Posted by rose on Friday, October 24, 2008 at 9:49pm.
It's been a long time since I studied psychology, Rose. Please refresh my memory about "a balanced view of internal versus external locus of control."
LOCUS OF CONTROL
“I have no social life,” complained a 40-something single man to student
therapist Jerry Phares. At Phares’s urging, the patient went to a dance,
where several women danced with him. “I was just lucky,” he later
reported; “it would never happen again.” When Phares reported this to his
mentor, Julian Rotter, it crystallized an idea he had been forming. In Rotter’s
experiments and in his clinical practice, some people seemed to persistently
“feel that what happens to them is governed by external forces of one kind
or another, while others feel that what happens to them is governed largely
by their own efforts and skills” (quoted by Hunt, 1993, p. 334).
What do you think? Are people more often captains of their destinies
or victims of their circumstances? Are they the playwrights, directors,
and actors of their own lives or prisoners of their situations? Rotter
called this dimension locus of control. With Phares, he developed 29
paired statements to measure a person’s locus of control. Imagine yourself
taking their test. Which do you more strongly believe?
In the long run, people get the or Unfortunately, people’s worth
respect they deserve in this world. passes unrecognized no
matter how hard they try.
What happens to me is my own or Sometimes I feel that I don’t
doing. have enough control over the
direction my life is taking.
The average person can have an or This world is run by the few
influence in government decisions. people in power, and there is
not much the little guy can do
about it.
Do your answers to such questions from Rotter (1973) indicate that
you believe you control your own destiny (internal locus of control)? Or
that chance or outside forces determine your fate (external locus of
control)? Those who see themselves as internally controlled are more
likely to do well in school, successfully stop smoking, wear seat belts,
deal with marital problems directly, make lots of money, and delay
instant gratification in order to achieve long-term goals (Findley &
Cooper, 1983; Lefcourt, 1982; Miller & others, 1986). How much control
we feel depends on how we explain setbacks.
(I don't know if that will refresh your memory.)
Thanks, Rose, that refreshed my memory, although some of the lines seem to be jumbled. :-)
These sites should help you.
http://www.usd.edu/~ssanto/locus.html
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/External+locus+of+control
http://inst.santafe.cc.fl.us/~mwehr/psyclab/9MotEmoL.htm
http://wilderdom.com/psychology/loc/LocusOfControlWhatIs.html
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