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effect of the general I-E locus of control conviction on remembering and planning one's life: Individual differences in life event reports of Georgian respondents, The
Social Behavior and Personality, 2000 by Hentschel, Uwe, Sumbadze, Nana, Shubladze, Sophia
The question of how life events are evaluated, is of course, directly dependent on the kind of life event, i.e. in the approach adopted by the authors, the choice of the event reported for the past as well as for the future. With the Life Line technique the selection is always based on a subjectively - attributed importance. The method of eliciting future life events did not permit a differentiation in concrete expectancies, steered by personal past experiences, and free fantasies (Oettingen, 1997) for a comparison between internals and externals. Emigration listed on the Life Line as a future life event could, for example, either be loosely connected with the idea of better living circumstances in another country, or be implemented in goal-directed behavior with concretely planned actions.
In the study by Kilman et al. (1978) externals showed a more difficult adjustment to life events in the 2-year memory period covered. Sarason, Johnson and Siegel (1978) report a positive correlation between a negative life change score and external locus of control, with a plausible interpretation of life change as the independent variable and locus of control as the dependent one. In the study of Lefcourt, Miller, Ware and Sherk (1981) besides separate influences of negative life events and externality (measured by Rotter's I-E scale) on mood disturbance, a significant interaction between these variables could be shown as well. Externality measured by other I-E scales revealed more mood disturbance for externals, irrespective of the life events experienced. It is difficult to compare these results directly with those obtained by the authors. In this study the reported life events clearly have the role of a dependent variable. Subjects were free to list whatever events they wanted, and consequently the focus is mainly on the relation of I-E to the kind of events reported. No conclusions, therefore, can be drawn about the adjustment competency of the two groups. The difference in pleasantness evaluation for the future events seems to reflect a greater tendency of the externals to be upset about events expected to happen. For past events, no difference in the pleasantness rating was found.
Regarding the expected length of life, there was no difference between externals and internals. The resulting means for males and females point in the direction of a realistic judgment (the actual life expectancy in Georgia is 76 years for women and 69 years for men (United Nations Development Program, 1997]), although obviously the sex variable can not explain the given differences sufficiently.
The explorative part of this study concerns the multivariate relationship of locus of control and sex, as well as the contents and the targets of the reported events. The past and future show, to some extent, a different picture. Similarities between the results of the two analyses are in regard to education-related events and events targeted to self and others, with higher scores for internals in the past and in the future. Similarities exist also with regard to higher scores for major events -the great majority of which are normative- and self-relatedness for the externals.
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