Locus of Control: Do You Run Your Life or Does Life Run You?

When an exam result comes back, some people look first at themselves and their abilities and others at the teacher or how hard the paper was.¹ That difference has a name. Locus of control is how far you believe the things that happen to you follow from your own actions rather than from luck, fate or other people, and the psychologist Julian Rotter published the questionnaire most often used to measure it in a 1966 monograph.²

An internal locus of control is the belief that your actions shape your outcomes, and an external one is the belief that outside forces do. Most people sit somewhere between the two, and often in different places for different parts of life. Across the work studies pooled in two large meta-analyses, an internal locus of control went with higher job satisfaction and motivation, but its link with job performance was small. The practical skill, set out at the end of this article, is sorting each problem into what depends on you, what depends on other people and what is chance.

It is one of several beliefs about yourself that psychologists study, alongside the ones covered in our explainer on mindsets and the beliefs that steer behavior.

Prefer to watch? The video covers the same ground as this article.

VideoLocus of Control: Do You Run Your Life, or Does Life Run You?WiserHours

Internal vs external locus of control: where you put the cause

The difference between an internal and an external locus of control is where you locate the cause of what happens to you. Someone leaning internal believes success or failure comes mainly from their own efforts; someone leaning external believes it is controlled by luck, chance or powerful others, and so sees little link between effort and reward.³

The reason it matters is that expectations steer behavior. Rotter’s wider theory, social learning theory, holds that people act on what they expect their actions to bring. If you expect effort to pay off, trying again after a setback makes sense. If you expect the result to be decided elsewhere, effort looks like a waste.³

Picture two colleagues passed over for the same promotion. One asks her manager what was missing and starts on the skill gap he names. The other decides promotions in that department go to whoever plays golf with the director. Her conclusion reflects an external locus of control. Neither is automatically right, and the second may be accurate in a badly run department.

After the next setback, notice which way your explanation runs, and ask whether it fits the facts of that situation, not whether it sounds like the right kind of person.

Is locus of control a fixed personality type?

Rotter cautioned in 1975 that internal and external are two ends of a continuum, not an either/or typology.¹ His paper on misconceptions was written because, by then, the idea had appeared in hundreds of studies, and some of them misunderstood what the measure could and could not show.⁴

Rotter also built in a second qualification. Locus of control is a generalized expectancy, a broad belief that predicts behavior across many situations, but in specific situations a person who is generally external can act like an internal, because experience has shown them that their actions count there.³ Later researchers treat it as a hierarchy: a general belief at the top, and narrower beliefs about health, marriage, parenting or work below it.⁵

Outcomes follow from my own actionsLuck, fate or powerful others decide

1. Work: I can usually change how a project turns out
2. Health: some of it is up to me, some is not
3. Money: the economy and my employer mostly decide

A nurse can feel firmly in charge of her shift and helpless about her pension, and both beliefs can be reasonable. The better question is “Where am I on this line for this part of my life, and why?”

How is locus of control measured?

Locus of control is measured almost entirely with self-report questionnaires. The most widely used is still Rotter’s 1966 scale: 23 forced-choice items plus 6 filler items, where each item asks you to pick which of two statements you agree with more. Rotter treated locus of control as a single dimension, and that assumption was soon challenged.¹

The best-known alternative came from Hanna Levenson, who argued in 1974 that “external” mixes two different beliefs. Her three scales measure them separately, alongside the internal one: a sense of mastery over your own life, a belief that powerful others decide, and a belief in chance. In a factor analysis of college men’s answers, the items split into those three groups.⁶ The split matters in practice: believing your boss controls your bonus is a different problem from believing life is random.

Two warnings help when you read a score. Scales run in different directions: on Rotter’s and Spector’s scales a high score means more external, while other studies, including the meta-analyses below, code a high score as more internal.⁵ And self-report measures invite answers that sound socially desirable.⁷ A free quiz online is best read as a starting point for thinking, not a measurement.

Does an internal locus of control help at work?

Thomas Ng, Kelly Sorensen and Lillian Eby pooled studies of locus of control at work in a 2006 meta-analysismeta-analysis: A study that combines the results of earlier studies on the same question into one overall estimate. Pooling makes the estimate more precise, but it cannot repair the studies it pools: a meta-analysis of surveys is still survey evidence.Full entry in the glossary in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. They grouped the outcomes under three perspectives, on well-being, motivation and how people approach their work, and found that an internal locus was linked to favorable outcomes such as positive task and social experiences at work and greater job motivation.⁸

A 2010 follow-up meta-analysis added samples and reports the sizes of the links.⁵

The study

Moderate evidence

Satisfaction tracks control beliefs; performance barely does

Pooling 184 samples of employed adults, Qiang Wang, Nathan Bowling and Kevin Eschleman found that a general internal locus of control correlated .22 with job satisfaction (44 samples, 12,197 people) and only .07 with job performance (16 samples, 3,893 people). Beliefs about control at work specifically were more strongly linked: .34 with job satisfaction and .16 with performance. Most of the studies were cross-sectionalcross-sectional: Describes a study that measures everyone in its sample at a single point in time. Because the possible cause and the outcome are recorded together, it can show that two things occur together but not which of them came first.Full entry in the glossary and relied on self-reports, so they describe associations rather than causes.⁵

A correlation of .07 is close to nothing for any one person: knowing how internal someone is tells you almost nothing about how well they will perform. The satisfaction links are larger and consistent, though still small to moderate, and the direction is open. A fair, well-run workplace may make people feel more in control, as much as feeling in control makes people like their jobs. The authors also found that beliefs about work itself, such as whether good performance gets rewarded, were generally more strongly linked to work outcomes than the general belief.⁵

A team’s sense of control is partly a report on the team’s conditions: if effort visibly leads to recognition, more people will answer like internals.

Is it better to have an internal locus of control?

Usually, but not always and not in every culture. A psychology guide at Simply Psychology, reviewed by a psychologist, notes that neither end is universally adaptive: too internal a view leads to self-blame for events nobody could control, and too external a view discourages taking responsibility at all.⁷

If you believe outcomes follow from your actions, a layoff caused by a factory closure or an illness that progresses despite good care becomes a personal failure. In 1982, Fred Rothbaum and colleagues argued that people seek control in two ways: by changing their surroundings, and by bringing themselves into line with forces they cannot change.⁹ On that view, accepting what you cannot move is a form of control. Persistent passivity after repeated setbacks is a separate topic, learned helplessness, with its own research history.

Culture changes the picture too. Cecilia Cheng and colleagues, in a 2013 meta-analysis, pooled studies of adults in 18 cultural regions, none of them clinical samples, and found that an external locus of control went with more symptoms of depression and anxiety overall, but the link with anxiety was weaker in collectivist societies than in individualist ones. The authors concluded that an external locus does not carry the same negative meaning everywhere, and noted that culture was measured by country, so the finding may not apply to any one person.¹⁰ Older cross-cultural comparisons found that Japanese people tend to score more external than Americans, while differences within Europe, and between Europe and the US, tend to be small.¹

When you catch yourself taking all the blame for something like a layoff, ask what share of it any one person could have changed, and keep only that share.

Can you change your locus of control?

Somewhat, and slowly. In a study using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, economists Deborah Cobb-Clark and Stefanie Schurer tracked more than 8,000 people aged 15 and over whose locus of control was measured in 2003 and again in 2007. Most changed little or not at all, about a quarter moved by more than roughly one point per question on the seven-question scale, the larger changes were concentrated among the young and the very old, and major life events, from a serious injury to the death of a spouse, were linked to small changes or none.¹¹

The belief is not fixed, though. In a 2004 analysis by Jean Twenge and colleagues, scores in US college student samples became substantially more external between 1960 and 2002: the average student in 2002 was more external than 80 percent of students in the early 1960s.¹² Children also tend to become more internal as they grow older and gain skills that give them more control.¹

Deliberate training has a mixed record. In a 1989 US study of test-anxious college students, those given coping skills training scored lower on measures of test anxiety, did better on class tests and scored higher on a measure of general self-efficacy than a waiting-list group, yet their locus of control did not change.¹³ Hands-on programs may do more. A 2000 meta-analysis of outdoor adventure programs by Tracy Hans found that participants, across studies, became more internal after taking part, a small to moderate shift in line with two earlier reviews; the abstract does not say how many of the studies had comparison groups.¹⁴ Beliefs about one area of life, built from what has worked there, look like the more realistic target. That is the same small-wins logic behind building self-confidence one task at a time, which rests on a narrower belief, self-efficacyself-efficacy: A person's belief in their ability to carry out a particular task or reach a particular goal. It is specific to the task, so someone can feel capable at work and unsure with money, and it goes with how readily people start and keep going.Full entry in the glossary.

Practical moves: find the control you have, accept the rest

The research suggests a modest aim: make your control beliefs more accurate, area by area, using Levenson’s three-way split of yourself, powerful others and chance.

1. Split the problem into three columns. What depends on my own actions, what depends on particular people, and what is chance? A delayed project might have a column-one cause (your estimate), a column-two cause (a manager’s late sign-off) and a column-three cause (a supplier’s strike).
2. Act on the first column first. That is where effort most plausibly pays off, and where small wins rebuild the belief that it does.
3. Treat the second column as influence, not control. You cannot decide for someone else, but you can ask, propose or negotiate.
4. Plan around the third column, then let it go. Build in slack, and stop replaying what nobody could have changed.

When self-blame or hopelessness needs a professional

Locus of control is a belief, not a diagnosis. Hopelessness and excessive guilt can be signs of depression, though: the World Health Organization’s 2026 fact sheet lists both among the symptoms of a depressive episode, which lasts most of the day, nearly every day, for at least two weeks.¹⁵

• Now: with thoughts of suicide, or if you cannot keep yourself safe, call your local emergency number or a crisis line, as the WHO advises.¹⁵ In the US, NIMH lists the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text) and 911 when a life is at risk.¹⁶ In the UK, NHS advice is 999 or A&E if a life is at risk.¹⁷
• Soon: if low mood, hopelessness or a sense that nothing you do matters has lasted two weeks or more, see a doctor or other health worker where you live.
• Routine: if you blame yourself for almost everything, raise it with a doctor or therapist at your next visit.

The bottom line

Where you place the cause of what happens to you is a sliding scale, and you can sit at different points on it for work, health and money. A very internal view turns into self-blame when events really are out of your hands, so judge each situation on its facts. Sort the problem into what depends on you, on other people and on chance, and act on the first column first.