Links between students lokus of control and causal attribution

Straipsnyje išsamiai aptariamos kontrolės lokuso ir kauzalinės atribucijos sampratos ir charakteristikos bei pristatomas tyrimas, kuriuo siekta nustatyti studentų kontrolės lokuso ir kauzalinės atribucijos sąsajas. Tyrime dalyvavo 120 Klaipėdos universiteto studentų (60 moterų ir 60 vyrų) nuo 19 iki 22 m. amžiaus. Rezultatų analizė atskleidė, kad daugumai tiriamųjų būdingas internališkumas ir optimistinis aiškinamasis stilius. Nustatyta, kad studentų internališkumas ir optimistinio įvykių aiškinimo stilius yra glaudžiai susiję. Internališkos asmenybės įvykius linkusios aiškinti, interpretuoti, nagrinėti optimistiniu aiškinamuoju stiliumi, labiau pasitiki savimi, yra teigiamai nusiteikusios. Moterys (studentės) yra internališkesnėss nei vyrai (studentai), jos taip pat dažniau nei vyrai įvykius linkusios interpretuoti optimistiniu aiškinamuoju stiliumi.What determines human actions and that wath happens to them or orher people: persons internal qualities or external independent factors? One way to help to answerthese questions is to analize the locus of control. The definition of the locus of control and the theoretical basis originated from the social learning theory J. B. Rotter. J. B. Rotter's attention was attracted the different ways how people perceive reinforcement. Some people think thak the reinfocement is determined by their own behaviours and qualities (intemality) others think thet the reinforciment is controlled externally by independet forces (externality). Respectively people might be divided into two groups of internals and ezternals. And in what way we perceive and exlain other peoples aceions, self - perception might be answered by theresearch of causal attribution. The theory of attribution explains how people create causal attriburion, how do they answer the questions beginning with words „why", „for whwt reason". The first definition of attribution was presented by F. Heider. It was analyzed how people interpret their own and other peoples successes and failures. Many conducted studies showed that people tend to atribute their successs to personal, internal disposition and reversely, they tend to atribute their failures to external circumstantial sauses. Aim of the research - to evaluate links between the locus of control and causal attribution. Research participants: 120 students from Klaipėda University took part in the study (60 male and 60 female). The age range was form 19 to 22 years. All the participant were provises with identical conditions, each one of them was examined separately. Two methods were used in this research: 1. Externality-Internality Scale. With the help of this scale we will netermine personal qualities, i.e. i fone is an internal or external personality. The theoretical interpretation of these personalities andthe research technique was presented by J. B. Rotter. A lot of versions of this technique exist. We shall use one of them, i.e. the technique fos determination of externality - intemality prepared by A. Bagdonas and L. Pociūtė. 2. ASQ-L questionnaire. With the help of this questionnaire weshall netermine which is the dominant explanatory style (optimistic - pesimistic), used by the research participants to interpret the most of the happening actions ASQ questionnaire was created by M. Seligman. ASQ questionnaire was translated into Lithuanian and named ASQ-L questionnaire. Data processing: the research data were processed with software packet STATISTICA. Findings 1. It was found, that there is links between students locus of control and causal atribution (event explanatory style). 2. Links between the externality - internality continuum and causal attribution was identified. I.e. the dependence between internality and optimistic explanatory style and between externality and pessimistic explanatory style. 3. Significant differences were found between the sex groups and the externality - internality continum, i.e. females are more intenal personalities that males. 4. Significant differences were found between sex groups and event explanatory styles, i.e. females tend to interpret the pestions in potimistic explanatory style and males in pesimistic explanatory style