- I was really on today! I was seeing the targets really well!
- I was feeling lazy today, just could not get it together until the end.
- No one was able to hit those targets on stations 2 and 13 today!
- The sun was in my eyes on the back side of the course.
- I did my best, but the other shooters were shooting out of their minds today!
We have all heard comments such as these after a match. We may have uttered them ourselves.
So, what is this “locus of control”?
To refresh my memory, I dug out one of my favorite textbooks – “Sport Psychology from Theory to Practice” by Mark H. Anshel. This is one of my favorite sport psychology books due to its comprehensive nature and excellent explanations. Locus of control (LOC) was popularized by Rotter all the way back in 1966 in which he defined LOC as a personality trait or disposition defining how much responsibility an athlete takes for their own performance and how much they perceive their performance to be under their own control. Later work by Weiner and his associates in the 1970’s related internal LOC to ability and effort and external LOC into task difficulty and luck.
So which style are you and what does this all mean to us recreational athletes? Is one style better than the other? Can we switch from one to the other? Let’s start by looking at the characteristics of “internals” vs “externals”? Mark Anshel provided a handy chart listing out the typical characteristics from which I picked out some of the main ones:
Internals:
Perceive positive and negative events as a consequence of their own actions
Feel they can regulate and be held responsible for most events in their lives
Are markedly affected by environmental factors such as external feedback or performance outcomes
Are very concerned about performance outcome
Tend to set high performance goals
Have higher self-confidence and self esteem
Persist longer at tasks
React more adversely to continued failure
More common in males and older adults
Externals:
Do not connect the events in their lives with their own actions.
Feel that events are beyond their control
Are not affected as much by external feedback or outcomes (often explained away as being caused by luck or other external factors)
Set relatively less-challenging goals
Are relatively impervious to outside criticism
Have lower persistence
Tend to be less upset by failure
More common in females (especially non-athletes) and younger age groups
So, which is better? Well, that is not easy to answer! One might think that being an “internal” is great – but “internals” tend to be a little more anxious about their performance since they feel responsible for the outcomes! That can be a heavy load to carry! In fact, continued perceived poor performance is one reason many youth and recreational athletes give up on an activity.
So, “externals” may not feel the same pressure as “internal” – in fact, many elite level athletes tend towards being “externals” since they can shrug off any bad performance chalking it up to external forces such as bad calls, a hot opponent, etc knowing that their skill will carry them through the next time.
Doing so is an ego-protecting strategy. However, at the recreational level, rationalizing away performance issues may result in over-looking a skill deficit that may need some work to correct! All those left to right crossers you have been missing might benefit from a few boxes of shells on a practice stand or some time with a coach, rather than explaining those misses away as being caused by poor lighting or some other external factor!
You may want to take a page from many coaches and try to use internal attributions to recognize good performance, and use a balance of internal and external attributions when performance is lacking to provide a bit of ego protection while at the same time, not masking areas that need improvement! So, the next time you shoot in competition, pay attention to your thoughts and words after the event! Which attributions are you using. Is it working for you?
Anshel, M. H. (2012). Sport psychology: From theory to practice. Pearson.