On This Page:ToggleInternal vs. External Locus of ControlExampleHow it WorksMeasurementApplicationsFAQs
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Take-home Messages
An internal locus of control refers to the belief that individuals have control over their own actions and outcomes, while an external locus of control refers to the belief that external factors or luck dictate one’s fate.
Internal vs. External Locus of Control
Locus of control is how much individuals perceive that they themselves have control over their own actions as opposed to events in life occurring instead because of external forces. It is measured along a dimension of “high internal” to “high external”.
It is also worth mentioning that the term locus of control is not to be confused withattributional style. Locus of control refers to an idea connected with anticipations about the future, while attributional style is a concept that is instead concerned with finding explanations for past outcomes.
Example
People with an internal locus of control accept occasions in their day-to-day existence as controllable. To be more specific, this means that they can recognize instances where destiny is controllable: for instance, an individual is taking a test for a driver’s license.
A person with an internal locus of control will attribute whether they pass or fail the exam due to their own capabilities. This individual would praise their own abilities if they passed the test and would also recognize the need to improve their own driving if they had instead failed the exam.
An individual with an external locus of control would perceive the same event differently. This individual would be more likely to blame other factors such as the weather, their current condition, or even the exam itself as an excuse rather than accept that the exam went the way it did because of personal decisions.
Rather than accept that part of the blame rests on them, the event is instead attributed to occur because of uncontrollable forces (destiny/fate/etc.).
Locus of control is one of the four elements of center self-assessments – one’s principal examination of oneself – alongsideneuroticism, self-viability, and self-esteem.
In a subsequent report, Judge et al. (2002) contended that locus of control, neuroticism, self-viability, and confidence elements might all influence each other.
How it Works
The first recorded trace of the term Locus of Control comes from Julian B. Rotter’s work (1954) based on the social learning theory of personality. It is a great example of a generalized expectancy related to problem-solving, a strategy that applies to a wide variety of situations.
One of these understudies was William H. James. This psychologist would later go on to produce his own work in the field, but while he was under the tutelage of Rotter, he wanted to study what he denoted as “expectancy shifts.”
These “expectancy shifts” can be classified as follows:
Typical Expectancy ShiftsTypical expectancy shifts derive from the belief that success (or failure) will be the determining notion for whatever activity/action is preceded next (that is to say, if one succeeds at something, then the expectancy is that they will succeed again).Let’s say – for example – that during a basketball game, a player shoots a basketball and scores a point. After attempting this three times and scoring all three, the player might come to believe that (due to the fact the player has been continuously successful) if they continue to shoot, they will continue to score.
Typical Expectancy Shifts
Typical expectancy shifts derive from the belief that success (or failure) will be the determining notion for whatever activity/action is preceded next (that is to say, if one succeeds at something, then the expectancy is that they will succeed again).Let’s say – for example – that during a basketball game, a player shoots a basketball and scores a point. After attempting this three times and scoring all three, the player might come to believe that (due to the fact the player has been continuously successful) if they continue to shoot, they will continue to score.
Typical expectancy shifts derive from the belief that success (or failure) will be the determining notion for whatever activity/action is preceded next (that is to say, if one succeeds at something, then the expectancy is that they will succeed again).
Let’s say – for example – that during a basketball game, a player shoots a basketball and scores a point. After attempting this three times and scoring all three, the player might come to believe that (due to the fact the player has been continuously successful) if they continue to shoot, they will continue to score.
Atypical Expectancy ShiftsAtypical expectancy shifts, which derive from the belief that success (or a failure) will not have any determining notion for whichever activity/action that follows it (that is to say, if one succeeds at an activity, then the expectancy for the subsequent one is independent of this result; one could fail or succeed).To give an example of this, picture someone who is at a casino. This individual places a bet on the ball, landing on a red number in the roulette wheel.After three spins of the wheel, the ball has landed once in a red number, once in a black number, and finally once in a green number. The individual will (hopefully) most likely come to the conclusion that the result of the spin is independent of the last result, with each individual spin being a stand-alone event.
Atypical Expectancy Shifts
Atypical expectancy shifts, which derive from the belief that success (or a failure) will not have any determining notion for whichever activity/action that follows it (that is to say, if one succeeds at an activity, then the expectancy for the subsequent one is independent of this result; one could fail or succeed).To give an example of this, picture someone who is at a casino. This individual places a bet on the ball, landing on a red number in the roulette wheel.After three spins of the wheel, the ball has landed once in a red number, once in a black number, and finally once in a green number. The individual will (hopefully) most likely come to the conclusion that the result of the spin is independent of the last result, with each individual spin being a stand-alone event.
Atypical expectancy shifts, which derive from the belief that success (or a failure) will not have any determining notion for whichever activity/action that follows it (that is to say, if one succeeds at an activity, then the expectancy for the subsequent one is independent of this result; one could fail or succeed).
To give an example of this, picture someone who is at a casino. This individual places a bet on the ball, landing on a red number in the roulette wheel.
After three spins of the wheel, the ball has landed once in a red number, once in a black number, and finally once in a green number. The individual will (hopefully) most likely come to the conclusion that the result of the spin is independent of the last result, with each individual spin being a stand-alone event.
Additional research supported the hypothesis that typical expectancy shifts were much more common amongst individuals who had confidence in their own abilities, whilst those who didn’t really believe in their capabilities tended to attribute their expectancies toward fate rather than skill.
In other words, the distinction lies in whether the cause is internal or external; those who have faith in their own abilities will look towards an internal cause and adapt a typical expectancy shift, while those who attribute their results to external causes will most likely exhibit an atypical expectancy shift.
Rotter has made strides in this area of his research, covering this phenomenon in multiple works (1975). He has talked about issues and confusion in others’ utilization of the interior versus outer build, explaining how misconceptions and miscommunication have led people to mistake Locus of Control for other psychological terms.
Measurement
Another example is Bialer’s (1961) 23-item scale for children, which actually even predates Rotter’s work. Other examples would be the Crandall Intellectual Ascription of Responsibility Scale (Crandall, 1965) and the Nowicki-Strickland Scale (Nowicki & Strickland, 1973), though again, most of these are not used in favor of Rotter’s 1966 questionnaire.
Many measures of locus of control have appeared since Rotter’s scale. These vary from the original that predate Rotter’s own original designs to the locus of controls designed specifically for groups – like children (such as the Stanford Preschool Internal-External Scale for three- to six-year-olds).
One important thing to note is that while other scales existed in 1984 besides the Duttweiler scales to measure locus of control, they all appear to fall victim to the same problems that the Rotter scales never originally addressed.
However, with Duttweiler’s 28-item ICI, which utilizes a Likert-type scale, individuals must specify whether they would behave as described in each of the 28 statements rarely, occasionally, sometimes, frequently, or usually.
This approach makes the scale much more adaptable to human nature’s nuances than the original Rotter scales.
Applications
The field most associated with locus of control is health psychology, mainly because the original scales to measure locus of control originated in the health domain of psychology.
Out of the reviewed scales, The best-known in the field of health psychology are the Health Locus of Control Scale and the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale, or MHLC (Wallston & Wallston, 2004).
The idea that health psychology and Locus of control go together is based on the concept that health may be attributed to three sources: internal factors (such asself-determinationof a healthy lifestyle), powerful external factors (the words of a doctor or a loved one) or luck/destiny/coincidence.
Those that belong to the last group are almost impossible to deal with, given that they have a firm belief that nothing they will do can either change or avert what is going to happen either way.
Both these scales tackled the issue of obesity and shed light on how it affects different types of individuals. These scales do not limit themselves only to the physical aspects of individuals; take, for example, Wood and Letak’s (1982) Mental health locus of control scale.
These scales try to measure the stages of health and depression that an individual is currently in; there’s even a scale meant for measuring cancer and cancer-like symptoms (the Cancer Locus of Control Scale of Pruyn et al., 1990).
For example, they point out that according to certain studies, locus of control was found to be linked with increased exercise, but also note how other studies have mentioned that the impact that exercise has on locus of control is either minimal or non-existent.
Activities such as jogging or running have long since been dismissed as lone factors for influencing any sort of command in one’s locus of control.
This ambiguity goes on in the study, with data on the relationship between internal health locus of control and other health-related behaviors also being suspicious.
These health-related behaviors include breast self-examination, weight control, and preventive-health behavior and in the study, it is said that alcohol consumption has a direct relationship with one’s internal locus of control.
This goes against what is known right now, which is that – according to multiple other studies – alcoholism is related instead to increased internality in regards to an individual’s locus of control. The perceived notion is that alcoholism is directly related to the strength of the locus, not to what type of locus exists.
That is to say, it does not matter whether an individual has an internal or external locus of control; alcohol consumption is only related to the actual strength of that respective locus of control.
FAQs
What is internal locus of control?An internal locus of control refers to the belief that one can control their own life and the outcomes of events. Individuals with a high internal locus of control perceive their actions as directly influencing the results they experience.
What is internal locus of control?
An internal locus of control refers to the belief that one can control their own life and the outcomes of events. Individuals with a high internal locus of control perceive their actions as directly influencing the results they experience.
What is external locus of control?An external locus of control refers to the belief that external factors, such as fate, luck, or other people, are responsible for the outcomes of events in one’s life rather than one’s own actions.
What is external locus of control?
An external locus of control refers to the belief that external factors, such as fate, luck, or other people, are responsible for the outcomes of events in one’s life rather than one’s own actions.
Who proposed the locus of control concept?
References
Bennett, P., Norman, P., Murphy, S., Moore, L., & Tudor-Smith, C. (1998). Beliefs about alcohol, health locus of control, value for health and reported consumption in a representative population sample.Health Education Research, 13(1), 25-32.
Bialer, I. (1961). Conceptualization of success and failure in mentally retarded and normal children.Journal of personality.
CRANDALL, V. C., KATKOVSKY, W., & CRANDALL, V. J. (1965) Children’s beliefs in their own control of reinforcements in intellectual-academic achievement situations.Child Development, 36, 91-109.
Duttweiler, P. C. (1984). The internal control index: A newly developed measure of locus of control.Educational and Psychological Measurement, 44(2), 209-221.
Furnham, A., & Steele, H. (1993). Measuring locus of control: A critique of general, children’s, health‐and work‐related locus of control questionnaires.British Journal of Psychology, 84(4), 443-479.
Nowicki, S., & Strickland, B. R. (1973). A locus of control scale for children.Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 40(1), 148.
Norman, P., Bennett, P., Smith, C., & Murphy, S. (1997). Health locus of control and leisure-time exercise.Personality and Individual Differences, 23(5), 769-774.
Norman, P., Bennett, P., Smith, C., & Murphy, S. (1998). Health locus of control and health behavior.Journal of Health Psychology, 3(2), 171-180.
Rotter, J. B. (1954).Social learning and clinical psychology.
Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement.Psychological monographs: General and applied, 80(1), 1.
Rotter, J. B. (1975). Some problems and misconceptions related to the construct of internal versus external control of reinforcement.Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43(1), 56.
Saltzer, E. B. (1982). The weight locus of control (WLOC) scale: a specific measure for obesity research.Journal of Personality Assessment, 46(6), 620-628.
Stotland, S., & Zuroff, D. C. (1990). A new measure of weight locus of control: The Dieting Beliefs Scale.Journal of personality assessment, 54(1-2), 191-203.
Wallston, K. A., Strudler Wallston, B., & DeVellis, R. (1978). Development of the multidimensional health locus of control (MHLC) scales.Health education monographs, 6(1), 160-170.
Wallston, K. A., & Wallston, B. S. (2004). Multidimensional health locus of control scale.Encyclopedia of health psychology, 171, 172.
Watson, M., Greer, S., Pruyn, J., & Van Den Borne, B. (1990). Locus of control and adjustment to cancer.Psychological Reports, 66(1), 39-48.
Wood, W. D., & Letak, J. K. (1982). A mental-health locus of control scale.Personality and Individual Differences, 3(1), 84-87.
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Saul McLeod, PhD
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
Gabriel Lopez-GarridoUndergraduate at Harvard UniversityPolitical Science and PsychologyGabriel Lopez-Garrido is currently in his final year at Harvard University. He is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree with a primary focus on Political Science (Government) and a minor in Psychology.
Gabriel Lopez-GarridoUndergraduate at Harvard UniversityPolitical Science and Psychology
Gabriel Lopez-Garrido
Undergraduate at Harvard University
Political Science and Psychology
Gabriel Lopez-Garrido is currently in his final year at Harvard University. He is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree with a primary focus on Political Science (Government) and a minor in Psychology.
