Human Growth and Development / Unit 12 HGD 1689 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Explanatory Style and Locus of Control
The idea
Attributional style, the course's third look at how people explain events, has two influential forms. Rotter's locus of control describes whether people see outcomes as caused by their own actions, an internal locus, or by luck, fate or others, an external locus. Explanatory style, from Peterson and Seligman, is the habitual way a person explains bad events. A pessimistic explanatory style explains them as internal, "it's me"; stable, "it will last"; and global, "it affects everything." Learned helplessness, the belief that one has no control over outcomes, was reformulated around this attributional style.
In practice
Two graduates rejected for the same job: one thinking "I'm unemployable, and I'll never get anything," the other "that interview went badly, and the next will be different."
Where people slip
In a thirty-five-year longitudinal study of Harvard graduates, a pessimistic explanatory style at twenty-five predicted poorer physical health from forty-five to sixty, even with earlier health controlled. Young adults in "bad" jobs, low in pay, training and accomplishment, may develop learned helplessness, while an internal locus of control goes with problem-focused coping, self-esteem and life satisfaction.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it · Sources for Human Growth and Development