Do You Feel in Control of Your Life?

Have you ever felt like life is happening to you and you have no say in it? Sometimes, life can bring moments when, no matter what we do, we simply can’t change the outcome. However, even when this isn’t the case and we have both the capacity and the opportunity to change things, we may still find ourselves feeling stuck and powerless. While we can all find ourselves in moments like this, for some of us, it can also become a pattern where we simply can’t see how we can influence or change things. One reason for this might be that we tend to attribute too much of what happens in our lives to external factors, making us feel like things are beyond our control. In this sketch, we will talk about “locus of control,” a psychological concept that describes how inclined we are to believe that we have control over our life circumstances.

What is locus of control?

Social learning theories in psychology often suggest that we learn by observing others and what’s happening around us, continuously forming expectations and predictions based on these observations. Over time, these expectations accumulate and become relatively stable traits of our personality, affecting how we interpret situations and act under certain circumstances.

“Locus of control” is a term that originally comes from Rotter’s (1954, 1966) work on social learning theory. According to this view, people (often through earlier life experiences, parenting styles, and more) develop tendencies in how much they see the events in their lives as the result of their own choices and actions versus external factors such as other people, society, luck, and so on.

When people have an internal locus of control, they tend to believe that they can influence what happens to them and that their choices, skills, efforts, and actions can shape events in their lives. Having a more external locus of control, however, means that we tend to believe that what happens in our lives is mostly determined by external forces, including other people, circumstances, the complexity of a task, luck, or fate.

For example, if we tend to have a more external locus of control, we might find ourselves blaming a test’s difficulty when we don’t do as well as we hoped, regardless of how much effort we put into studying, or blaming the referee whenever our team loses a game, regardless of how well our team played that week. If we tend to have a more internal locus of control, on the other hand, we might be more inclined to look for internal causes. When we fail a test, we might reflect on how much we studied or how well we understood the subject. When our team loses, we might focus more on how well we played.

The key point is that locus of control describes our general tendency to attribute the causes of events to our own choices and efforts versus external factors like other people or luck, rather than whether those events actually stem from these causes or not.

How does having internal vs. external locus of control affect us?

Locus of control describes tendencies in how we assign causality to events, and these tendencies are not dysfunctional on their own. These tendencies can be associated with different psychological and behavioral outcomes that may influence our overall well-being, depending on the situation and context.

For example, internal locus of control is often associated with:

Greater confidence in our abilities
Being more inclined to take initiative.
A tendency to focus on what we can do to solve a problem.
On the other hand, sometimes taking on too much responsibility and experiencing more self-blame.

While having an external locus of control is often associated with:

Sometimes struggling with motivation when we strongly believe that our personal efforts won’t change the outcome.
A tendency to experience greater stress, insecurity, or helplessness, especially when circumstances feel beyond our control.
On the other hand, sometimes we find it easier to cope with ambiguity or stress when we believe we aren’t entirely responsible for how things turn out.

Importantly, the way we tend to place control and responsibility in our lives will also affect how we respond to distress, mental health challenges, crises, setbacks, and more, which can have a more indirect effect on our life quality, relationship issues, and overall wellbeing.

How can therapy help?

Certain events in our lives, especially earlier life experiences, can make us develop certain expectations about life and others that can become rather stable patterns in our lives. These patterns can sometimes become too rigid and overgeneralized to the point of limiting us.

Therapy can help us become more aware of how we tend to interpret events in our lives and where we tend to place control and responsibility. By exploring our beliefs, past experiences, and habitual ways of thinking, it can become possible for us to have a more flexible and realistic take on what is within our control and what isn’t. Building this flexibility in turn can help us take greater ownership of our choices without blaming ourselves for everything, while also learning to cope with uncertainty and situations we cannot change.

Takeaways

Locus of control describes how inclined we are to believe we control our life circumstances, attributing events to our own choices and efforts or to external factors.
Having an internal locus of control often involves attributing the causes of events to personal choices, skills, and actions, while having an external locus of control often involves attributing the causes of events to other people, circumstances, luck, or fate.
These tendencies can influence our confidence, motivation, stress, sense of responsibility, and responses to distress and setbacks, depending on the situation and context.
Therapy can help us develop a more flexible and realistic understanding of what is within our control, take ownership of our choices without excessive self-blame, and cope with uncertainty and situations we cannot change.

References

Botha, F., & Dahmann, S. C. (2023). Locus of control, self-control, and health outcomes. SSM – Population Health, 25, 101566. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2023.101566
Cheng, C., Cheung, S. F., Chio, J. H., & Chan, M. S. (2012). Cultural meaning of perceived control: A meta-analysis of locus of control and psychological symptoms across 18 cultural regions. Psychological Bulletin, 139(1), 152–188. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028596
Galvin, B. M., Randel, A. E., Collins, B. J., & Johnson, R. E. (2018). Changing the focus of locus (of control): A targeted review of the locus of control literature and agenda for future research. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 39(7), 820–833. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2275
Rotter, J. B. (1954). Social learning and clinical psychology. New York, NY: Prentice Hall.
Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs, 80, 1–28.

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