Differentiation in the Source of Internal Control for Chinese.

In Rotter's social learning theory, internal locus of control was conceived to reside within the self. In the last three decades, different researchers have suggested modifications to the concept of locus of control, but no one has questioned Rotter's assertion that the source of internal control lies within the self. This paper suggests that there might be multiple sources, i.e., direct and indirect sources, of internal control for people from collectivist cultures. The direct source is the traditional one, which comes from the self. The indirect source can come from extensions of oneself, such as one's close in-group members. This indirect source had been viewed previously as the source of external control in individualist cultures. This paper presents cultural and historical background, as well as data from an empirical study, to support the hypothesis that there could be both direct and indirect sources of internal control for people in collectivist cultures. The study included 86 American college students and 180 college students from Taiwan. Data from the study supported the single-source theory for Americans and multiple-source theory for Chinese. Implications for cross-cultural differences in locus of control were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]