What’s one thing you can do to improve your physical and mental health, be happier and more successful?
Before I tell you the answer, first try answering these questions (interpretation in the footnotes [1]). For each question select the statement (a or b) that you agree with the most.
- a) Many of the unhappy things in people’s lives are partly due to bad luck.
b) People’s misfortunes result from the mistakes they make. - a) In the long run, people get the respect they deserve in this world.
b) Unfortunately, an individual’s worth often passes unrecognized no matter how hard he tries. - a) Most people don’t realize the extent to which their lives are controlled by accidental happenings.
b) There really is no such thing as luck.
What on earth is a locus of control?
Julian Rotter, one of the most influential academic psychologists of the 20th century [2], suggested that people tend to fall somewhere on the scale between having what he called an internal locus (‘internals’) and having an external locus (‘externals’).People who see outcomes, both good and bad, to be due to their own doing are said to have a strong internal locus (the left side of the below scale). Conversely, those who see outcomes as mainly owing to fate, uncontrollable circumstances, or that the world is too unpredictable and complex to successfully influence are said to be externals. This theory predicts that people who internalize the successes and failures of life are likely to be more confident and active in pursuing their goals than externals.
Why does all this matter?
Ng, Sorensen and Eby [3] review the literature on the topic and stumble on some interesting findings in your health, professional, and personal life. People with a strong internal locus of control scored 33% higher on job satisfaction, performance, position and attendance than those with an external locus of control. Internals are more intrinsically motivated, have lower stress rates and overall burnout rates (despite working longer hours). In the studies conducted, if a participant thought they could alter or control outcomes in their life, they even showed improvements in physical and mental well-being.
A word of caution, though, that this might just be correlation, not causation – it could easily be the case that people who feel in control of their lives do so because they’ve been successful.
What do we do about this?
Rotter suggests altering our thoughts to be internal (“I did it”) but not thinking globally (“it always happens”) or in stable terms (“it will always happen”)[3]. For example, imagine receiving a failing grade for your maths test. An adaptive response, again according to Rotter, would be to say “I failed on this maths test. It’s my fault, but it’s because I didn’t study hard this time and haven’t put enough effort into it.” Less adaptive ways to respond might be “I failed, I always fail, and I fail at everything” or “the stupid test was too hard and the teacher doesn’t like me”. Health is another useful application of this technique and it might help to say “I’m not fit because I haven’t been exercising, but I have been fit before, and it doesn’t have to be this way forever”. Are there any areas you can apply these techniques to?
If you’re confident in the conclusions of this research, you might want to try shifting your locus of control to be more internal. (Attending a CFAR workshop is one intervention you might try! Although you can also invent your own.)
Of course, there are a few things that are out of your control – but probably fewer than you think.
Footnotes
[1] 1.a) 2. b) 3. a)→ high external locus of control
1.b) 2. a) 3. b)→ high internal locus of control
You can take the full test here ⤴
[2] Haggbloom SJ, Warnick R, Warnick JE, Jones VK, Yarbrough GL, Russell TM, et al. The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century. Review of General Psychology. 2002;6(2):139. doi: 10.1037/1089-2680.6.2.139 ⤴
[3] Ng, TW, Sorensen, KL, & Eby, LT. (2006). Locus of control at work: a meta‐analysis. Journal of organizational Behavior, 27(8), 1057-1087. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/job.416/pdf ⤴
[4] http://ubc-emotionlab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Lecture-20-Cognition-wrap-up-Begin-Emotions.pdf
[5] Thanks to Jess Whittlestone, Lyra Rinaudo and Anna Salamon for reviewing drafts of this post and suggestions.



I’m interested in the link between internal locus of control and the Just World Fallacy; the more you think that everyone gets what they deserve, the more everyone is to blame for for their own ‘bad luck’. Having an internal locus of control therefore increases efficacy at the cost of empathy. Clearly this isn’t total, or there wouldn’t be so many people who are interested in both Rationality and Effective Altruism, but I have seen some studies (too busy to find links – may come back later to update) and also also anecdotally it seems to me to apply to a lot (but not all) people. I try to think in terms of ‘I can’t always control what happens to me but I can control how I respond’, which seems more accurate.
(A lot of this is owed to Amanda McAskill’s remarks on facebook)
I used to work on a haematology ward, and it was pretty clear that getting (like some of my patients did) life threatening blood cancer at 21 is pretty much wholly external to anything you do. Naturally, a supporter of a more ‘internal’ locus of control view would want to say that external factors will count sometimes, and there will often be a balance external and internal factors for outcomes and things we care about, and although in some cases (e.g. being born with a genetic disorder, getting struck by lighting) the balance will tilt strongly towards external factors, it will be the case that in most circumstances, or in a relevant class of circumstances, it will be internal factors that are the more important.
But I don’t think that is true either. Social science provides a plethora of factors, out of our control, that have a lot of influence of how our lives turn out: race, class, IQ, height, conscientiousness, country of origin, and many others. It seems pretty plausible that a combination of all of these will explain the majority of variance in a lot of things (we know for example that country of origin alone explains more than half the variance in income). Even if we try to winnow down to what we hope might be a relevant class (e.g. “Income conditional on being born in the U.S.”), it seems pretty likely that a combination of external factors are still more important than our own volition. Not always: there will be some things that could have gone much better if only we tried harder or thought more strategically; but in broad strokes mostly not, and even in very narrow domains it is plausible the external factors still dominate: If I look at the factors that turned me into a doctor, my own volitional powers get little of the credit; I defy anyone to point to a significant achievement of theirs which would not be very sensitive to (for example) being born in Bangladesh, or being born to a chaotic family, or being born with an IQ 2 standard deviations lower, or having severe depression, and so on.
So it seems to me that an ‘internal locus of control’ rests upon false beliefs about the world (c.f. the just world fallacy mentioned above): the relevant evidence suggests whether people succeed or fail (ourselves included) depends much more on factors out of our control than those within it. Given the psychological data, it may just be the case this is a case where epistemic and prudential rationality diverge: holding the (implausible) internal-locus view gives prudential advantages in terms of achieving more than those who hold the (more plausible) external-locus view.
But it may have costs too (as alluded to by gillyc, a tempting corrollary of the internal locus view is to view others failures or poor circumstances without sympathy – these things are generally ‘their own fault’, given the internal locus view). Further, I prefer attempt to try harness prudentially advantageous attitudes whilst keeping an eye on how things really are. Easier said than done, but perhaps attitudes like, “Maybe people can end up victims of circumstance, but I’ll do my best to make sure I won’t be one of them”, or “Although many things are out of my hands, I have a chance to achieve this, so lets optimise what is in my hands to increase these chances”, are what we should be aiming to foster.
Is this the quality of posts we should expect from CFAR? A poorly summarized research explained at pop-sci reading level, followed by a recommendation to “try shifting your locus of control to be more internal”?
This makes it seem like the stuff taught in the workshops if of an equally low quality, which I know to not be the case at all. It makes me sad to see that this is the public facing blog of CFAR.