Sunday Sermon: Locus of Control

Basic principle's behind the theory

Well it appears my batteries are close to being fully charged again, in terms of my Blog. So this is a bit of a long one I'm afraid. I figured that considering that I trained heavily in psychology, and that I still keep as up-to-date as I can with various aspects of psychological research and literature, that my Blog was actually woefully bereft of psychology influenced articles. 'Hey' I said to myself 'why not change that buddy?'. So I'm going to introduce you to a concept that has a high level of visibility in the field of personality psychology. Drum roll please... the concept of 'Locus of Control'! Now some of you will have come across the theory before I'm sure. It's certainly well known enough to have made the leap across into popular psychology and glossy magazines. You know, the type of magazine normally read by 20 something females on trains who then look up from the pages at you and tut disapprovingly for no apparent reason, and maybe mutter under their breath 'men'. However, for many of you I'm sure the phrase holds absolutely no meaning and you're probably wandering whether I just made it all up. I should therefore try to proffer some sort of explanation of the concept.

Just another average dice roll

The theory or concept of 'Locus of Control' was first developed by Julian B. Rotter (great name) in 1954. Rotter's concept was simple enough, he felt that in any given situation or maybe even in life in general that there would be personality types that attributed cause and effect to external or internal factors. Or in his theory the 'Locus' from the Latin for place or location of effect would be perceived to be internal or external. Initially he concluded that whether the Locus was internal or external was a moot point, and it was all about the individuals mental perception of the situation that was important, it was simply a personality trait. How very 1950's of him. Over a decade of research though Rotter and many of his students expanded greatly on the premise that the Locus of Control was of paramount importance to our emotional responses in many situations, and that in many respects different personality types would react differently based on the Locus of Control. Much of the work of Rotter and his student's though focused primarily on the internal cognition of the information, rather than the effect of the situation itself. They were after all psychologists.
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