Some comments on the “Cognates of personal control”

Abstract

Since the appearance of the monograph on internal versus external of reinforcement (Rotter, 1966), which detailed the theory of of control and numerous empirical studies going back to 1957, a wide interest in this variable has been expressed in the social sciences. As is often the case, the concept has spawned a series of overlapping, more specific, and related terms. The monograph reviewed the history of this concept and introduced a definition that could be easily operationalized. The concept was applied to learning theory (chance vs. skill learning situation), and, perhaps of greater significance to many, data reported in the monograph strongly suggested that relatively stable individual differences in locus of could be measured and used predictively. Previous literature, much of it sociological, had focused primarily on situational or group differences. In the literally thousands of studies using this measure of individual differences, misinterpretations of the concept and the measure were common. The most common misinterpretation involved the issue of generality-specificity. In social learning theory, all broad personality characteristics develop at least partially as a result of a process of generalization; but there is a gradient of generalization encompassing specificity as well as generality. Just as there may be a broad need for achievement, there is also specificity, in that the need for academic achievement for a person will differ in strength from the need for athletic achievement. I have attempted to clarify these and other issues in regard to locus of (Rotter, 1975). As a generalized expectancy that reinforcements occur as a result of one's own behavior or characteristics, locus of operates most strongly in situations that are relatively novel or ambiguous. Situations in which skill is dearly recognized by the culture as the major determinant and in which the individual has had considerable