Locus of Control

Introduction

Locus of control (LOC) is an individual's expectancy about the typical source (locus) of reinforcement. Does reinforcement originate within an individual (‘When something good happens to me, it is because I worked for it’) or from outside (‘I have no influence on what the [Page 565]government does’)? In the former case, we have an internal LOC, whereas in the latter case, we have an external LOC.

I provide a brief overview of the LOC construct and how it has been measured with self-report questionnaires. This task is daunting. LOC has been one of the most frequently investigated individual differences, and LOC measures have been used in thousands of empirical investigations. I have relied here on several earlier and more extensive reviews (Lefcourt, 1991; MacDonald, 1973).

In addition to its own popularity, the LOC construct has inspired related lines of research into generalized expectancies about the sources of good and bad events – notions like explanatory style, helplessness, hope, illusory control, John Henryism, secondary control, self-efficacy, and so on (Peterson, 1999). Those who work within these other traditions may not always cite LOC as the intellectual parent of their constructs, or they may insist that their own approaches are distinct. Regardless, there is considerable overlap – theoretically and empirically – between LOC and its offspring.

Social Learning Theory and Locus of Control Research

Rotter (1954) introduced locus of control in his social learning theory to make sense of people's varying reactions to success and failure. A radical learning theory, one that does not look within an individual to explain behaviour, would predict that success (reinforcement) should always result in continued responses, whereas failure (punishment or extinction) should never do so. This prediction proves to be wrong. In some cases, success does not produce perseverance, and in other cases, failure does not produce passivity.

Rotter therefore proposed that people's behaviour is influenced not just by reinforcement or punishment but also by their expectancies about the link between responses and outcomes. It is only when expectancies are congruent with what happens that success and failure have effects. People who do not expect that efforts and actions produce reinforcement will not have their response tendencies changed by occasional reward. And those who do expect that efforts and actions produce reinforcement will not be dissuaded from future responding by occasional lack of reward.

According to Rotter (1966), expectancies about a given situation are shaped by the features of that situation and by experiences in similar situations. These experiences accumulate and produce generalized expectancies. So, LOC is abstracted from past experiences, but it also determines future learning and thus can have a life of its own. LOC is psychologically interesting because it is not always redundant with reality.

Lefcourt (1991: 415) summarized what early researchers learned about the correlates of LOC:

These findings are consistent with the role assigned to LOC in social learning theory. However, other findings seemed contrary. Either LOC was not associated with the active pursuit of goals, or the magnitudes of correlations were surprisingly low.

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