JULIAN ROTTER: LOCUS OF CONTROL (1916- )

Born in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of three brothers. The family lived comfortably until the 1929 economic depression when Rotters father lost his business, which was a pivotal event for him as a teenage boy. In high school: he discovered books about psychoanalysis by Freud and Adler. As a game, he would interpret the dreams of his friends, and he decided he wanted to become a psychologist. Disappointed to learn that there were few jobs for psychologists, he chose to major in Chemistry at Brooklyn College.

He happened to meet Alfred Adler and switched his major to psychology. After he received his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1951, he went to work at a state mental hospital in Connecticut. He served as a psychologist with the U.S. Army during World War II and then accepted a teaching position at Ohio State University, where George Kelly was director of the clinical psychology program.

At Ohio State, he advanced his social-learning approach to personality. His research program attracted many outstanding graduate students who went on to productive careers. In 1963 he left Ohio State for the University of Connecticut at Storrs. In 1988, he received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association.

Internal locus of control personalities believe that the reinforcement they receive is under the control of their own behaviors and attributes. With a firm grip on their situation and behave accordingly. perform at a higher level on laboratory tasks, less susceptible to attempts to influence them, place a higher value on their skills, and more alert to environmental cues report lower anxiety and higher self-esteem, are more responsible for their actions, and enjoy greater mental and physical health.

External locus of control think that other people, fate, or luck controls the rewards they receive. In other words, they are convinced that they are powerless with respect to outside forces, thus, heir behaviors and abilities make no difference in the reinforces they receive, may see little value in exerting any effort to improve their situation.

Rotter developed self-report inventories to assess locus of control. The Internal-External (I-E) Scale consists of 23 forced-choice alternatives. From each pair of items, subjects select the one that best describes their beliefs.

Childrens Nowicki-Strickland Internal-External scale, a widely used 40-item test that has been translated into two dozen languages. An adult form of the scale is available, as well as a cartoon version for use with preschool children.

Studies have shown that attempts to control our external environment begin in infancy, becoming more pronounced between ages 8 to 14.

People apparently become more internally oriented as they grow older, reaching a peak in middle age.

External locus of control appears to increase in women after divorce, and who have been physically abused tend to show an external locus of control.

Lower social classes and minority groups showed an external locus of control. Asians were shown to be more externally oriented than were Americans, a finding that may be explained in terms of cultural beliefs. Whereas American culture traditionally prizes selfreliance and individualism, Asian culture emphasizes community reliance and interdependence. Success is viewed more as a product of external than internal factors.

Internally oriented people engage in significantly more daydreams about achievement. acquire and process more information in different situations, experience greater personal choice, and are more popular. Internals are attracted to people they can manipulate, have higher self-esteem, and act in more socially skillful ways. People high in internal locus of control are less likely to have emotional problems or become alcoholics. They cope better with stress those who reported higher levels of work-related stress and burnout scored higher in external locus of control than did those less bothered by stress and burnout.

Internally oriented people may be physically healthier, lower blood pressure and fewer heart attacks. When they do develop cardiac problems, they cooperate better with the hospital staff. Internals tend to be more cautious about their health and are more likely to wear seat belts; to exercise, and to quit smoking. 4 aspects of locus of control as it relates to physical health: self-mastery, illness prevention, illness management, and self-blame. The factor most closely associated with physical well-being was self-mastery.

Locus of control is learned in childhood and is directly related to parental behavior. External control were likely to be expressed by children reared in homes without an adult male role model. External control tended to increase with the number of siblings. Children in large single-parent families headed by women are more likely to develop an external locus of control. Parents of children who possessed an internal locus of control were found to be highly supportive, to offer praise (positive reinforcement) for achievements, and to be consistent in their discipline. They were not authoritarian.

He is a Professor in Emeritus at the University of Delaware. His research involves the sensation-seeking trait, affect assessment, and its role in risk-taking behaviors and its biological bases. A fellow of the American Psychological Society, a fellow of its Division of Personality and Social Psychology. A diplomate of the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology-Clinical Psychology. Zuckerman has served as president of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences. He also is a board member of the Delaware Council on Gambling Problems and the Delaware Addictions Coalition.

He is the author of more than 200 articles and book chapters and several books. He also serves on the editorial board of Personality and Individual Differences. Zuckerman received his bachelor's and doctoral degrees from New York University. Beginning in the 1970s at the University of Delaware has conducted research on a limited-domain aspect of personality that he calls sensation seeking. He describes sensation seeking as a desire for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experience, and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experience

To measure sensation seeking, Zuckerman constructed the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS), a 40-item paperand-pencil questionnaire. He administered it to many people whose behavior corresponds to his definition of sensation seeking. (police officers and race-car drivers), and people who admitted to experimenting with drugs or varied sexual experiences Their SSS scores were compared with the scores of people who chose to avoid novel or risky activities. Those people who deliberately sought unusual activities scored high on SSS, and those who preferred less venturesome activities scored less.

Thrill and adventure seeking: a desire to engage in physical activities involving speed, danger, novelty, and defiance of gravity such as parachuting, scuba diving, or bungee jumping. Experience seeking: the search for novel experiences through travel, music, art, or a nonconformist lifestyle with similarly inclined persons. Disinhibition: the need to seek release in uninhibited social activities. Boredom susceptibility: an aversion to repetitive experiences, routine work, and predictable people, and a reaction of restless discontent when exposed to such situations.

Zuckerman later proposed good and bad kinds of sensation seeking. The so-called good type, or non-impulsive socialized sensation seeking, involves the thrill and adventure-seeking component. The bad kind, impulsive unsocialized sensation seeking, consists of high scores on the Disinhibition, experience seeking, and boredom susceptibility components as well as high scores on Eysencks psychoticism scale.

Younger people are more inclined to seek adventure, risk, and novel experiences than are older people. Test scores on subjects ranging from adolescents to 60-year-olds showed that sensation seeking begins to decrease in ones 20s. Men scored higher on thrill and adventure seeking, Disinhibition, and boredom susceptibility. Women scored higher on experience seeking.

Some high sensation seekers do prefer a variety of activities but not necessarily dangerous ones. They opt for encounter groups, meditation training, and other novel experiences. Once the initial excitement has subsided, high sensation seekers usually discontinue the activities because they no longer provide the optimal level of stimulation. High sensation seekers were more likely to experiment with illicit drugs, more likely to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, drive fast, have more car accidents and convictions for reckless or drunken driving, and engage in frequent sex.

Among college men, high-seeking scores correlated positively with risky sexual behavior the men knew could expose them to AIDS. Physical risk-taking has been related to sensation seeking. Skydivers, firefighters, riotcontrol police officers, and race-car drivers. Those identified as anti-social risk takers (drug addicts) or as adventurous risk takers (mountain climbers).

High sensation seekers appear more willing than low sensation seekers to relocate from familiar to unfamiliar surroundings and to travel to exotic places, even when the journey involves physical hazards. High sensation seekers did not earn better grades in school because high sensation seekers were more involved in recreational pursuits, they used less time for study. They have image, dreams, and daydreams so vivid that the distinction blurs between these internal stimuli and the real world. Zuckerman suggested that because high sensation seekers continually search for novel experiences, if they cannot find them in external situations they look inward and create a fantasy world.

High sensation seekers have a greater need for stimulating and varied experiences, and select different jobs. Men with high SSS scores shows interest in the helping professions such as psychologist, physician, psychiatrist, social worker, and minister. Their scores correlated negatively with business sector jobs such as accountant, purchasing agent, and banker. Women with high SSS had high interest test scores for the profession of lawyer and low interest test score for elementary school teacher, home economics teacher, and dietician. High sensation seekers of both sexes who were interested in the helping professions expressed a preference for risky, cutting-edge jobs such as crisis intervention work or paramedic duty on emergency response team.

High sensation seekers were shown to be more liberal in political and religious attitudes than were low sensation seekers. Those with high SSS are more likely to express atheistic views rather than belief in any conventional faith. High scores on the SSS express more permissive attitudes toward sexual behavior, whether their own or that of other people. Low sensation seekers are more likely to be frequent churchgoers. They scored high on measures of authoritarianism, which is a personality style characterized by rigid opinions and prejudiced attitudes.

High sensation seekers demonstrated stronger or more highly aroused physiological responses and higher tolerance thresholds for pain, loud y noise, and other stressful stimuli. They cope better with stress than can low sensation seekers, who have a lower tolerance for arousal. In studies of high sensation seekers exposed to novel stimuli, researchers detected increases in the electrical activity of the brain and the level of sex hormones.

Scores on the SSS in early studies supported the idea that first-borns and only-borns of both sexes were higher in sensation seeking than are later-borns. Because first-borns of both sexes and onlyborns receive more stimulation and attention from their parents at an early age, they are likely to be exposed to a greater optimal level of stimulation, which predisposes them to sensation seeking behavior as adults.

Best Known For: Learned helplessness Positive psychology Early Life: Martin Seligman was born on August 12, 1942 in Albany, New York. After graduating high school, he attended Princeton University where he earned an A.B. degree in 1964. In 1967, he earned a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Career: After working as an assistant professor at Cornell University, he returned to teach psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. During this time, he began researching learned helpless. Seligman discovered that when people feel they have no control over their situation, they tend to give up rather than fight for control. His research on helplessness and pessimism had important implications in the prevention and treatment of depression.

Influenced by earlier humanist thinkers like Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, positive psychology has continued to grow over the past two decades. Seligman is often referred to as the father of modern positive psychology. In Haggelbloom et al.'s 2002 article on the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, Seligman was ranked as the 31st most eminent psychologist in addition to being the 13th most often cited psychologist in introductory psychology textbooks.

Positive psychology was advanced in the late 1990s during his term as president of the American Psychological Association. Positive psychology deals with happiness, excellence, and optimal human functioning.

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY ON HAPPY PERSONALITY Psychologists have variously labeled the happy personality in terms such as subjective well-being or life satisfaction and define it as encompassing a cognitive evaluation of the quality of ones life experience and the possession of positive affect. High-income people tend to experience greater stress and to devote less of their time to relaxation and leisure activities than those with lower income.

The absence of good health can diminish happiness but being healthy does not necessarily mean a happy personality. Health appears to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for subjective well-being. Age and gender generally have little bearing on happiness. The relationship between age and happiness improves with age. Among adolescents, many are not happy but those who have certain factors in common. Adolescents who measured high in life satisfaction had more positive relationships with peers and parents, reported lower levels of anxiety and depression, and had greater hope for the future. They also expressed a feeling of greater personal control over their life than did adolescents scoring low in life satisfaction.

People who experienced health problems and physical limitations in old age did suffer a decline in subjective well-being. Physical exercise is an important component of subjective well-being in older people. An analysis studies revealed that both aerobic exercise and resistance or strength training showed a strong positive correlation with happiness. Married women have been found to be happier than unmarried women, and married men are happier than unmarried men.

Happiness appears to vary across cultures, with a nations relative wealth being of major importance. Countries marked by such poverty that satisfying basic needs is difficult have much lower reported levels of happiness among the population than do more economically advanced countries.

Subjective well-being was typified by feelings of autonomy and being in control, by a sense of purpose, and by an absence of negative emotions such as pessimism. In term of race, those who had experienced discrimination reported lower levels of life satisfaction than did those who had experienced no discrimination.

Self-acceptance includes making positive evaluations about oneself and ones life. Environmental mastery refers to the ability to deal effectively with challenges and problems. Autonomy implies a strong sense of selfdetermination.

A study of adolescents in China found no significant effects on happiness of participation in online social interactions. In Italy, an increase in subjective well-being and a greater feeling of closeness to their own social group and to society in general after forming social relationships through the Internet.

Life satisfaction was enhanced when the goals people set for themselves were concerned with personal growth and with community contributions. People rated high in life satisfaction were found to be intensely committed to achieving their goals and believed they were making progress toward those ends.

The pleasant life consists of a great deal of positive emotion such as job satisfaction, contentment, serenity, and optimism.

The engaged life consists of engagement, involvement, commitment, and absorption in work.

The meaningful life involves using ones talents, abilities, and strengths to belong to, serve, or commit completely to some enterprise larger than the self. This could be religion, organization, political party, ideal, or anything else that transcends the self.