Locus of Control

Locus of control is a construct that is used to categorize people’s

basic motivational orientations and perceptions of how much control
they have over the conditions of their lives. People with an external
locus of control tend to behave in response to external circumstances
and to perceive their life outcomes as arising from factors out of their
control. People with an internal locus of control tend to behave in
response to internal states and intentions and to perceive their life
outcomes as arising from the exercise of their own agency and abilities.
The concept of internal – external control (IE) was first proposed
by Rotter (1996) and it forms relatively small part of a more extensive
personality theory incorporating many of the principles established in
psychology of learning; this theory is known as social learning theory.
He proposed that the degree to which people believe their lives to be
under their own control is an important dimension of individual
variation. People who are relatively internal believe they are responsible
for their destiny, whereas people who are relatively external believe that
the good and the bad things that happen to them are determined by luck,
chance or powerful others.
In Rotter’s social learning theory I-E is regarded as a
characteristic attitude towards the world, referred to as generalized
expectancy. The expectancy about the locus of control over rewards and
punishments generated by a person’s position on the I-E dimension will
influence the way that person perceives most situations, and hence will
partially determine how the person will behave. Rotter regards
generalized expectations as only one of the factors which determine the
way person behave in a particular situation. He believe that behaviour is
a function of reinforcement, but generalized expectancies have
important modifying effects on the expected relation between behaviour
and reinforcement.
According to Rotter, first people have to believe that they have
the capability to perform the necessary behaviour to earn the
reinforcement, and also to regard the reward as worth the effort before
they will act. Second, and even more important, they have to expect that
when they behave appropriately they will actually receive the desired
reward. Therefore, whether or not a behaviour occurs depends upon
three conditions:
1. a person must have the capacity to produce the behaviour
2. he must regard the reward as desirable
3. he must expect that the reward will be received if the appropriate
behaviour is produced.
From the research summarized by Phares(1978) relating to I-E to
a wide variety of behaviours, a distinct picture of the internal as
compared to external people emerges. The internal person is more likely
to be receptive to aspects of health care likely giving up smoking, taking
exercises etc. Their desire for self determination is reflected in their
greater resistance to social influence and attempted attitude change. In
part, this behaviour is a result of internals’ superior knowledge since
they are characterized by their effort to seek out information which
enables them to exert greater control over their environment.
In the area of mental health, the internals are generally found to
be better adjusted and less anxious as compared to externals. External
individuals beliefs are symptomatic of a number of psychiatric disorders
such as depression and schizophrenia. In short, the internal individual,
in contrast to the external, is independent, achieving, and masterful.
The present scale is Likert Type scale, with multiple choices
responses presented in a continuum. Responses range from strongly
agree, agree, undecided, disagree to strongly disagree. In this five point
scale, the responses are given in weight from 1 to 5 or, 5 strongly agree,
4 agree, 3 undecided, 2 disagree, 1 strongly disagree. Approximately
100 statements were selected with an attempt to cover the whole range
ie, powerful others, chance control, and individual control, rather
evenly. These statements were then edited and only those which were to
point and short were selected. Care was also taken that statements were
in such a form that idea that they were converging can be either
accepted or rejected. Double barrelled, incomplete, and ambiguous
statements were excluded from the list.
The final scale consist of 24 statements, 8 each for P-powerful
others, C-chance control, and I-individual control. These statements
have thoroughly been revised and edited before being included in the
final scale. The statements are presented in a random order or follows
for P-powerful others, statements 3,8,11,13,15,17,20,22, statements
2,6,7,10,12,14,16,24 for C-chance control and statements
1,4,9,18,19,21,23 for I-individual control. P= belief about control by
powerful others, high score indicate that other people control your
outcomes. C= belief about chance of control, high score indicate you
believe that unordered, chance, or random events control your
outcomes. I= belief about individual control, high score indicate you
believe that your outcomes are controlled by you – that your current
situations and your rewards are direct outcomes of things you control.
The split half reliability of the scale with N= 380, was found to be
0.72 for P, 0.79 for C and 0.65 for I. The retest reliability was formed to
be 0.76. Apart from predictive validity, concurrent validity was
established for the scale against Rotter’s Locus of control scale.