locus of control
Personal agency perception
Locus of control is a psychological concept describing where people believe control over their lives originates.
Those with an internal locus of control feel their actions shape outcomes: She attributed her success to hard work.
Those with an external locus believe outside forces—luck, fate, powerful others—determine what happens: He blamed the economy for his failures.
The term appears frequently in discussions of motivation, resilience, and personal responsibility.
- agencyPower to act
- taking chargeAssuming leadership or control
- willpowerMental strength resisting impulse
- roll of the diceRandom chance outcome
- blameAssign responsibility for wrongdoing
playing the victim · responsibility · choice · attribution · mastery · victim · ownership · accountability · external · internal · influence · learned · motivation · belief · psychology · outcome
- psychologypsychology, psychologist, therapist, psychiatrist, clinical psychology
- psychology termsmotivation, habits, self-knowledge, stress, intuition
- personalitypersonality, trait, temperament, traits, character
- motivationmotivation, drive, motivate, inspire, encouragement
- personality traitsextraversion, agreeableness, introvert, neuroticism, temperament
- attributionattributed to, cited, according to, per, via
locus of controllearned helplessness
Trauma-induced belief in powerlessness
self-efficacy · personal agency · victim mentality · self-determination · self-blame
locus of controlfatalism
Doctrine of inevitable outcomes
determinism · free will · predestination · powerlessness · destiny
locus of controlrandomness
Lack of predictable pattern
chaos · meaninglessness · absurdism · nihilism · unpredictability
locus, control, local, locale, locality, localize, localized, localization, locally