Locus of control
Whether you see your outcomes as driven by your own actions or by outside forces.
What it means
Locus of control is a generalized expectancy about the source of one's outcomes: people with an internal locus believe results follow mainly from their own actions, effort, and choices, while those with an external locus attribute outcomes to luck, fate, chance, or powerful others. Rotter introduced it within social-learning theory as a stable individual difference that influences how people interpret reinforcement — whether a reward is read as earned and repeatable or as arbitrary and beyond control. The mechanism is motivational: an internal locus tends to predict more proactive, persistent, information-seeking, and achievement-oriented behavior because action seems worthwhile, whereas a strong external locus can foster passivity and, in the extreme, learned helplessness. Important nuances qualify the picture: locus of control is domain-specific (one can feel internal about work but external about health), an extreme internal locus can bring excessive self-blame, and a realistically external attribution is appropriate when outcomes truly are uncontrollable. It matters for health behavior, academic and workplace performance, coping, and mental health, and it overlaps conceptually with self-efficacy and the illusion of control.
Examples
Facing the same grade, an internal student concludes 'I need to study differently,' while an external one decides it came down to whether the teacher liked them.
Two patients get the same cholesterol result. One overhauls his diet and starts walking daily; the other shrugs that heart trouble runs in the family and nothing he does will change it.
After losing a pitch, the internal salesperson rewrites the deck and rehearses the objections; the external one concludes the client had already picked a favourite before the meeting began.
First described in Julian Rotter (1966).