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Locus of control - Psychology

Social influence evaluation point. I don't understand this point, please explain.

I'll try and go really basic!

Locus of control is basically your perception of control over your actions. So an INTERNAL locus of control are individuals who believe they ARE responsible for their own actions whereas an EXTERNAL are individuals who believe that there behaviour is out of their control i.e. their behaviour is a result of luck.

Normative influence is where an individual conforms (adopts the beliefs) with the majority in order to FIT in- individuals don't want to be rejected etc so might smoke in order to stay friends with the "popular" kids.

Informational influence is where an individual conforms with the majority in order to be RIGHT- think about if you want to decide which city in the UK was the most fun, there isn't any statistics to test so you have to rely on the information given by others and if you believe this is correct then you adopt the belief as evidence for reality.

Correlation is a relationship or link.

So now we have covered the terminology let's look at the point...

1) Spector is measuring locus of control (perception of control over your own actions) and the likelihood of students being effected by normative (conform to fit in) and informational influence (conform to be right).
2) Spector found a link between locus of control and likelihood of students being effected by normative social influence.
3) He found individuals with an external locus of control (believe they don't control their behaviour) are more likely to be effected by normative influence (desire to fit in)
baso: individuals who believe they DON'T determine their actions are more likely to be effected by normative influence- they belief they don't control their own actions- so obvs they would be more influenced than those with an internal locus of control.
4) Spector found no link between information social influence and locus of control- so it doesn't matter if you have an external or internal locus of control you will be effected by informational social influence equally.
5) So overall- external will conform more (they belief they don't have control over their actions- so why the heck would they not!) than internals in situations of normative influence (influence to fit in)- but there is NO difference between external and internal locus of control when informational influence is around (influence to be right)

Hope this helps :smile: