Locus of control - Definition and Overview

The locus of control is a concept in psychology, originally developed by Julian Rotter.

People tend to attribute their successes or failures to either internal or external causes. Persons with an internal locus of control see themselves as responsible for the outcomes of their own actions. Someone with an external locus of control, on the other hand, sees environmental causes and situational factors as being more important than internal ones. These individuals would be more likely to attribute success to luck rather than effort, or to attribute failure to some unfair circumstance than to his/her own shortcomings.

See also

• fundamental attribution error
• Locus of control (http://moodle.ed.uiuc.edu/wiked/index.php/Locus_of_control)