical internal beliefs; these families emphasized effort, education, responsibility and thinking, and parents typically gave their children rewards they had promised them. In contrast, externals are typically associated with lower socioeconomic status. Societies experiencing social unrest increase the expectancy of being out-of-control; therefore, people in such societies become more external[citation needed].
The 1995 research of Schneewind suggests that "children in large single parent families headed by women are more likely to develop an external locus of control".[34][citation needed] Schultz and Schultz also claim that children in families where parents have been supportive and consistent in discipline develop internal locus of control. At least one study has found that children whose parents had an external locus of control are more likely to attribute their successes and failures to external causes.[35] Findings from early studies on the familial origins of locus of control were summarized by Lefcourt: "Warmth, supportiveness and parental encouragement seem to be essential for development of an internal locus".,[36] but causal evidence regarding how parental locus of control influences offspring locus of control (whether genetic, or environmentally mediated) is lacking.
Locus of control becomes more internal with age[citation needed]. As children grow older, they gain skills which give them more control over their environment, however whether this, or biological development is responsoble for changes in locus is unclear.
It is sometimes assumed that as people age they will become less internal and more external, but data here has been ambiguous.[37] Longitudinal data collected by Gatz and Karel (cited in Johnson et al., 2004[citation needed]) imply that internality may increase until middle age, decreasing thereafter. Noting the ambiguity of data in this area, Aldwin and Gilmer (2004) cite Lachman's claim that locus of control is ambiguous. Indeed, there is evidence here that changes in locus of control in later life relate more visibly to increased externality (rather than reduced internality) if the two concepts are taken to be orthogonal. Evidence cited by Schultz and Schultz (2005) (for example, Heckhausen and Schulz (1995) or Ryckman and Malikosi, 1975) suggests that locus of control increases in internality until middle age. The authors also note that attempts to control the environment become more pronounced between ages eight and fourteen.