PSYCH 111 Chapter Notes - Chapter 25: Externals
17 May 2016
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1. ARTICLE CITATION:
• Original Author(s): Rotter, J. B.
• Original Publication Date: 1966
• Original Title: Are You The Master Of Your Fate?
• Original Place of Publication: Psychological Monographs, 80, 1-28
2. QUESTIONS ADDRESSED IN ORIGINAL STUDY:
(List the 2 – 5 most important questions addressed in the original study)
• Are the consequences of your behavior under your personal control or re they determined by
forces outside of yourself?
• When something good happens to you, do you take credit for it or do you think how lucky you
were?
• When something negative occurs, is it usually due to your actions or do you chalk it up to fate?
• How are actions and their consequences distributed? When and why are you to blame, and when
and why are you not to blame?
3. FINDINGS OF ORIGINAL STUDY:
(List the 2 – 5 most important findings of the original study)
• Behaviors are either reinforced or chastised by rewards or punishments.
• Once the expectancy of a reward is established, the removal of reinforcement will cause the
expectancy of such a relationship between behavior and reinforcement to fade.
• The totality of your individual learning experiences creates in you a generalized expectancy
about whether reinforcement is internally or externally controlled.
• Generalized expectancies will result in characteristic differences in behavior in a situation
culturally categorized as chance determined vs. skill determined, and may act to produce
individual differences within a specific condition.
4. EXTENSIONS OF ORIGINAL STUDY
(List the 2 – 5 most important advances made by subsequent research in this area)
• A test could be developed to measure reliably the extent to which individuals possess an internal
or an external locus of control orientation toward life.
• People will display stable individual differences in their interpretations of the causes of
reinforcement in the same situations.
• During testing people were not given the option of choosing neither or both for situations, so
they were forced to pick a side for which they support.
• Rotter though he could predict people’s actions in certain situations using the test.
5. IMPLICATIONS OF WORK
(List the 2 – 5 most important implications of all of this research)
• Individuals identifies as internals by the I-E Scale tended to prefer betting on “sure things” and
liked moderate odds over the long shots.
• Externals would wager more money on risky bets and engage in more risky gambling.
• Internal people are more successful in persuading other people to engage in an activity or pursue
a passion.
• Internals are more resistant to manipulation of their attitudes by others.
• Highly internally motivated people are more likely to achieve greater than people who believe in
an external belief system.
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