*External Or Internal Locus of Control, Or Both?*

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That's what you think!

No, seriously, why doesn't it make sense? If you know about your allergy beforehand then whose fault is it if you expose yourself to the allergen?

That is the kind of thing I mean when I say I get very confused trying to separate up internal from external control.

Last edited by ouinon on 23 Apr 2008, 9:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

Procrastination is already an attribution of responsibility.

But , even if you still end up attributing failure at something to your procrastination, you could choose to think that your procrastination is the result of various nutritional factors which wreck your ability to concentrate, or poor habits learned when a child because of your parents, or because you are genetically made that way in which case it is your parent's innocent fault but not yours, unless you could have done something about it, in which case why didn't you? Something else is responsible for your failure!!

Where do you stop when ascribing control of situations? Where is that locus of control? Mine never stops moving.

Last edited by ouinon on 23 Apr 2008, 10:06 am, edited 3 times in total.

I think it's not such an easy question to answer; it depends on too many factors (both internal and external).

For instance, if you were given an assignments and failed, you might blame it on your procrastination or you might blame the assignment (that it was too difficult, badly elaborated etc.) Whether or not you blame it internally depends on the assignment, day, your mood, whether or not you like the class etc.

You might blame a failure on internal factors in one and on external factors in another assignment (for example).

So...I don't think there are clear cut answers in most moderate cases.

Am I making any sense?

Doesn't it depend on what factors actually exist at that moment?

I have a hard time believing that most people have an exact and consistent mix of this -- it sounds like psychobabble someone made up.

I blame failures on nobody. I don't 'blame'. I'll just plainly state the person, including if it was me, that made a failure.

But blame is irrational in the sense that blame does neither correct the failure nor help to get further in the project.

Blame is just an emotion that makes you feel bad and keeps you occupied with this badness. It doesn't matter if you blame yourself or another. Both evoke a negative feeling.


About these questions...

I found and took this test (13 questions): http://www.psych.uncc.edu/pagoolka/LC.html
Got a 6. (Middle ground)

I took this test: http://www.queendom.com/tests/access_page/index.htm?idRegTest=704
And got a 60:

I also do think that usually changes with most people depending on the situation they're in. If it's prolonged negative or positive, the view of everything will subtly change if influential emotions are there.

Yes.

Now that I've begun to think about it I too have trouble believing this.

But tests exist, have existed since the 60's, which supposedly discern to what extent a person tends to "blame"/attribute responsibility for events on external or internal factors. This score on the index/scale is supposedly fairly constant over one's life, ( though it can change with cognitive training or after certain events, slightly), and is considered to be indicative of certain stable aspects of a person's functioning, as Sora's post above with quote from test result makes clear. etc

The only decent overview link I've found so far is :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control

I can see how it is possible for someone to "argue"/establish any "locus of control" that they like/prefer/need in any situation. It is always going to be theoretically possible to find/perceive an explanation/final attribution of causes which suits you, because in every given situation there are an almost infinite number of possible "culprits"/causes, going back to Adam and Eve. So any individual can find the explanation which fits their chosen "setting", whether this tends to place control externally or internally.

However what I don't understand is that this is supposed to be constant/consistent. I too am surprised that this is apparently the case.

But perhaps I do have one fixed locus of control but it is supported by/the result of/necessitates some "odd"/maladaptive (?) identifications of internal and external.

I read somewhere a while back how apparently some autistic people could be helped to read if they imagine themselves actually behind, and slightly above, their own head.

I'm thinking how I don't identify much as "me", in a way, ( unless everything is), so maybe my locus of control is all over the place because of that. Almost nothing could really be my responsibility because there is almost no "me" to attribute anything to, just lots and lots of "environment".

If I imagine myself behind my head it is as if I come into view as a factor in the situation.

Perhaps that's what's weird about my attribution of locus of control, and why I have spent so many hundreds of hours trying to find explanations for things such that the final cause is "not me", although in theory i can see perfectly well that what I do does such and such.

Not me trying to escape responsibilty but because there didn't seem/"feel" enough of me to have caused all that/be responsible for all that. It didn't "balance", so it must be something else.

Am I making any sense at all?

Last edited by ouinon on 23 Apr 2008, 1:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Okay, in attempt to clarify, and because i got it a bit clearer myself;

It's like my locus of control is virtually bound to be somewhere else, and that could be anywhere in space-time, and change constantly, because I perceive "myself" as almost entirely the product of forces acting on me, whether it's food, or genes, or conditioning; in fact finding out about aspergers made this worse, because suddenly even more of what I had thought was "me" turned out to be like thousands of others with the same genetic predisposition.

How does anyone ever establish an internal locus of control, if almost all of oneself seems to be environment/nurture/chemical reaction/inherited genes? What is one actually responsible for in all that?

How can anyone ever believe that they are in control?

Last edited by ouinon on 24 Apr 2008, 3:31 am, edited 4 times in total.

Just realised what this issue is reminding me of; zen buddhist hua-tou's .

"Who is dragging this corpse around?"

"Who is eating?"

"Before you were born what was your original face?"

Someone else will correct this, but I know there's famous quote about how success has a thousand fathers yet failure is an orphan. Of course, some people see (or attribute) things the opposite way 'round.

Am familiar with concept of locus of control, though haven't a simple, clear cut answer. The environment (which consists of all sorts of stuff, whether we're conscious of it or not) has all sorts of shaping influence upon people, yet genes can be stubborn & irresistable, too. Do personality, temperament, characteristics or "traits" count as internal "locus of control" factors? They're not external, yet they certainly are not under my control-I don't even understand them (my biological expression of genetic information).

Haven't sense that I can take over my own mind and "make it do my bidding". My internal perceptions & interpretations feel not of my choosing-but it's not like I'm accusing anyone else of doing things to my brain (except for annoying ads that creep into my head).
Don't feel that I "run my own show" but I don't feel like an obedient automaton, either. My willpower only works when it's able-so the notion of such a "force" within self seems fallacious. I can't agree with or get along with myself-and have similar reaction to forces outside myself.

Could give you 50 different replies (incl. contradictory beliefs) & they'd all be true for me, to some extent or under some circumstances. So I just don't know-am all over the place on this one. Internal & external are hard to delineate & blend/interact together symbiotically.

Voted for "unable to distinguish" what's responsible for what, next to last option in poll.

That is how I feel.

And after another night to sleep on the subject I am even more in agreement with what Not harmless psychobabble either, because the two ends of the locus of control spectrum are not equally ok, in fact one, the "external" end, is supposed to be a sign of poor functioning. ( perhaps rather like introversion was seen 100 years ago.)

People with a clearly internal locus of control are considered healthier individuals.

According to studies done in the 70's and 80's an external locus of control, or even a mid point on the scale, apparently correlates with depression, poor self-esteem, reactivity/passivity etc, and it counts against you in employment.

But I was thinking! ... : maybe the index/scale doesn't measure anything except how well someone is adapted to this society, which puts so much emphasis on the "individual". Maybe the tests are just an ostensibly innocent/"concerned" way of establishing if you have the "right" perspective on life, one which fits with capitalist enterprise and go-gettingness, etc. In which you are supposed to be an independent unit, functioning autonomously, the ideal being in our culture.

And people who don't function like that ... well, obviously they are often going to be depressed, anxious, reactive, etc; they are trying to live in a society which insists that each person see themselves as divided off from their environment, actors on their environment rather than parts of it.

It is discriminatory psychobabble! Despite its respectable position in the world of psychology and sociology, it is another classification which denigrates a certain ( minority) way of being.

I've been thinking about free will too in connection with this, and also because quite a few people have said several times now on threads in the PPR forum that free will is an illusion , a purely subjective "effect" which has nothing to do with our/any actual freedom.

I read somewhere not long ago, but can't remember where, that there is a movement afoot in psychology suggesting that before long many of the ideas we have of internal thought processes will be shown to be constructions/creations based on illusions; that our impression of "thinking things through", etc, will be shown to be as delusional as the idea that someone who gets a tan in their lifetime will pass it down to their children.

I was actually considering this seriously last night, for the first time. What if what we think of as "ourselves" really were an accident of "wiring" watching/aware of our brains getting on with stuff, which we can do nothing about, despite cultural//social constructs leading us to think that we can.

Perhaps until 15,000 years ago almost no human was even aware of these processes anyway. They didn't even "see"/notice/perceive them unless in "drug" induced trances/states. They experienced the world with as little sense of choosing and deciding amongst thoughts/ideas as a baby does.

And maybe an external locus of control is actually the natural "ancient" perspective on life; we have no choice, we are part of one great big process. Believing that some final/fundamental, willed core "self" has control over things is a laughable idea. But one our society has become obsessed by, to the point of declaring people who aren't so sure of it unhealthy.

Isn't that what so many people finding out about AS/aspergers, and coming on Wrong Planet find so affirming, and liberating, and comforting, the idea that much of what they have been struggling with, accused by society of choosing/willing/being responsible for , is actually an "external" factor, in that it is genetic ,( and/or socially exacerbated), and outside their locus of control, which is what we vaguely knew all the time, but society does not permit unless it has the label of an illness/disease, or a disorder/disability.

Society has made it almost impossible to hold this perspective, has made it very difficult to function with, an external locus of control. Believing and/or experiencing life as if have little or no control over one's actions or environment has been made/labelled taboo/despicable/diseased. It is so taboo that it is almost impossible to think it, to think that it might actually be alright.

This sounds like stuff I've read on Naturalism.org about how the notion of free will is the cause of right-wing notions of "rugged individualism" and "personal responsibility" and thus causes contempt for the supposedly "lazy" poor.

Indeed, Contra-Casual Free Will is such a philosophical sacred cow in the Western World that people are willing to accept notions like Quantum Mechanics allowing free will and other ideas that are merely grasping at straws, as well as fallacious arguments like "there must be free will otherwise morality and justice cannot exist. (an argument by consequences fallacy that also makes the unjustified assumption that responsibility requires free will)."

I don't really blame anything :S