We consider many of life’s experiences as good, bad, or somewhere in between. We credit our accomplishments in life to luck or personal effort or, again, somewhere in between. These perspectives reflect our locus of control, and they have a profound effect on our academic success, career, relationships, and health.

What is your locus of control? What forces are responsible for your successes and failures?

Internals Versus Externals

“Psychologists call people who take the credit for success and the blame for failure ‘internals’,” says research psychologist Andrew Williams. “Internals believe they are responsible for the good and bad things that happen to them.” They tend to be self-reliant and take pride in victory; they feel shame in defeat.

“Externals, on the other hand, blame outside forces or bad luck for their failures and attribute their successes to good fortune,” explains Williams. “Extreme externals do not believe their behaviour has any effect on their lot in life. Externals are fatalistic.”

In short, internals do things and externals have things done to them. Of course, many people fall in the middle of this continuum. “Individuals who maintain a balance between internalism and externalism are often happier,” says Williams. “They know what is within their control and what is not.”

Self-Revealing Tests

An experimental psychologist, Williams has administered personality tests to almost half a million people for government, academic, and corporate organizations. In a quirky new self-help book, How Do You Compare? 12 Simple Tests to Discover Hidden Truths About Your Personality (Perigee, 2004), Williams presents 12 well-known scientifically devised personality tests for readers to discover more about key aspects of themselves. The idea behind Williams’s approach is that you can learn more about yourself by taking these short tests than you can by reading a stack of self-help books.

The theory of locus of control is nothing new. It was derived from the social learning theory developed by psychologist Julian Rotter in 1966. Social learning theory says that an individual learns on the basis of his or her history of reinforcement, that is, the reward or praise given by others in response to behaviour. From social learning theory Rotter developed the locus of control construct.