Internal-External Locus of Control and Word Association

Abstract

Internal-external (I-E) locus of control responses and patterns of word association responses were examined among Japanese and American students. Except for research conducted in Japan, use of word associations to augment I-E studies has not been reported previously. Word associations were used to assess the phenomenological dimension of the experiential locus. This was conceived as the culture-based linguistic tendency of individuals to represent experiences to themselves in terms of internally or externally referent descriptors. Japanese students gave significantly more external referent word association responses and scored significantly more external on the Rotter I-E scale. Several earlier studies have focused on conceptual subdimensions of the I-E scale (e.g., luck versus fate, powerful others, and the like) in order to facilitate interpretation of culturally different I-E response patterns. The present research, rather than addressing such conceptual subdimensions, sought to place culturally different I-E responses in context by examining superordinate or background cultural-linguistic characteristics via word associations.