Locus of control
Encyclopedia
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 important aspect of personality studies.
One's "locus
" (Latin for "place" or "location") can either be internal (meaning the person believes that they control their life) or external (meaning they believe that their environment, some higher power, or other people control their decisions and their life).
Individuals with a high internal locus of control believe that events result primarily from their own behavior and actions. Those with a high external locus of control believe that powerful others, fate, or chance primarily determine events.
Those with a high internal locus of control have better control of their behavior, tend to exhibit more political behaviors, and are more likely to attempt to influence other people than those with a high external (or low internal respectively) locus of control. Those with a high internal locus of control are more likely to assume that their efforts will be successful. They are more active in seeking information and knowledge concerning their situation.
. 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 students, such as William H. James (not to be confused with William James
), who studied two types of expectancy shifts:
Work in this field led psychologists to suppose that people who were more likely to display typical expectancy shifts were those who more likely to attribute their outcomes to ability, whereas those who displayed atypical expectancy would be more likely to attribute their outcomes to chance. This was interpreted as saying that people could be divided into those who attribute to ability (an internal cause) versus those who attribute to luck (an external cause). However, after 1970, Bernard Weiner
pointed out that attributions to ability versus luck also differ in that the former are an attribution to a stable cause, the latter an attribution to an unstable cause.
A revolutionary paper in this field was published in 1966, in the journal Psychological Monographs, by Rotter. In it, Rotter summarized over ten years of research by himself and his students, much of it previously unpublished. Early history of the concept can be found in Lefcourt (1976). Rotter (1975, 1989) has discussed problems and misconceptions in others' use of the internal versus external control of reinforcement construct...
(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
(Benassi, Sweeney & Dufour, 1988; cited in Maltby, Day & Macaskill, 2007).
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 this was actually based on Rotter's belief that locus of control is a unidimensional construct. Since 1970, Rotter's assumption of unidimensionality has been challenged, with Levenson, for example, arguing that different dimensions of locus of control, such as belief that events in one's life are self-determined, are organized by powerful others and are chance-based, must be separated. Weiner's early work in the 1970s suggested that more-or-less orthogonal to the internality-externality dimension, we should also consider differences between those who attribute to stable causes, and those who attribute to unstable causes.
This meant that attributions could be to ability (an internal stable cause), effort (an internal unstable cause), task difficulty (an external stable cause) or luck (an external, unstable cause). Such at least were how the early Weiner saw these four causes, although he has been challenged as to whether people do 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) Weiner uses different terms for these four causes—such as "objective task characteristics" in place of task difficulty and "chance" in place of luck. It has also been notable how psychologists since Weiner have distinguished between stable effort and unstable effort—knowing that, in some circumstances, effort could be seen as a stable cause, especially given the presence of certain words such as "industrious" in the English language.
-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, although this remained an unpublished scale.
Many measures of locus of control have appeared since Rotter's scale, some that use a five-point scale, such as The Duttweiler Control Index (Duttweiler, 1984), and some that relate to specific areas, such as health. These scales are 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, which is used for three- to six-year-olds. Furnham and Steele (1993) cite data that suggest that the most reliable and valid of the questionnaires for adults is the Duttweiler scale. For a review of the health questionnaires cited by these authors, see below under "Applications".
suggest it is not assessing an entirely homogeneous concept. 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" (Duttweiler, 1984, p. 211). She developed the ICI to assess several variables especially pertinent to internal locus: cognitive processing, autonomy, resistance to social influence, self-confidence and delay of gratification
. After administration of this scale to 133 students at Gainesville Junior College in Georgia, United States, she found the scale to have good internal reliability, with a Cronbach's alpha
of 0.85. Unlike the forced-choice format used on Rotter's scale, Duttweiler's 28-item ICI uses a Likert-type scale, in which people have to state whether they would rarely, occasionally, sometimes, frequently or usually behave as specified by each of 28 statements.
, Martin Seligman
and John D. Teasdale
(Abramson, Seligman & Teasdale, 1978). 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 is also needed. Abramson et al. therefore believed that how people explained successes and failures in their lives related to whether they attributed these to internal or external factors, to factors that were short-term or long-term and to factors that affected all situations in their situations.
The topic of attribution theory, introduced to psychology by Fritz Heider
, has had an influence on locus of control theory, but it is important to appreciate the differences between the history of these two models in psychology. Attribution theorists have been, largely speaking, social psychologists, concerned with the general processes characterizing how and why people in general 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. Prior to 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 somewhat 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, that of globality-specificity (see the article on explanatory style
).
, largely thanks to the work of Kenneth Wallston. Scales to measure locus of control in the health domain are reviewed by Furnham and Steele (1993). The most famous of these would be the Health Locus of Control Scale and the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale, or MHLC (Wallston, Wallston, & DeVellis, 1976; Wallston, Wallston, Kaplan & Maides, 1976). The latter scale is based on the idea, echoing Levenson's earlier work, that health may be attributed to three possible outcomes: internal factors, such as self-determination of a healthy lifestyle, powerful others, such as one's doctor, or luck.
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), or 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 also refer to Claire Bradley's work, linking locus of control to management of diabetes mellitus
. Empirical data on health locus of control in various fields has been reviewed by Norman and Bennett (1995). These authors note that data on whether certain health-related behaviors are related to internal health locus of control have been ambiguous. For example, they note that some studies found that internal health locus of control is linked with increased exercise, but they also cite several studies that have found only a weak or no relationship between exercise behaviors (such as jogging
) and internal health locus of control. They note similar ambiguity 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 behaviors. Of particular interest are the data these authors cite 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, but other studies have found alcoholism to be linked with increased internality, and similar ambiguity has been found in studies that looked at alcohol consumption in a more general, non-alcoholic population. Norman and Bennett appear a little 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 health locus of control, as well as internal health locus of control, may be linked with smoking cessation.
Norman and Bennett argue that a stronger relationship is found when health locus of control is assessed for specific domains than when general measures of locus of control are taken. Overall, studies using behavior-specific health locus scales have tended to produce more positive results (Lefcourt, 1991). Moreover, these scales have been found to be more predictive of general behavior than more general scales, such as the MHLC scale (Norman & Bennett, 1995, p. 72). Norman and Bennett cite several studies that used health-related locus of control scales in specific domains, including smoking cessation (Georgio & Bradley, 1992), diabetes (Ferraro, Price, Desmond & Roberts, 1987), tablet-treated diabetes (Bradley, Lewis, Jennings & Ward, 1990), hypertension (Stantion, 1987), arthritis (Nicasio et al., 1985), cancer (Pruyn et al., 1988) and heart and lung disease (Allison, 1987).
They also argue that health locus of control is better at predicting health-related behavior if studied in conjunction with health value, i.e. 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) (cited in Norman & Bennett, 1995) found increased relationship between internal health locus of control and health when health value was assessed. Despite the importance that Norman and Bennet (1995) attach to use of specific measures of locus of control, there are still some general textbooks on personality, such as Maltby, Day and Macaskill (2007), which continue to cite studies linking internal locus of control with improved physical health, mental health and quality of life
in people undergoing conditions as diverse as HIV
, migraines, diabetes, kidney disease and epilepsy
(Maltby, Day & Macaskill, 2007)
In the 1970s and 1980s, Whyte correlated locus of control with academic success of students enrolled in higher education courses. Students who tended to be more internally controlled believed that hard work and focus would result oftentimes 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
further 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.
, sports psychology, educational psychology
and the psychology of religion
. Richard Kahoe has published celebrated work in the latter field, suggesting that intrinsic religious orientation correlates positively, extrinsic religious orientation correlates negatively, with internal locus. Of relevance to both health psychology and the psychology of religion is the work prepared by Holt, Clark, Kreuter and Rubio (2003), in preparing a questionnaire to assess spiritual health locus of control. These authors distinguished between an active spiritual health locus of control orientation, in which "God empowers the individual to take healthy actions" and a more passive spiritual health locus of control orientation, where people leave everything to God in the care of their own health. 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 to talk about occupational change, than externals (Allen, Weeks & Moffat, 2005; cited in Maltby et al., 2007).
The research of Schneewind (1995; cited in Schultz & Schultz, 2005) suggests that "children in large single parent families headed by women are more likely to develop an external locus of control" (Schultz & Schultz, 2005, p. 439). Schultz and Schultz also point out that children who develop an internal locus tend to come from families where parents have been supportive and consistent in self-discipline. There has been some ambiguity about whether parental locus of control influences a child's locus of control, although at least one study has found that children are more likely to attribute their successes and failures to unknown causes if their parents had an external locus of control (see the first of the external links listed below).
As children grow older, they gain skills that give them more control over their environment. In support of this, psychological research has found that older children have more internal locus of control than younger children. Findings from early studies on the familial origins of locus of control were summarized by Lefcourt:
A study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine examined the health effect of childhood "locus of control". 7,500 British adults followed from birth who had shown an internal locus of control at the age of 10 were less likely to be overweight at age 30. The children who had an internal locus of control also appeared the have higher levels of self esteem.
.
is another related concept, introduced by Albert Bandura
. Self-efficacy has been measured by means of a psychometric scale and differs from locus of control in that whereas locus of control is generally a measure of cross-situational beliefs about control, self-efficacy is used as a concept to relate to more circumscribed situations and activities. Bandura has emphasized how the concept differs from self-esteem—using the example that a person may have low self-efficacy for ballroom dancing, but that if ballroom dancing is not very important to that person, this is unlikely to result in low self-esteem.
Psychiatrist and expert on trauma and dissociation, Colin A. Ross
, MD, describes the inappropriate self-blame that characterizes many adult survivors of childhood trauma as "the locus of control shift." This theory is pivotal in his therapeutic sessions with near-psychotic people at the Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma
.
It is important to appreciate that differences do exist between internal locus of control and self-efficacy. Smith (1989) has argued that the Rotter scale to assess locus of control cannot be taken as a measure of self-efficacy, because "only a subset of items refer directly to the subject's capabilities" (Smith, p. 229). Smith noted, in his empirical study, that coping skills training led to increases in self-efficacy, but did not affect locus of control as measured by Rotter's (1966) scale.
Locus of control has also has been included as one of the four dimensions that comprise core self-evaluations
, one's fundamental appraisal of oneself, along with neuroticism
, self-efficacy
, and self-esteem
. 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.
External link for Attributional Style:
Personality psychology
Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and individual differences. Its areas of focus include:* Constructing a coherent picture of the individual and his or her major psychological processes...
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
Julian Rotter
Julian Rotter is an American psychologist who is known for developing influential theories, including social learning theory and locus of control.-Background:...
in 1954, and has since become an important aspect of personality studies.
One's "locus
Method of loci
The method of loci , also called the memory palace, is a mnemonic device introduced in ancient Roman rhetorical treatises . It relies on memorized spatial relationships to establish, order and recollect memorial content...
" (Latin for "place" or "location") can either be internal (meaning the person believes that they control their life) or external (meaning they believe that their environment, some higher power, or other people control their decisions and their life).
Individuals with a high internal locus of control believe that events result primarily from their own behavior and actions. Those with a high external locus of control believe that powerful others, fate, or chance primarily determine events.
Those with a high internal locus of control have better control of their behavior, tend to exhibit more political behaviors, and are more likely to attempt to influence other people than those with a high external (or low internal respectively) locus of control. Those with a high internal locus of control are more likely to assume that their efforts will be successful. They are more active in seeking information and knowledge concerning their situation.
History of concept
Locus of control is the framework of Rotter's (1954) social learning theory of personality. Lefcourt (1976) defined perceived locus of control as follows: "Perceived control is defined as a generalised expectancy for internal as opposed to external control of reinforcements" (Lefcourt 1976, p. 27). Early work on the topic of expectancies about control of reinforcement had, as Lefcourt explains, been performed in the 1950s by James and Phares prepared for unpublished doctoral dissertations supervised by Rotter at Ohio State UniversityOhio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...
. Attempts have been made to trace the genesis of the concept to the work of Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler was an Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. In collaboration with Sigmund Freud and a small group of Freud's colleagues, Adler was among the co-founders of the psychoanalytic movement as a core member of the Vienna...
, but its immediate background lies in the work of Rotter students, such as William H. James (not to be confused with William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
), who studied two types of expectancy shifts:
- typical expectancy shifts, believing that a success or failure would be followed by a similar outcome; and
- atypical expectancy shifts, believing that a success or failure would be followed by a dissimilar outcome.
Work in this field led psychologists to suppose that people who were more likely to display typical expectancy shifts were those who more likely to attribute their outcomes to ability, whereas those who displayed atypical expectancy would be more likely to attribute their outcomes to chance. This was interpreted as saying that people could be divided into those who attribute to ability (an internal cause) versus those who attribute to luck (an external cause). However, after 1970, Bernard Weiner
Bernard Weiner
Bernard Weiner is a cognitive psychologist who is known for developing a form of attribution theory that explains the emotional and motivational entailments of academic success and failure. Bernard Weiner got interested in the field of attribution after first studying achievement motivation...
pointed out that attributions to ability versus luck also differ in that the former are an attribution to a stable cause, the latter an attribution to an unstable cause.
A revolutionary paper in this field was published in 1966, in the journal Psychological Monographs, by Rotter. In it, Rotter summarized over ten years of research by himself and his students, much of it previously unpublished. Early history of the concept can be found in Lefcourt (1976). Rotter (1975, 1989) has discussed problems and misconceptions in others' use of the internal versus external control of reinforcement construct...
Locus of control personality orientations
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. Externals attribute outcomes of events to external circumstances. 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 N-achN-Ach
Need for achievement refers to an individual's desire for significant accomplishment, mastering of skills, control, or high standards. The term was first used by Henry Murray and associated with a range of actions. These include: "intense, prolonged and repeated efforts to accomplish something...
(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
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
(Benassi, Sweeney & Dufour, 1988; cited in Maltby, Day & Macaskill, 2007).
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 this was actually based on Rotter's belief that locus of control is a unidimensional construct. Since 1970, Rotter's assumption of unidimensionality has been challenged, with Levenson, for example, arguing that different dimensions of locus of control, such as belief that events in one's life are self-determined, are organized by powerful others and are chance-based, must be separated. Weiner's early work in the 1970s suggested that more-or-less orthogonal to the internality-externality dimension, we should also consider differences between those who attribute to stable causes, and those who attribute to unstable causes.
This meant that attributions could be to ability (an internal stable cause), effort (an internal unstable cause), task difficulty (an external stable cause) or luck (an external, unstable cause). Such at least were how the early Weiner saw these four causes, although he has been challenged as to whether people do 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) Weiner uses different terms for these four causes—such as "objective task characteristics" in place of task difficulty and "chance" in place of luck. It has also been notable how psychologists since Weiner have distinguished between stable effort and unstable effort—knowing that, in some circumstances, effort could be seen as a stable cause, especially given the presence of certain words such as "industrious" in the English language.
Scales to measure locus of control
The most famous questionnaire to measure locus of control is the 23-item forced choice items and six filler items scale of Rotter (1966), but this is not the only questionnaire—indeed, predating Rotter's work by five years is Bialer's (1961) 23-item scale for children. Also of relevance to locus of control scale are the Crandall Intellectual Ascription of Responsibility Scale (Crandall, 1965), and the Nowicki-Strickland Scale. One of the earliest psychometric scales to assess locus of control, using a LikertLikert
Likert may refer to:* Rensis Likert, an American educator and organizational psychologist best known for his research on management styles* the Likert scale developed by Rensis Likert, a measuring device used in quantitative social science...
-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, although this remained an unpublished scale.
Many measures of locus of control have appeared since Rotter's scale, some that use a five-point scale, such as The Duttweiler Control Index (Duttweiler, 1984), and some that relate to specific areas, such as health. These scales are reviewed by Furnham and Steele (1993), and include those related to health psychology
Health psychology
Health psychology is concerned with understanding how biological, psychological, environmental, and cultural factors are involved in physical health and illness. Health psychologists work alongside other medical professionals in clinical settings, work on behavior change in public health promotion,...
, industrial and organizational psychology
Industrial and organizational psychology
Industrial and organizational psychology is the scientific study of employees, workplaces, and organizations. Industrial and organizational psychologists contribute to an organization's success by improving the performance and well-being of its people...
, and those specifically for children, such as the Stanford Preschool Internal-External Control Index, which is used for three- to six-year-olds. Furnham and Steele (1993) cite data that suggest that the most reliable and valid of the questionnaires for adults is the Duttweiler scale. For a review of the health questionnaires cited by these authors, see below under "Applications".
The Internal Control Index of Duttweiler
A scale with reasonably good psychometric properties has been the Internal Control Index (ICI) of Duttweiler (1984). In her paper on this scale, Duttweiler notes many problems with Rotter's I-E Scale, including problems with its forced choice format, its susceptibility to social desirability and her observation that studies that subject the scale to factor analysisFactor analysis
Factor analysis is a statistical method used to describe variability among observed, correlated variables in terms of a potentially lower number of unobserved, uncorrelated variables called factors. In other words, it is possible, for example, that variations in three or four observed variables...
suggest it is not assessing an entirely homogeneous concept. 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" (Duttweiler, 1984, p. 211). She developed the ICI to assess several variables especially pertinent to internal locus: cognitive processing, autonomy, resistance to social influence, self-confidence and delay of gratification
Gratification
Gratification is the pleasurable emotional reaction of happiness in response to a fulfillment of a desire or goal.Gratification, like all emotions, is a motivator of behavior and thus plays a role in the entire range of human social systems....
. After administration of this scale to 133 students at Gainesville Junior College in Georgia, United States, she found the scale to have good internal reliability, with a Cronbach's alpha
Cronbach's alpha
Cronbach's \alpha is a coefficient of reliability. It is commonly used as a measure of the internal consistency or reliability of a psychometric test score for a sample of examinees. It was first named alpha by Lee Cronbach in 1951, as he had intended to continue with further coefficients...
of 0.85. Unlike the forced-choice format used on Rotter's scale, Duttweiler's 28-item ICI uses a Likert-type scale, in which people have to state whether they would rarely, occasionally, sometimes, frequently or usually behave as specified by each of 28 statements.
Related area: attributional style
Attributional style, or explanatory style, is a concept that was introduced by Lyn Yvonne AbramsonLyn Yvonne Abramson
Lyn Yvonne Abramson is currently a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison....
, Martin Seligman
Martin Seligman
Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman is an American psychologist, educator, and author of self-help books. His theory of "learned helplessness" is widely respected among scientific psychologists....
and John D. Teasdale
John D. Teasdale
John D. Teasdale was a leading researcher at Oxford University, and then in the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge. He dedicated his focus to understanding the cognition behind depression. Teasdale was a pioneer in the cognitive therapy advancements in the United Kingdom. He was one of...
(Abramson, Seligman & Teasdale, 1978). 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 is also needed. Abramson et al. therefore believed that how people explained successes and failures in their lives related to whether they attributed these to internal or external factors, to factors that were short-term or long-term and to factors that affected all situations in their situations.
The topic of attribution theory, introduced to psychology by Fritz Heider
Fritz Heider
Fritz Heider was an Austrian psychologist whose work was related to the Gestalt school. In 1958 he published The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, which expanded upon his creation of balance theory and marked the starting point of attribution theory...
, has had an influence on locus of control theory, but it is important to appreciate the differences between the history of these two models in psychology. Attribution theorists have been, largely speaking, social psychologists, concerned with the general processes characterizing how and why people in general 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
Bernard Weiner
Bernard Weiner is a cognitive psychologist who is known for developing a form of attribution theory that explains the emotional and motivational entailments of academic success and failure. Bernard Weiner got interested in the field of attribution after first studying achievement motivation...
, in the 1970s. Prior to 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 somewhat 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, that of globality-specificity (see the article on explanatory style
Explanatory style
Explanatory style is a psychological attribute that indicates how people explain to themselves why they experience a particular event, either positive or negative. Psychologists have identified three components in explanatory style:...
).
Applications of locus of control theory
Locus of control's most famous application has probably been in the area of health psychologyHealth psychology
Health psychology is concerned with understanding how biological, psychological, environmental, and cultural factors are involved in physical health and illness. Health psychologists work alongside other medical professionals in clinical settings, work on behavior change in public health promotion,...
, largely thanks to the work of Kenneth Wallston. Scales to measure locus of control in the health domain are reviewed by Furnham and Steele (1993). The most famous of these would be the Health Locus of Control Scale and the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale, or MHLC (Wallston, Wallston, & DeVellis, 1976; Wallston, Wallston, Kaplan & Maides, 1976). The latter scale is based on the idea, echoing Levenson's earlier work, that health may be attributed to three possible outcomes: internal factors, such as self-determination of a healthy lifestyle, powerful others, such as one's doctor, or luck.
Some of the scales reviewed by Furnham and Steele (1993) relate to health in more specific domains, such as obesity
Obesity
Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems...
(for example, Saltzer's (1982) Weight Locus of Control Scale or Stotland and Zuroff's (1990) Dieting Beliefs Scale), or 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 also refer to Claire Bradley's work, linking locus of control to management of diabetes mellitus
Diabetes mellitus
Diabetes mellitus, often simply referred to as diabetes, is a group of metabolic diseases in which a person has high blood sugar, either because the body does not produce enough insulin, or because cells do not respond to the insulin that is produced...
. Empirical data on health locus of control in various fields has been reviewed by Norman and Bennett (1995). These authors note that data on whether certain health-related behaviors are related to internal health locus of control have been ambiguous. For example, they note that some studies found that internal health locus of control is linked with increased exercise, but they also cite several studies that have found only a weak or no relationship between exercise behaviors (such as jogging
Jogging
Jogging is a form of trotting or running at a slow or leisurely pace. The main intention is to increase fitness with less stress on the body than from faster running.-Definition:...
) and internal health locus of control. They note similar ambiguity 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 behaviors. Of particular interest are the data these authors cite 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, but other studies have found alcoholism to be linked with increased internality, and similar ambiguity has been found in studies that looked at alcohol consumption in a more general, non-alcoholic population. Norman and Bennett appear a little more optimistic in reviewing the literature on the relationship between internal health locus of control and smoking cessation
Smoking cessation
Smoking cessation is the process of discontinuing the practice of inhaling a smoked substance. This article focuses exclusively on cessation of tobacco smoking; however, the methods described may apply to cessation of smoking other substances that can be difficult to stop using due to the...
, although they also point out that there are grounds for supposing that powerful others health locus of control, as well as internal health locus of control, may be linked with smoking cessation.
Norman and Bennett argue that a stronger relationship is found when health locus of control is assessed for specific domains than when general measures of locus of control are taken. Overall, studies using behavior-specific health locus scales have tended to produce more positive results (Lefcourt, 1991). Moreover, these scales have been found to be more predictive of general behavior than more general scales, such as the MHLC scale (Norman & Bennett, 1995, p. 72). Norman and Bennett cite several studies that used health-related locus of control scales in specific domains, including smoking cessation (Georgio & Bradley, 1992), diabetes (Ferraro, Price, Desmond & Roberts, 1987), tablet-treated diabetes (Bradley, Lewis, Jennings & Ward, 1990), hypertension (Stantion, 1987), arthritis (Nicasio et al., 1985), cancer (Pruyn et al., 1988) and heart and lung disease (Allison, 1987).
They also argue that health locus of control is better at predicting health-related behavior if studied in conjunction with health value, i.e. 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) (cited in Norman & Bennett, 1995) found increased relationship between internal health locus of control and health when health value was assessed. Despite the importance that Norman and Bennet (1995) attach to use of specific measures of locus of control, there are still some general textbooks on personality, such as Maltby, Day and Macaskill (2007), which continue to cite studies linking internal locus of control with improved physical health, mental health and quality of life
Quality of life
The term quality of life is used to evaluate the general well-being of individuals and societies. The term is used in a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, and politics. Quality of life should not be confused with the concept of standard of...
in people undergoing conditions as diverse as HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
, migraines, diabetes, kidney disease and epilepsy
Epilepsy
Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by seizures. These seizures are transient signs and/or symptoms of abnormal, excessive or hypersynchronous neuronal activity in the brain.About 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, and nearly two out of every three new cases...
(Maltby, Day & Macaskill, 2007)
In the 1970s and 1980s, Whyte correlated locus of control with academic success of students enrolled in higher education courses. Students who tended to be more internally controlled believed that hard work and focus would result oftentimes 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
Cassandra B. Whyte
Cassandra Bolyard Whyte is an American higher education administrator, teacher, and educational researcher. She is recognized for publication and leadership in the areas of higher education management, improving academic performance of students, campus planning and safety, predicting educational...
further 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.
Organizational psychology and religion
Other fields to which the concept has been applied include industrial and organizational psychologyIndustrial and organizational psychology
Industrial and organizational psychology is the scientific study of employees, workplaces, and organizations. Industrial and organizational psychologists contribute to an organization's success by improving the performance and well-being of its people...
, sports psychology, educational psychology
Educational psychology
Educational psychology is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. Educational psychology is concerned with how students learn and develop, often focusing...
and the psychology of religion
Psychology of religion
Psychology of religion consists of the application of psychological methods and interpretive frameworks to religious traditions, as well as to both religious and irreligious individuals. The science attempts to accurately describe the details, origins, and uses of religious beliefs and behaviours...
. Richard Kahoe has published celebrated work in the latter field, suggesting that intrinsic religious orientation correlates positively, extrinsic religious orientation correlates negatively, with internal locus. Of relevance to both health psychology and the psychology of religion is the work prepared by Holt, Clark, Kreuter and Rubio (2003), in preparing a questionnaire to assess spiritual health locus of control. These authors distinguished between an active spiritual health locus of control orientation, in which "God empowers the individual to take healthy actions" and a more passive spiritual health locus of control orientation, where people leave everything to God in the care of their own health. In industrial and organizational psychology
Industrial and organizational psychology
Industrial and organizational psychology is the scientific study of employees, workplaces, and organizations. Industrial and organizational psychologists contribute to an organization's success by improving the performance and well-being of its people...
, it has been found that internals are more likely to take positive action to change their jobs, rather than merely to talk about occupational change, than externals (Allen, Weeks & Moffat, 2005; cited in Maltby et al., 2007).
Familial origins
The development of locus of control is associated with family style and resources, cultural stability and experiences with effort leading to reward. Many internals have grown up with families that modeled typical internal beliefs. These families emphasized effort, education, responsibility and thinking. 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, so people in such societies become more external.The research of Schneewind (1995; cited in Schultz & Schultz, 2005) suggests that "children in large single parent families headed by women are more likely to develop an external locus of control" (Schultz & Schultz, 2005, p. 439). Schultz and Schultz also point out that children who develop an internal locus tend to come from families where parents have been supportive and consistent in self-discipline. There has been some ambiguity about whether parental locus of control influences a child's locus of control, although at least one study has found that children are more likely to attribute their successes and failures to unknown causes if their parents had an external locus of control (see the first of the external links listed below).
As children grow older, they gain skills that give them more control over their environment. In support of this, psychological research has found that older children have more internal locus of control than younger children. 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".
Locus of control and age
It is sometimes assumed that as people age, they will become less internal and more external, but data here has been ambiguous. Longitudinal data collected by Gatz and Karel (cited in Johnson et al., 2004) imply that internality may increase up to middle age, and thereafter decrease. 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 (cited in Schultz & Schultz, 2005), suggests that locus of control increases in internality up until middle age. These authors also note that attempts to control the environment become more pronounced between the age of eight and fourteen. For more on the relationship between locus of control and coping with the demands of later life, see the article on aging.A study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine examined the health effect of childhood "locus of control". 7,500 British adults followed from birth who had shown an internal locus of control at the age of 10 were less likely to be overweight at age 30. The children who had an internal locus of control also appeared the have higher levels of self esteem.
Gender-based differences in locus of control
As Schultz and Schultz (2005) point out, significant differences in locus of control have not been found for adults in a U.S. population. However, these authors also note that there may be specific sex-based differences for specific categories of item to assess locus of control—for example, they cite evidence that men may have a greater internal locus for questions related to academic achievement (Strickland & Haley, 1980; cited in Schultz & Schultz, 2005).Cross-cultural issues in locus of control
The question of whether people from different cultures vary in locus of control has long been of interest to social psychologists. Japanese people tend to be more external in locus of control orientation than people in the U.S., whereas differences in locus of control between different countries within Europe, and between the U.S. and Europe, tend to be small (Berry, Poortinga, Segall & Dasen, 1992). As Berry et al. (1992) point out, different ethnic groups within the United States have been compared on locus of control, with blacks in the U.S. being more external than whites, even when socio-economic status is controlled (Dyal, 1984; cited in Berry et al., 1992). Berry et al. (1992) also point out how research on other ethnic minorities in the U.S., such as Hispanics, has been ambiguous. More on cross-cultural variations in locus of control can be found in Shiraev and Levy (2004). The research in this area indicates how locus of control has been a useful concept for researchers in cross-cultural psychologyCross-cultural psychology
Cross-cultural psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental process, including both their variability and invariance, under diverse cultural conditions...
.
Self-efficacy
Self-efficacySelf-efficacy
Self-efficacy is a term used in psychology, roughly corresponding to a person's belief in their own competence.It has been defined as the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain set of goals. It is believed that our personalized ideas of self-efficacy affect...
is another related concept, introduced by Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura is a psychologist and the David Starr Jordan Professor Emeritus of Social Science in Psychology at Stanford University...
. Self-efficacy has been measured by means of a psychometric scale and differs from locus of control in that whereas locus of control is generally a measure of cross-situational beliefs about control, self-efficacy is used as a concept to relate to more circumscribed situations and activities. Bandura has emphasized how the concept differs from self-esteem—using the example that a person may have low self-efficacy for ballroom dancing, but that if ballroom dancing is not very important to that person, this is unlikely to result in low self-esteem.
Psychiatrist and expert on trauma and dissociation, Colin A. Ross
Colin A. Ross
Colin A. Ross is a psychiatrist of Canadian origin and professional training. Ross attended medical school at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada and completed his training in psychiatry at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada...
, MD, describes the inappropriate self-blame that characterizes many adult survivors of childhood trauma as "the locus of control shift." This theory is pivotal in his therapeutic sessions with near-psychotic people at the Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma
Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma
The Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma is a psychiatric hospital in Dallas, Texas in the United States founded by Colin A. Ross in 1991, treating adults suffering from depression, self-mutilation, suicide ideation, anxiety, dissociative schizophrenia, dissociation and substance abuse...
.
It is important to appreciate that differences do exist between internal locus of control and self-efficacy. Smith (1989) has argued that the Rotter scale to assess locus of control cannot be taken as a measure of self-efficacy, because "only a subset of items refer directly to the subject's capabilities" (Smith, p. 229). Smith noted, in his empirical study, that coping skills training led to increases in self-efficacy, but did not affect locus of control as measured by Rotter's (1966) scale.
Summary, critique and the future
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 has been included as one of the four dimensions that comprise core self-evaluations
Core self-evaluations
Core self-evaluations represent a stable personality trait which encompasses an individual’s subconscious, fundamental evaluations about themselves, their own abilities and their own control. People who have high core self-evaluations will think positively of themselves and be confident in their...
, one's fundamental appraisal of oneself, along with neuroticism
Neuroticism
Neuroticism is a fundamental personality trait in the study of psychology. It is an enduring tendency to experience negative emotional states. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than the average to experience such feelings as anxiety, anger, guilt, and depressed mood...
, self-efficacy
Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is a term used in psychology, roughly corresponding to a person's belief in their own competence.It has been defined as the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain set of goals. It is believed that our personalized ideas of self-efficacy affect...
, and self-esteem
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a term in psychology to reflect a person's overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame: some would distinguish how 'the self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, the...
. 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.
See also
- Explanatory styleExplanatory styleExplanatory style is a psychological attribute that indicates how people explain to themselves why they experience a particular event, either positive or negative. Psychologists have identified three components in explanatory style:...
- Fundamental Attribution ErrorFundamental attribution errorIn social psychology, the fundamental attribution error describes the tendency to over-value dispositional or personality-based explanations for the observed behaviors of others while under-valuing situational explanations for those behaviors...
- Learned helplessnessLearned helplessnessLearned helplessness, as a technical term in animal psychology and related human psychology, means a condition of a human person or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance...
- OptimismOptimismThe Oxford English Dictionary defines optimism as having "hopefulness and confidence about the future or successful outcome of something; a tendency to take a favourable or hopeful view." The word is originally derived from the Latin optimum, meaning "best." Being optimistic, in the typical sense...
- PessimismPessimismPessimism, from the Latin word pessimus , is a state of mind in which one perceives life negatively. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass half empty or half full?"...
- Industrial Organizational Psychology
External links
- The Social Learning Theory of Julian B. Rotter
- Locus of control: A class tutorial
- Locus of control
- http://www.similarminds.com/locus.html (test to see what you are)
External link for Attributional Style: