Do you take the credit when things go well for you? Is it your fault when things go wrong?
Or are you a feather in the wind, guided through life by the great, mysterious other?
These questions are at the root of a psychological concept called Locus of Control.
It was introduced by Rotter in the mid-1950s and refers to whether a person believes the
consequences of their actions are caused by their own, personal behaviours, or by other
environmental factors. For example, if you perform well on a class
test about Locus of Control after watching this video, is that thanks to your decision
to watch the video and cement your knowledge on the topic, or is your test result thanks
to my decision to make the video, YouTube's algorithm for putting it in front of you,
and your teacher's fortuitous choice to ask easy questions?
There's very little doubt which is the better orientation to embody, but before we get to
that, let's clearly outline what the two locus of control orientations are:
First, those with an internal locus of control orientation believe that their behaviours
lead to real-world outcomes. These people perform well in tests because
they worked hard for those grades. When someone with a high internal locus of control performs
badly on the sports field it's because they didn't put in the training hours, or decided
to go out partying ‘til 3 the night before. But those with an external locus of control
orientation are different; they believe that other factors - beyond themselves - have caused
whatever outcome; and there's nothing they could have done to change things.
People with a high external locus of control blame their teacher for a poor test result,
or that the person behind them was coughing throughout the test so they couldn't concentrate.
A compelling win out on the sports field is gratefully attributed to good luck; the other
team was having a bad day and their captain wasn't in the right frame of mind because
he'd just be dumped by his sweetheart who's run off with the captain of the Chess club.
Anyway... These are the two poles of a scale - most of us aren't entirely one or the other.
So, Rotter (1966) created a self-report measure to ascertain where on the I-E scale we each
stand. In order to determine this, Rotter presented
participants with 23 paired statements: "People's misfortunes result from the mistakes
they make" is paired with the later statement "Many of the unhappy things in people's lives
are partly due to bad luck" Participants are required to state whether
they agree with each of the statements and at the end, either the Internal or External
statements are counted, giving the participant a score between 0 and 23 for how closely they
align which that Locus of control orientation - 0 being not at all and 23 meaning you're
a fully-committed, card-carrying ambassador of that locus of control orientation.
As I mentioned before, most of us are a little of both with a leaning slightly more one way
than the other. But which is the "better" orientation to have? External and able to
blame all of life's problems on other people and factors, or Internal and able to take
full credit for all of life's achievements? Most research points towards an internal locus
of control orientation being preferable to an external locus of control. Davis and Phares
(1967) found that people with an internal locus of control worked harder to achieve
a goal than their externally oriented counterparts, even when both groups were given the same
encouragement that they had all the skills required to complete the task.
A decade later, Strickland (1979) found that locus of control orientation even has an impact
on personal health, as people with an internal locus of control were more likely to be aware
of - and implement - good health practices into their life than those with an external
locus of control. Developing the thinking further, Gross (1987)
likens Rotter's external locus of control to Seligman's (1975) concept of "learned helplessness",
which Seligman suggests is a cause of depression. I think it's probably clear by now that across
a range of studies, the benefits of adopting an internal locus of control over an external
one are numerous: in achieving goals and promoting physical and mental health.
Rotter (1966) Want to improve your chances? Perhaps join the Peace Corps; in all of Rotter's
locus of control studies, peace Corps volunteers were found to exhibit the highest levels of
internal locus of control (1966) – and if you’re a proponent of social learning theory
you could well pick this up by association… So where do you reckon you are on the Internal-External
scale? Or how about your parents, or your friends? I’ll see you in the comments!
Thanks for watching this video – I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting. Of
course, if you did, there’s a great thumbs up button to tell others that it’s a valuable
video to watch. And if it’s your first time here, join us
by subscribing and you won’t miss out on another video! See you next time.