In and Out of Control

Nearly every decision that a person makes in their lives is influenced in some capacity by their own actions and the world around them. Thus, enters the internal and external loci of control and how one interprets his or her ability to change his or her lives and what or who is ultimately responsible. While there are certainly a plethora of factors that may also alter an individual’s perception, such as age or skill in the case of a car accident, these loci of control have a considerable influence on how a person responds to scenarios in his or her life and whether or not he or she feels as if he or she were the dominant force in creating that situation. Through the lens of a car accident, scrutinizing individuals’ locus is an exercise in examining how they might react. Internally minded individuals will find fault with themselves, but externally minded people will find fault with the world around them.

Lotus of control is a concept of personality psychology that had its understanding developed by Julian B. Rotter in 1954. It is essentially a scale that assesses individuals’ perceived control and free will over the consequences of their actions or the events that affect them. An individual’s locus is defined as either internal or external, which dramatically influences the individual’s self-perception. This influence, in some respects, alters individuals’ understandings of their capability to have any sort of control in and on the world around them.

An internal locus of control typically presumes that the individuals in question believes that they are the determinant of their successes and consequences, and an attitude that is fostered “when someone whose efforts are consistently rewarded” (Twenge, Zhang, Im). By the same token, an external locus of control means that individuals believe that these results are firmly out of their control and instead in the realm of God, fate, or any greater power, and totally independent from their actions, they feel that they “do not succeed despite their efforts” and so develop such an attitude. Succinctly, “internals see a causal relationship between their behavior and rewards, whereas externals do not” (Twenge, Zhang, Im). This suggests internals hold a sense of accountability. Because they realize they produce the consequences to their actions, they have a healthy sense of their roles in the world. 

Certainly, a car accident is hardly a reward in any sense, but from the basis of the loci one can extrapolate possible responses from the unfortunate person in a car accident. Being that people with an internal locus of a control are more likely to believe that they are the masters of their own destiny, one can assume that they would be more likely to blame themselves for the accident due to a propensity of self-criticism “by attributing responsibility of outcomes to their own actions (Ridling). On the other hand, the person with an external locus of control would not be as congruous with such a line of thinking because his or her actions are not wholly his or her own. They would be more likely to blame the other driver because unlike the person with the internal locus, who is generally “assuming too much responsibility” for him or herself, the external locus encourages shifting the blame to a third party actor or at least not the individual themselves (Ridling). Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the external control is not as predicable when considering the outcomes.  

To say that a locus of control determines every individual’s perception with totality would be inaccurate. There are nearly always a variety of other factors that can influence an individual’s perception of an event, in the case of a car accident it is imperative to remember that “human factors in driving are composed of two components: driving skills and driving style” (Holland, Geraghty, Shah). How an individual manages “speed, attitudes to other road users and to rules, and general attentiveness” directly asserts some sort of governance on how the individual feels about his or her own ability and the cultivation of safe driving techniques. Holland, Geraghty, Shah explain that “It suggests that drivers who believe outcomes are controlled by external forces may be less likely to change behavior in response to outcomes” rather than one who believes outcomes to be reliant on their own ability, and implies “that externally oriented persons are more likely to be involved in car accidents as they would take fewer precautions to prevent road accidents” than an internally oriented person. Because the external person believes others are at fault, he or she will continue to discount his or her actions.

These loci of control can affect how prone a person is to behavior that is risky when driving. Internally oriented people trend towards “being responsible and accountable for [themselves]”and creating stress for themselves, whereas externally oriented people are more likely to feel “helpless and powerless” and thereby less likely to have confidence in their own capabilities—particularly when they are not appropriately rewarded for successes or otherwise acknowledged (Ridling). This is not to say that one is more or less skilled than the other in, for example, driving, but that the prior is more prone to arrogance than the latter.

Essentially, externality often will “reflect the greater cynicism, distrust” and perhaps an unwillingness to claim responsibility for bad events that occur for them (Twenge, Zhang, Im). As externality grows, it is likely that the individual might attempt to absolve themselves of any blame. In a car accident, an exceedingly externally oriented person is most likely to blame the other driver, the road itself, or perhaps even the signal lights. They will do anything to eschew personal responsibility for an event, “paradoxically, increases in individualism may lead to greater externality,” encouraging self-serving behavior and “the victim mentality” (Twenge, Zhang, Im). Because of this, externally oriented people are less likely to assign the responsibility of the car accident to themselves, because there was simply no power for them to change what happened and instead is encouraged by a variety of factors to blame anything else because the very act of blaming anything else is “self-protective” (Twenge, Zhang, Im).  If an externally minded person is likely to become frustrated with his or her perceived inability to have an effect on his or her lives, it follows that they might be less likely to be invested in their activity because it appears to be so far out of their control.

In order to be a good driver, one has to realize that action derives from beliefs. Carol Holland, Jennifer Geraghty and Kruti Shah note that a driver’s skill “is influenced by beliefs about one’s own ability and what makes a good driver.”  Beyond that, as individuals’ experiences grow and they become more comfortable with the skill of driving, their “personality and values” might also leave a more obvious impact (Holland, Geraghty, Shah). “Personality factors that have been investigated in terms of relationship with driving include aggression hostility … risk taking, sensation seeking” with the locus of control being compounded into these as well. While internally oriented people are not as prone to the victim mentality, it could be said that they suffer from the inverse and by assuming too much responsibility for themselves and “overestimate their skills” and can account that their experience correlates with their age—young and new to driving (Holland, Geraghty, Shah). The conclusion is the same; however, that because internally oriented people place more stock into their own abilities rather than the inevitability of happenstance like those who are externally oriented. It can be posited that internally minded drivers are the causes of accidents whereas externally minded drivers are the victims of accidents, though stay unlikely to change any dangerous behaviors, with “young male drivers [having] been shown to consistently emphasize skill factors … particularly during their first year of driving” (Holland, Geraghty , Shah). While experience improves drivers’ skills, their internal psyche may override it. 

In this sense, it can be discerned that between the two extremes of these there is a middle ground of sorts. Loci of control do not determine everything about an individual’s personality, nor do they truly determine the actual cause of an event, they are only meaning of perception. What both of these extremes neglect is that whether or not something is out of their control does not have to be a mutually exclusive quality, and that “it is not always wise to plan too far ahead because many things turn out to be a matter of good bad fortune anyhow” (Twenge, Zhang, Im). A person can do everything within his or her power to achieve a given end but still be subjected to whims beyond his or her control. If the person has no idea of outside circumstances then there is little he or she can do, despite his or her skill to avoid changes to the original goal.

Ultimately, it is more likely that an internally minded person will blame themselves whereas the externally minded person will blame the other, but what the internally minded person does not appear to consider is that some situations that result in a car accident are out of both parties’ control. Very rarely will someone hope for their tire to go flat or blowout specifically to end up in a collision which internally minded people do not concede because they are consumed with stress or anxiety disorders by placing so much credence into their ability and responsibility to fulfill their qualifications of being a skilled driver: it is their own failing. Externally minded people feel that the accident or the cause thereof is out of their control, and to an extent, they are right. However, depending on the circumstances of the car accident, neither party can be declared to be at fault—for it is, after all and above all else, an accident.

Works Cited

April, Kurt A., Babar Dharani, and Kai Peters. "Impact of Locus of Control Expectancy on Level of Well-Being." Review of European Studies 4.2 (2012): 124-37. Http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/res. Web.

Holland, Carol, Jennifer Geraghty, and Kruti Shah. Differential Moderating Effect of Locus of Control on Effect of Driving Experience in Young Male and Female Drivers. Birmingham: Http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886910000644, May 2010. PDF.

Ridling, Bethany L. "Insight and Locus of Control as Related to Aggression in Individuals with Severe Mental Illness (SMI)." The McNair Scholars Research Journal (2010): 1-15. EBSCO. Web. 10 July 20. <http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/mcnairjournal/2/>.

Twenge, Jean, Liqing Zhang, and Charles Im. "It’s Beyond My Control: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis of Increasing Externality in Locus of Control, 1960–2002." Personality and Social Psychology Review 8.3 (2004): 308-19. PychInfo. Web. 7 July 2013.