Talk:Locus of control
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[edit] There is still a lot of work to do
I say that there is still a lot of work to do on this before it really fits into Wikipedia. I beg that people who edit this article will at least have read references, such as Lefcourt's (1966) paper in Psychological Bulletin, the Rotter paper referred to below or Lefcourt, H. (1976). Locus of Control Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, or the more recent book on attributional style edited by Buchanan and Seligman. I hope to write out these references in full in the very near future. ACEOREVIVED 20:26, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
I am in the process of adding some reference, and beg that those who wish to edit this site wait until they have read at least some of these. ACEOREVIVED 19:37, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Wasn't locus of control developed in the 60s instead of the 50s? The first publication being:
Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80, whole issue.
Actually, this was NOT, contrary to popular misconceptions, the first reference. I shall be adding to this rather third-rate article.
[edit] WARNING
It is articles such as this (in its current form) that give Wikipedia a bad name. I teach psychology at a university in the United Kingdom (I shall not reveal which one)and have three degrees in the subject. This article is one which I would NOT want my students to use in its current form, it is so limited. I shall be tidying up this article to make it more accurate, and eventually adding reference to Kenneth Wallston's work on locus of control in the health domain. ACEOREVIVED 20:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Cleanup needed
The article is grammatically poor (the plural of locus is loci), incorrectly uses terminology (says that people *are* internal/external loci, when instead it should be that they *have* internal/external loci), doesn't cite it's sources (source that women tend to have external loci more than men?), and needs major paragraph reformatting. Tarayani 02:47, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Certainly needed attention
I was relieved that this had been put in the "articles needing attention from psychology experts" category, and I have removed the innacurate stuff about attribution theory (such as the nonsense saying that this, developed by Heider, was developed by Rotter). I have replaced it with material on attributional style, and may enlarge this section and tidy up this entire rather weak article when I have more time. ACEOREVIVED 20:51, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
- I agree it needs attention; it was attrocious. I try to get to them when I have time. I am glad to see someone taking an interest in improving these. --DanielCD 23:40, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Thank you DanielCD, I have added a bit tonight (February 25 2007). My main plea is that those who work on this will have read at least some of the references that now appear at the end of the paper. A good paper for people to read is Furnham, A. & Steele, H. (1993). Measures of locus of control: A critique of children's, health and work-related questionnaires which appeared in British Journal of Psychology, 84, 443-479.ACEOREVIVED 20:44, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] I hope readers will notice improvements
I hope that people notice improvements, given that I have now worked quite hard editing this article, putting in more information about scales to measure locus of control, history of the concept and applications of locus of control theory. I still feel, however, that the section on health locus of control could be expanded. I wonder whether the section on attributional style should go in a separate article? ACEOREVIVED 20:11, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
- I think the attributional style material fits well here for now, unless you have a lot of additional material you would like to use to make another article.
- I did some copyediting. Some of the sentences run-on a bit, but I figured you were still in process with your editing so I left most of them alone. If you would like, check my edits to make sure I didn't change anything essential. --DanielCD 19:24, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Empirical section on health locus needed
I think that this article could benefit from attention from a health psychologist, who might be able to cite some empirical data in relation to whether internal health locus correlates positively with favourable health outcomes. Also, I shall appreciate any one who could give any further advice on the familial origins of locus of control, providing more up-to-data than that cited in this article. ACEOREVIVED 21:45, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
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- This would be OR. The views of experts on this topic can be from from their published work, both popular and scientific. They might instead want to come here to suggest additional sources, as the article seems to say that there is no dissenting opionion--or at least so I gather from the uniform POV. .DGG 01:25, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] What work is now needed to remove the tags?
Having edited this article quite extensively, I think it might sound pretentious if I were to suggest that it can now be removed from the category "Pages needing expert attention from Psychology experts" and also lose the "clean-up" tag. Indeed, I still think that the section on applications needs more depth and detail, and that there needs to be a wider indication of more up-to-date literature on familial origins of locus of control orientations. Then again, the section on characteristics of internals and externals, which appear near the end of the article, could do with more source citation, and it would be good if this article could have something of a conclusion. So, my recommendation would be that we work on these goals before these tags are removed. What do others think? ACEOREVIVED 19:51, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Recent Vandalism?
Apparently a disgruntly college student was displeased by the information in the beginning of the wiki. They added many citation needed references, which is completely out-of-line considering that it was used for every sentence. This extremely strict use of the citation needed reference does not appear anywhere else in the article.
This is what the article appeared as before I had fixed it:
As an example, college students with strong internal locus of control believe that their grades are determined by their abilities and efforts.[citation needed] These students believe, "The more I study, the better grades I get."[citation needed] They change their study strategies as they discover their deficiencies.[citation needed] They raise their expectations if they succeed, and they worry when they think they have no control over their assignments.[citation needed]
In contrast, college students with strong external locus of control believe that their grades are the result of good or bad luck, and hence, are less likely to work hard for high grades.[citation needed] This has obvious implications for differences between internals and externals in terms of achievement motivation.[citation needed] Due to their locating control outside themselves, they tend to feel they have less control over their fate.[citation needed] People with an external locus of control tend to be more stressed and prone to depression.[citation needed]
If this person wishes to improve the article they need to provide references instead of spamming it. I have fixed the vandalism. Megapaw 03:40, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Intro
I think the intro should be toned down a bit as far as techinical language. It needs to be (I hate to say 'dumbed down') but it needs to be more simple and definitional. It doesn't seem to really give a solid definition, and as you read you go into the article still a bit confused. I'll try to look at it as I have time, but I'm no expert either. I think this is a rather simple concept and the article might be improved with simpler language and shorter sentences. --DanielCD 22:41, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
I changed the intro a bit, moving the historical material below the definitional. I also changed the word 'theory' to 'concept', as I think it's more appropriate. Feel free to change it back if anyone disagrees. --DanielCD 22:44, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
- Since 1970, Rotter's assumption of unidimensionality has been challenged, with Levenson, for example, arguing that different dimensions of locus of control, such as belief that events in one's life are self-determined, are organized by powerful others and are due chance-based, must be separated. Weiner's early work in the 1970s, suggested that, more-or-less orthogonal to the internality-externality dimension, we should also consider differences between those who attribute (life events?) to stable causes, and those who attribute to unstable causes.
- This is a bit confusing. I bold typed some parts. Many are not going to know what 'orthogonal' means, and I am wondering if the 'life events' is correct (I didn't add it), but it needs some kind of clarification. I could probably figure out the 'must be separated', but I'd probably need to diagram the sentence first.
- I'm just hoping these suggestions can help improve this piece. --DanielCD 22:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Importance rating
I was just wondering where this article should stand in the "importance ratings" that append some psychology articles. Could I propose mid-range? Unlike, for example, intelligence, it is not a wide enough concept to go in the category of Top-intelligence articles, and unlike schizophrenia, may not quite make it to high-importance, but I do think that locus of control is an important enough topic in personality psychology to make it to mid-range importance. ACEOREVIVED 18:49, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
