Chapter 18 Rotter and Mischel: Cognitive Social Learning Theory 541Internal and External Control of Reinforcement
At the core of Rotter’s social learning theory is the notion that reinforcement does
not automatically stamp in behaviors but that people have the ability to see a causal
connection between their own behavior and the occurrence of the reinforcer (Rotter,
1954; Rotter & Hochreich, 1975). People strive to reach their goals because they
have a generalized expectancy that such strivings will be successful.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Rotter became intrigued by the observa-
tion that many people did not increase their feelings of personal control after
experiencing success and that others did not lower their expectancies after repeated
failure (Rotter, 1990, 1993; Zuroff & Rotter, 1985). In other words, some people
tended to explain away successful outcomes as being due to luck or chance,
whereas others retained a high sense of personal control even after several nonre-
inforced behaviors. These tendencies seemed to be especially true in situations that
people regarded as ambiguous or novel (Rotter, 1992) or when people were not
clear whether the outcome of their behavior was due to their skill or to chance.
Rotter (1990) suggested that both the situation and the person contribute to feelings
of personal control. Thus, a person with a generalized expectancy for success in
one situation may have low feelings of personal control in another situation.
To assess internal and external control of reinforcement, or locus of control,
Rotter (1966) developed the Internal-External Control Scale, basing it on the doc-
toral dissertations of two of his students, E. Jerry Phares (1955) and William H.
James (1957). The I-E Scale consists of 29 forced-choice items, 23 pairs of which
are scored and 6 of which are filler statements designed to disguise the purpose of
the scale. The scale is scored in the direction of external control so that 23 is the
highest possible external score and 0 is the highest possible internal score. Table 18.1
shows several sample items from the I-E Scale. People must select either alterna-
tive “a” or alternative “b” from each pair of items. Although the internal or exter-
nal direction of these items may seem obvious, Rotter (1990) reported that scores
have only a modest correlation with a social desirability scale.
The I-E Scale attempts to measure the degree to which people perceive a causal
relationship between their own efforts and environmental consequences. People who
score high on internal control generally believe that the source of control resides within
themselves and that they exercise a high level of personal control in most situations.
People who score high on external control generally believe that their life is largely
controlled by forces outside themselves, such as chance, destiny, or the behavior of
other people (see Table 18.2). At the beginning of this chapter, we asked you to check
either “a” or “b” for six items that might assess internal or external locus of control.
Marking “b” for all times except Number 2 might indicate internal locus of control.
However, as Rotter (1975, 1990) pointed out, too much internal control is not always
socially desirable. For example, Item 2 of the chapter opener taps into a person’s
generalized expectancy for omnipotence, hardly a socially desirable attitude.
Rotter’s Internal-External Control Scale has become one of the most thoroughly
investigated topics in psychology as well as in other social sciences, having sparked
several thousand publications since its inception. Despite this popularity, the concepts
of internal and external control are not always clearly understood. Although Rotter
(1975) pointed out several common misconceptions concerning internal and external