The locus of control is such a property of a person that determines his tendency to attribute responsibility for his activity to external forces (the so-called external locus or external) or to personal efforts and abilities (internal, internal).
Self control
A relatively perfect mechanism for regulating and evaluating cognitive processes is control. In order for the subject to be able to realize and analyze his own actions, mental processes and conditions, he uses such a mechanism as self-control. Its appearance and improvement is determined by the requirements of the collective for human behavior. Formed self-regulation helps an individual to control his behavior in various situations.
To do this, there should be a standard and the ability to receive information about controlled states and actions. In stressful situations it is an object of volitional regulation.
A person can consciously regulate his own states, motives and actions, comparing them with certain subjective ideas and norms, as a result of self-control. It is necessary so that human behavior complies with the requirements of society, therefore it is a socially mediated phenomenon inherent only in such a social being as a person.
Self-control allows you to make an informed choice of the most acceptable and permissible forms of response to circumstances that develop around it.
Locus of control
The individual himself, the society as a whole, and the social environment act as the subject of control. The reaction of a person depends on whether he feels himself the master of fate or “floats by the will of the waves”. Responsibility for control can also be attributed either to external forces, or to one’s own efforts and abilities. In any case, a person takes care of what has already happened and who is responsible for how the event ends - he or fate, an accident, i.e. all that cannot be controlled. “Locus of control” - this is the name in psychology for the personality's ability to determine the source of what controls his life — the external environment or himself. This is a stable property of an individual, which is formed in the process of personal socialization.
Your locus of control can be determined using the developed set of special techniques. This allows you to some extent evaluate personal characteristics.
Those who consider themselves to be inherent in the internal locus of control are most likely to have studied well at school, do not smoke, use seat belts in the car, use contraceptives, solve family problems on their own, strive to earn a lot of money and easily give up pleasures to achieve strategic goals.
The degree of competence and well-being depends on how a person explains his failures. Most likely, you are familiar with students who consider themselves victims. They always blame their failure in learning on things that are not dependent on their control - for example, on their own intelligence, “bad” teachers, tests and worthless textbooks. This is the external locus of control.
Successful people are very likely to evaluate failure as an accident, believe that they need a new approach to solving the problem. Insurance agents, whose locus of control is likely to be internal, believe that failure can be controlled, that you need to sell insurance policies as much as possible.
Externalities and internals are also distinguished by the type of interpretation of public situations, in particular, by the method of obtaining information and by the mechanism of their causal explanation. The locus of control of internals provides greater awareness of the situation and the problem, a higher responsibility than the people-externals. There are practically no “pure” externalities and internals. In any person there is a share of confidence in their own abilities, strengths and a share of dependence on circumstances.