Internal locus of control

Locus of control theory is a theory in psychology that originally distinguished between two types of people - internals, who attribute events to their own control, and externals, who attribute events in their life to external circumstances. Although popularly associated with Julian Rotter after his publication in Psychological Monographs where he outlined his now classic "locus of control" scale (1966), work on locus of control actually predates Rotter's paper, as Lefcourt's (1966) review in the same year as Rotter's paper clarifies. Its roots can be found in the work on typical and atypical expectancy shifts carried out by psychologists in the 1950s.

As an example, college students with strong internal locus of control believe that their grades are determined by their abilities and efforts. These students believe, "The more I study, the better grades I get." They change their study strategies as they discover their deficiencies. They raise their expectations if they succeed, and they worry when they think they have no control over their assignments.

In contrast, college students with strong external locus of control believe that their grades are the result of good or bad luck, and hence, are less likely to work hard for high grades. This has obvious implications for differences between internals and externals in terms of achievement motivation. Due to their locating control outside themselves, they 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 depression.

History of concept
Although locus of control has frequently been viewed as a cognitive model of personality, its roots can actually be seen in behaviorism as the immediate background to this theory related to beliefs about reinforcement. Indeed, 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, p27). Early work on the topic of expectancies about control of reinforcement had, as Lefcourt explains, been performed in the 1950s by James, and in work which Phares prepared for an unpublished doctoral dissertation at the University of Ohio ((cited in Lefcourt, 1976). 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 psychologists such as William H. James (not to be confused with William James), 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 disssimilar 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).

A revolutionary paper in this field was published in 1966, in the journal Psychological Monographs, by Julian B. Rotter. Early history of the concept can be found in Lefcourt (1976), who, early in his treatise on the topic, relates the concept to learned helplessness.

Characteristics of locus of control orientations
Internals were believed by Rotter (1966) to exhibit two essential characteristics - high in achievement motivation, low in 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 due 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 (Weiner, 1974). 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 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 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 (Nowicki & Strickland, 1971). One of the earliest psychometric scales to assess locus of control, using a Likert-type scale in contrast to the forced-choice alternative measure which can be found in Rotter's scale, was that devised by W.H. James, for his unpublished doctoral dissertation at the University of Ohio, although this remained an unpublished scale (Lefcourt, 1976). Many measures of locus of control have appeared since Rotter's scale, both those, such as The Duttweiler Control Index (Duttweiler, 1984), which uses a five-point scale, and those which are related to specific areas, such as health. These scales are reviewed by Furnham and Steele(1993), and include those related to health psychology, occupational psychology and those specifically for children, such as the Stanford Preschool Internal-External Control Index (Mischel et alia, 1974; cited in Furnham & Steele, 1993), which is used for three to six year olds. Furnham and Steele (1993) cite data which 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".

Related area: Attributional style
Attributional style, or explanatory style, is a concept that was introduced by Abramson, Seligman and Teasdale (1978). Buchanan and Seligman (1995) have edited a book-length review of the topic. This concept goes a stage further than Weiner, saying 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 lives versus highly circumscribed situations.

This concept has had much relevance to the study of depression, with Abramson et al. believing that those who showed a characteristic way of attributing negative outcomes - to internal, stable and global causes - would be likely to suffer depression when negative events happened to them. It is important to remember this, since their model is a diathesis-stress model, they were not arguing that this attributional style alone caused depression, nor were they arguing that this attributional style simply increases vulnerability to depression - the model stipulates that an objective, negative event must take occur in conjunction with this style for clinical depression to result. Empirical research has been performed in support of this theory, although the data, are in fact, ambiguous. An important consideration here, emphasised by Robbins and Hayes (1995), is that the Abramson-Seligman-Teasdale model of depression is a diathesis-stress model, implying that it is important to control for severity of actual negative event in comparisons of attributional styles of depressive and non-depressives. Indeed, one of the factors accounting for whether ambiguity in research into the model is whether empirical researchers have assessed attributions for hypothetical events or for real events. Interestingly, those studies that have looked at attributions for hypothetical events have been more supportive of the model, possibly because these studies are more likely to have controlled for event severity.

Attributional style has been assessed on questionnaires such as the Attributional Style Questionnaire or A.S.Q. (Peterson, Semmel, von Baeyer, Abramson, Metalsky & Seligman, 1982), which assesses attributions for six negative and six positive hypothetical events, the Expanded Attributional Style Questionnaire or E.A.S.Q.(Peterson & Villanova, 1988), which assesses attributions for eighteen hypothetical negative events, and various scales that assess attributions for real events, such as the Real Events Attributional Style Questionnaire of Norman and Antaki (1988) or the Attributions Questionnaire of Gong-guy and Hammen (1980). Although these scales provide empirical methodology for study of attributional style, and considerable empirical data support the Abramson-Seligman-Teasdale model of depression, there has been dispute about whether this concept really exists. Cutrona, Russell and Jones (1987), for example, found evidence for considerable cross-situational variation and temporal change of attributional style in women suffering from post-partum depression. As Xenikou et alia (1997) note, however, Cutrona, Russell and Jones found more evidence for the cross-situational consistency of stability and globality than of internality. More data in support of long-term stability of attributional style has come from a diary study by Burns and Seligman (1989). Using a technique called Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanation (C.A.V.E) these authors found that over a long time period, people did show stable patterns of how they manifested attributional style. The important differences between locus of control and attributional style are that the latter is concerned with expectancies about the future, the former with attributions for the past, and that whereas locus of control cuts across both positive and negative outcomes, authors in the attributional style field have distinguished between a Pessimistic Explanatory Style, in which failures are attributed to internal, stable and global factors, successes to external, unstable and specific causes, and a an Optimistic Explanatory Style, in which successes are attributed to internal, stable and global factors, failures to external, unstable and specific causes (Buchanan & Seligman, 1995).

Explanations as to how individual differences in attributional style originate have been considered by Eisner (1995). She notes that repeated exposure to controllable events may foster an optimistic explanatory style, whereas repeated exposure to uncontrollable events may foster a negative one, and also cites evidence from twin studies for some heredity basis to attributional style. Original with Eisner is the argument that trust in interpersonal relationships is linked with optimistic explanatory style.

Applications of locus of control theory
Locus of control's most famous application has probably been in the area of health psychology, 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 (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 alia, 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. Other fields to which the concept has been appplied include occupational psychology, 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 (Kahoe, 1974).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" (Holt et al., p294) and a more passive spiritual health locus of control orientation, where people leave everything to God in the care of their own health.

Characteristics of locus of control orientations
Empirical research findings have implied the following differences between internals and externals:


 * 1) Internals are more likely to work for achievements, to tolerate delays in rewards and to plan for long-term goals, whereas externals are more likely to lower their goals. After failing a task, internals re-evaluate future performances and lower their expectations of success, whereas externals may raise their expectations. These differences relate to differences in achievement motivation (as noted above, Rotter (1966) believed that internals tend to be higher in achievement motivation than externals). However, empirical findings have been ambiguous here. There is some evidence that sex-based differences may complicate these findings, with females being more responsive to failures, males to successes (Weiner, 1980).
 * 2) Going back to Bialer's (1961), considerable data suggest that internal locus of control is associated with increased ability to delay gratification (Lefcourt, 1976). However, at least one study has found this effect does not apply to all samples. Walls and Miller (cited in Lefcourt, 1976) found an association between internal locus and delay of gratification in second and third grade children, but not in adults who were vocational rehabilitation clients.
 * 3) Internals are better able to resist coercion. This relates to higher outer-directedness of externals, another factor which Rotter (1966) believed distinguished the two orientations.
 * 4)  Internals are better at tolerating ambiguous situations. There is also a lot of evidence in clinical research that internality correlates negatively with anxiety, and that internals may be less prone to depression than externals, as well as being less prone to learned helplessness. However, this does not mean that the emotional life of the internal is always more positive than that of the external, as internals are known to be more guilt-prone than externals.
 * 5) Internals are less willing to take risks, to work on  self-improvement and to  to better themselves through remedial work than externals
 * 6) Internals derive greater benefits from social supports.
 * 7) Internals make better mental health recovery in the long-term adjustment to physical disability.
 * 8) Internals are more likely to prefer games based on skill, while externals prefer games based on chance or luck.

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, because poor people have less control over their lives. Societies experiencing social unrest increase the expectancy of being out-of-control, so people in such societies become more external.

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 summarised by Lefcourt: "Warmth, supportiveness and parental encouragement seem to be essential for development of an internal locus" (Lefcourt, 1976, p100).

Locus of control and age
It is sometimes assumed that as people age, they will become less internal and more external, but data here have been ambiguous (Aldwin & Gilmer, 2004; Johnson, Grant, Plomin, Pedersen, Ahern, Berg & McClearn, 2001). 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.

Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is another related concept, introduced by Albert Bandura. Although someone may believe that how some future event turns out is under their control, they may or may not believe that they are capable of behaving in a way that will produce the desired result. For example, an athlete may believe that training eight hours a day would result in a marked improvement in ability (an internal locus of control orientation) but not believe that he or she is capable of training that hard (a low sense of self-efficacy). Self-efficacy has been measured by means of a psychometric scale (Sherer, Madux et al., 1982) 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 emphasised how the concept differs from self-esteem - using the example that may have low self-efficacy for ballroom dancing, but that if ballroom dancing is not very important to one, this is unlikely to result in low self-esteem.

Psychiatrist and expert on trauma and dissociation, Colin A. Ross, M.D., 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.

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