Locus of Control Essay Example for Free

Locus of Control Essay After completing and evaluating my responses to the Locus of Control Assessment, my result was that I have an internal locus of control. An internal locus of control is when a person believes that they are generally in control of the events that affect their life. In my opinion, the assessment is right, I believe I control most of the events that happen in my life. Now, on the other end an external locus of control is when a person believes that they generally do not have control of the events that affect their life (Myers, 2012, p. 1). The two reliable sources I found that provided information on Locus of Control were www. ncrel. org and www. psych. uncc. edu. After conducting some research I have determined that there are positive and negative outcomes for both internal and external locus of control. The important thing is to keep a balance between them. Some positive internal locus of control situations are when you study hard and get an A in your test or when you enter a contest and win. In these situations you controlled the event in your life. The negative aspect of an internal locus of control is that in some cases you can’t control the events that affect your life. For example being diagnosed with colon cancer or having surgery to remove your intestine. In these situations are person with an internal locus of control may feel hopeless and blame them selves for not preventing it. When it comes to an external locus of control the positive aspect of it is that when situations arise that person will most likely attribute it to something else. For example, they would say it was luck if they won the lottery or the teacher was in a good mood if they got a C in their math class. In negative cases they will blame others for the outcome because they believe they don’t have any control over the events that happened in their life. An example would be if they don’t do their homework because their mom forgot to buy paper or if they have an accident and rear end the person in front of them and blame the other driver for stopping abruptly. In my opinion, it is better to have an internal locus of control. The reason why I believe this is because in most cases we have control over certain events that happen in our life. Having an external locus of control would give the person no sense of responsibility for their actions since they feel they do not have control over it. A person with an internal locus of control is more responsible, successful, easily motivated and always looking for improvement within them. A person with an external locus of control is less responsible, blames everyone else for their failures, is less motivated and success is something they feel will happen if others achieve it for them. Depending on the situation or the life event these two have to be balanced. If you’re a person with an internal locus of control like me and we experience a situation that is out of our hands we have to accept that and understand that not everything in life can be controlled. Some things are going to happen no matter what we do. In cases like this is when it’s good to have an external locus of control because for some people not being in control all the time and experiencing a situation that is out of their hands can be damaging for their self-esteem. When an event arises we should be able to logically look at the situation and analyze if there was anything we could have done different to solve the problem or avoided it and evaluate the decisions we made that concluded with the end result. Once you analyze the situation you can determine if changing the steps you took would have changed the end result. If it wouldn’t have changed the out come then it was out of your hands and you should see it as an external locus instead of an internal locus.