Locus of Control and the Denial of Anxiety

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Abstract
Houston (1972) noted, although internal and external locus of control subjects reported the same amount of anxiety in stressful skill and chance situations, internal subjects actually manifested more physiological arousal. He interpreted this finding as evidence for the use of denial among internal subjects. We argue that methodological problems preclude this conclusion, and a modification of Houston's experiment was designed to test the idea that internal subjects do not interpret their arousal as anxiety because their arousal facilitates performance, while defensive external subjects interpret their arousal as anxiety because it hinders performance. Results did not confirm Houston's (1972) findings of significant differences in heart rate between internal and external subjects (30 men and 30 women) under stress. Although internal subjects performed significantly better than defensive external subjects in the non-stressful skill condition, the hypothesized relationships between facilitating anxiety, debilitating anxiety, physiological arousal, and performance on a skillful task did not hold.

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