Psychology I / Humanistic and Social-Cognitive Views
Practice question · Multiple choice

An internal locus of control is generally associated with better coping. Why can it become a liability in a genuinely uncontrollable situation?

Hints
  1. Ask what an internal attributor concludes after a redundancy caused by a market collapse.
  2. The trait is usually adaptive because most outcomes are partly controllable. What if this one is not?
Show the answer

B. Because owning outcomes you could not change makes luck into failure

Why

Owning outcomes is protective while outcomes are partly yours to own. Applied to a bereavement or a market collapse it becomes self-blame, which is precisely the attributional style implicated in depression, so the healthy pattern is calibration rather than a maximised internal score.

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