Social Agents and the Development of Locus of Control in Young Children

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Abstract
The purpose was to investigate the development of preschoolers' locus of control (LOC) in relation to social agents, parental LOC, achievement motivation, and LOC dimensions. Children (N = 65) responded to the Stephens-Delys Reinforcement Contingency Interview; teachers rated children on achievement-related behavior while parents completed the Adult Nowicki-Strickland Internal-External Scale. Children's perceptions of control over all social agents except themselves were highly correlated. Children perceived the most control over social interactions involving teachers, mothers and fathers, and significantly less control over peers and themselves. No correlations were found between children's and parent's LOC nor between children's LOC and teachers' ratings of achievement. Results suggest that LOC may not be acquired through modeling but rather through contingent reinforcement. Since achievement ratings primarily reflected the child's interactions with object-related tasks and since LOC measures involved mostly the child's interactions with social tasks, children's perceptions of control over both social and object tasks may not be related.