Control

Definition

The term control has a long history in social psychology and has been used in a variety of ways. At the most general level, control can be understood as influence, whether it be over internal states (as in emotional control or self-control) or over external aspects of the environment, including control over outcomes (i.e., being able to attain outcomes you desire) or over other people (i.e., making them do what you want them to do). Psychologists from different perspectives have focused on this basic construct in a multitude of ways. Some have focused on understanding the effects of changing circumstances in the environment to permit different degrees of control to individuals. Research also has focused on the subjective experience of feeling like you have control over outcomes you attain. Others have focused on the antecedents and consequences of feeling like you are being controlled—typically by other people. Still others have used the term control (or controlled) to help differentiate between those aspects of cognition and behavior that are consciously, as opposed to nonconsciously, determined. Each of these instantiations of the term control has its own nuanced meaning and place in the history of social psychology.

On Being and Feeling in Control

Among the earliest authors to use the term control as a central construct was Julian Rotter in the 1950s. Rotter's social learning theory asserted that behavior is a function of one's expectations about future reinforcement. Specifically, Rotter differentiated between two sorts of expectations, which he referred to as loci of control. When people expect that they can control the procurement of desired outcomes (i.e., that their behavior will lead to the outcomes), they are said to have an internal locus of control. People with an internal locus of control are expected to be more motivated to behave in an attempt to attain the desired reinforcements. By contrast, when people expect that they cannot control the attainment of desired outcomes (i.e., that the outcomes are controlled by fate or chance), they are said to have an external locus of control. In other words, the outcomes are controlled by forces external to them. People with an external locus of control are hypothesized to be unmotivated to act, because they believe their actions will not lead to the outcomes they desire.

Subsequently, in the 1970s, Martin Seligman used the concept of having control over outcomes as the centerpiece for his theory of helplessness and depression. Seligman speculated that when people experience lack of control over outcomes in their environments, they tend to develop a chronic condition, referred to as learned helplessness, which he suggested was closely related to depression. Having an external locus of control thus bears similarity to being helpless, although the concept of locus of control was viewed as a personality variable (i.e., something that is differentially strong from one person to another), whereas the experience of helplessness was understood as a phenomenon caused by objective lack of control in the environment.

In a series of poignant studies that illustrated the helplessness phenomenon, animals would be placed in a small cage with two compartments. The floor in one was covered with an electrified grid. This half of the cage was separated from the “safe” compartment by a wall, the height of which could be manipulated by the experimenter. Early on, the animals were positioned on the side of the cage with the electrified grid beneath them, and over the course of several trials, they learned that they could escape the unpleasant (though nonlethal) shocks by jumping over the dividing wall. However, when the height of this dividing wall was varied randomly, in such a way that escaping [Page 183]the shocks became something that the animal could no longer control (i.e., could no longer escape reliably), the animals gradually learned to stop trying. Further, the impact of this experience was chronic and emotionally charged. The animals refused food and water, and their health deteriorated. This illustration is thought to mirror the development of severe depression in people and serves to demonstrate the consequences of lacking objective control over the desired outcomes in one's environment.

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