If students either attribute their successes or failures
to having a bad day, unfair grading procedures on their
teacher's part, or even God's will, they can be said to
have a more external locus of control. These students
might say, "It doesn't matter how hard I study. The
teacher just doesn't like me, so I know I won't get a good
grade." These students generally don't learn from
previous experience. Since they attribute both their successes and failures to luck or chance, they tend to
lack persistence and not have very high levels of
expectation. [3].Locus of control is grounded in expectancy-value
theory, which describes human behavior as determined
by the perceived likelihood of an event or outcome
occurring contingent upon the behavior in question, and
the value placed on that event or outcome. More
specifically, expectancy-value theory states that if (a)
someone values a particular outcome and (b) that person
believes that taking a particular action will produce that
outcome, then (c) they are more likely to take that
particular action.
Julian Rotter's [3] locus of control formulation
classified generalized beliefs concerning who or what
influences thing along a bipolar dimension from internal
to external control: "Internal control" is the term used to
describe the belief that control for future outcomes
resides primarily in oneself while "external control"
refers to the expectancy that control is outside of
oneself, either in the hands of powerful other people or
due to fate/chance. Locus of control:refers to how much
one feels in control of his or her environment that is the
extant to which he or she believes that his of her
behavior influences outcomes [4].