Cure your Emetophobia and Thrive – Chapter 3 preview..
Cure your Emetophobia and Thrive – Chapter 3 preview… Chapter three: Locus of Control
Establishing and maintaining an Internal Locus of Control is probably the single most important factor in you taking control of your life, and being healthy, happy and successful. Please read that sentence again, slowly.
The word ‘locus’ is Latin for ‘place’, and the word ‘control’ refers to how much control, or power, you believe you have over events in your life. Locus of control is a concept that was first developed by clinical psychologist Julian Rotter in the 1950s.
“Individuals who have an internal locus of control believe that a positive cause/effect relationship exists between their own behavior and the outcomes they experience. People having an external locus of control, on the other hand, perceive a lack of a relationship between their activities and consequent outcomes. In these individuals, outcomes may be perceived as controlled by sources external to oneself such as powerful others or by chance factors such as fate or luck.”
(Crisson and Keefe, 1988)
Your locus of control is incredibly important in the formation and maintenance of limiting belief systems. People with a strong external locus of control are those who tend to feel powerless; they find it very hard to believe that they can make changes in their lives, and they find it hard to get perspective over their problems or symptoms.
I first started to understand locus of control only about ten years ago (though in hindsight I had obviously witnessed it every single day of my clinical practice because everyone has a locus of control, and everyone is affected by their locus of control) when I first met Sarah. Sarah was not a patient or client of mine but a friend whom I met at a party. She was telling me about her job as a physicist in an oncology department in a well-known hospital. Basically, her responsibility was to decide how much radiotherapy to give cancer patients, specifically children, with leukaemia. She would study their medical histories, speak to their consultants and surgeon, and agree a specific course of radiotherapy. Anyway, she was telling me (over a very large gin and tonic) how ‘it didn’t really matter much anyway’ because ‘in lots of cases she could tell which kids were going to live or die – regardless of their treatment – just by observing their behaviour in the waiting room’.
I have to tell you, I was absolutely floored by this statement. At first I thought, ‘Oh here we go again, another weirdo who thinks they can predict the future’ (apologies here to any readers who can, actually, predict the future!). But then she went on to qualify her statement by saying, ‘yes, basically, the helpless, needy children die, and the determined, independent ones tend to live’. I still wasn’t incredibly comfortable with her assertions, so I pressed her for more information, and what she went on to describe to me was the differences between the children who had an internal locus of control, and those who had an external locus of control. The children with an internal locus were more likely to survive their leukaemia and thrive, and the children with an external locus were less likely to do so.
In a recent search of the PsycINFO database (April 6th, 2012), I found 16,913 research studies with the phrase ‘locus of control’ as keywords. That’s nearly seventeen thousand research papers into this subject. I found that, in just about every illness, phobia, medical condition, habit, disability and lack of success, the research suggests that locus of control is one of the most significant determining factors in not only whether the person is going to ‘get better’, win the race or reach the peak, but also whether they are going to suffer their problem in the first place. The really sad thing here is that it isn’t actually that difficult to change your locus from external to internal.
Here are a few examples of this research (there is more in the resources section of our website):
A study by Abrahamsson et al. (2002), demonstrated that feeling powerless is a key factor in dental phobia. Those with panic disorder have been found to have a more external locus of control than those without – believing that events occur in a random and uncontrollable way (Cloitre, Heimberg, Liebowitz and Gitow, 1992). In relation to depression, a number of studies have highlighted the importance of a sense of control: Burger (1984) found that those who believed that their lives were controlled by chance or powerful others, had higher levels of depression. Mirowsky and Ross (1990) determined that depression was associated with not feeling in control of either good outcomes or bad outcomes, or of both.
Abouserie (1994) looked at locus of control and stress levels in university students. It was found that those with an external locus of control had higher levels of academic stress than others who had an internal locus. So, the students who believed that they were in control of their situations were less stressed than those who believed that their academic results were controlled by luck or outside forces.
One recent research paper (Gale et al., 2008) examined the health effect of childhood locus of control. This report used results from the 1970 British Cohort Study where thousands of British adults were followed from birth. Those who had shown an internal locus of control at the age of ten were less likely to be overweight at age 30, and also appeared to have higher levels of self-esteem. Sturmer et al. (2006) revealed that locus of control was an important factor in heart disease. It was found that those with an internal locus of control over disease had a lower risk of heart attack. In a breast cancer study, Watson et al. (1999), found that patients who scored highly on helplessness at the baseline were more likely to have relapsed or died during the following five years.
A particularly interesting study by Rodin and Langer (1977) involved pensioners in a nursing home. To a control group of pensioners it was emphasised that the nursing home staff were responsible for their care and that these staff would try to make them happy. To those in a ‘responsibility-induced’ group, it was stressed that they were responsible for themselves. This group was also offered plants to care for whereas those in the control group were given plants which the staff watered. Those in the responsibility-induced group became more active, reported feeling happier and appeared more alert. They were more involved in social activities with the staff and other residents. Even more incredibly:
The most striking data were obtained in death rate differences between the two treatment groups. Taking the 18 months prior to the original intervention as an arbitrary comparison period, we found that the average death rate during that period was 25% for the entire nursing home. In the subsequent 18-month period following the intervention, only 7 of the 47 subjects (15%) in the responsibility-induced group died, whereas 13 of 44 subjects (30%) in the comparison group had died.
Just to clarify that last line in the quote above, nearly 50% fewer pensioners died, when they had a plant to look after. The act of looking after the plant gave them a sense of purpose, they realised that they weren’t completely powerless, and so started to think more internally, which helped to develop a more internal locus of control.
A really good example of a person with an incredibly strong internal locus of control would be Jessica Cox. Jessica was born without any arms. As a small child, she was frustrated that she wasn’t able to do things that other children were able to do easily. She had low self-esteem and felt angry and upset about being different. But Jessica has now learned to live her life to the full. She has stated that ‘Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% of how you respond to it’. Jessica is now a black belt in Taekwondo, plays the piano, drives a car, and can even fly a plane – all using her feet. She works as a motivational speaker, helping others to see that they can achieve great things by being creative and determined.
I hope you are starting to see just how important having an internal locus of control is, as it will have a profound effect upon almost every area of your life.
Where does our locus of control come from?
Essentially, you LEARN to have either an internal or external locus from your parents or your environment. People with an internal locus of control tend to have grown up in families that valued education and learning and encouraged their children to apply effort and be responsible. These families tend to have been supportive, caring and consistent. People with an internal locus of control have usually been taught ‘problem-solving’ skills as children. They probably grew up in an environment where they were encouraged to think for themselves. Rather than their parents (or other people) doing everything for them, they were taught how to resolve difficulties and overcome obstacles for themselves.
Those with an external locus of control may come from less affluent backgrounds, since many people living in poverty feel that they have little or no control over their lives (Maqsud and Rouhani, 1991; Lever et al., 2005). People who are external are also more likely to have grown up in an environment where parents (or care-givers) were overly controlling, very over-protective or did not give their children much responsibility.
Additionally, people in societies where there is instability or conflict tend to be more external, as their environment increases the expectation of being out-of-control and powerless. Could this, in part, explain why wars always seem to be fought in highly religious communities? Often people attribute wars to religion. Perhaps, though this is not always the case; in a society where there is unrest, people feel more out of control and consequently become more external. In such societies, people are more likely to believe that God has more power over their lives than they do. Thus in countries where wars are ongoing, religion is highly prevalent.
Interestingly our (British) society as a whole does, to some extent, promote the development of an external locus of control in our children, by propagating paranormal and external types of beliefs. We encourage our children to believe in all sorts of magical external forces: Father Christmas, the tooth fairy, lucky charms, gods, etc. Indeed you would probably feel like a bad parent if you didn’t! A strong emphasis on anything ‘magical’ or out-of-control during childhood can, however, encourage a child to form an external locus of control, especially if the child is not actively encouraged to develop problem-solving skills.
So, we are trained to have either an internal or external locus, trained by our parents, our carers, our teachers, our clergy and our politicians. Trained, from birth, to either believe that we can influence what happens in our lives, or that we can’t. Once our locus of control has been created (probably by around age seven or eight) it becomes habitual to see, think and process experiences in relation to our locus. Much like people who tend to either see the metaphorical glass as either half-full, or half-empty, some people see, think and believe that they can influence what happens in their lives (internal) and others believe in fate, luck, chance and ‘significant others’ (external)…
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