Who is in control?

What shapes your future; is it you or is it the world around you? Does random chance or the actions of powerful others decide the outcome of your life? Are we controlled by fate or can we make our own choices and select our own path?

Most people will believe that their future is shaped by a mix of their own actions and the actions of those around them mixed with chance, but within populations there can be surprising variations in attitudes about who is in control and who is responsible for our futures. Psychologists call this ‘Locus of Control’ and talk about people having an Internal or External Locus Of Control.

Back when I trained as a teacher, they didn’t teach us ideas like ‘locus of control’ but on hearing of this concept from a Clinical Psychologist after several years in teaching, ‘locus of control’ made a lot of sense in explaining the behaviour of both pupils and adults.

Internal Locus of Control

People with an internal locus of control believe that their success in exams or life is down to their own ability and their own effort. When things go wrong, they recognize the need to change their actions. Sometimes they can blame themselves too much, but generally they tend to be successful and content.

External Locus of Control

People with an external locus of control believe that their success in exams, or life, is down to their luck or to the actions of ‘powerful others’ such as their teacher or their boss, or perhaps even their god. When things go wrong, they might decide that they are not clever or blame their teacher, the school or their boss for their lack of success. Sometimes they can be content with their allotted ‘fate’ but sometimes they can be angry that society has failed them.

Most people are not 100% Internal Locus of Control, or 100% External, but lie somewhere in between; their experience in life will have shaped their point of view. For example, if you regularly experience success in school, you are more likely to believe in your own ability to control your future. By contrast, if you regularly do badly in school you may avoid the pain of trying and ‘failing’ by giving up and accepting that you have limited ability, and so move closer to being ‘External Locus of Control’. A teacher who pushes you to keep trying may become a target for your anger – it is their fault that you keep experiencing failure.

In N. Ireland we actually have a selection exam at the age of 11 which is used by grammar schools to select the children that they want as pupils. It is not surprising that some pupils interpret their rejection by this system as a sign that they should ease back on their effort or give up in school. Certainly, in my last school we spent much of Year 8 persuading pupils (especially boys) that they were not failures and could still succeed. As an ICT teacher I would always point out to my Y8 pupils that each one of them was smarter than the computers we were using, but that some humans just take more time to get results.

I used to try to counter this by telling a story in class, or as part of a school assembly, about a friend’s experience of being taken rock climbing by his teacher, back in the 1970s when safety rules were more relaxed. The teacher stayed at top of the rock face holding the rope secured to each boy in turn as they climbed. As he got half way up my friend Philip decided to let go of the rocks and swing out, relying on the teacher to hold him. Philip knew this would upset the teacher but felt it was funny until the panicked tone of the teacher made him realise that the teacher was in danger of letting him fall. The learning point being that if the pupil ever stops trying, the teacher might be powerless to prevent disaster.

Political Effects of an External Locus of Control

A population that tends towards an External Locus of Control is easier for populist parties to exploit. The political leaders cast themselves in the role of powerful others – especially gifted and heroic leaders who can lead the people from disaster and protect them from those forces (or immigrants) that threaten to bring disaster.

Think of how Donald Trump deliberate plays at being a religious figure with people laying hands on him and praying over him as though he was the messiah, come to lead America from the Darkness of Liberalism into the Evangelical Light. He does not blame Americans for any of their social problems, he does not ask them to change, but offers them the chance to blame the hordes of migrants that sweep across the USA border. Note how someone with an external locus of control is almost primed to support such a figure.

Back during the horror of our Troubles many of us felt that we were helpless victims of history. Depending on our background, everything was the fault of the British government and the legacy of partition, or the fault of republican terrorists and the Irish government for undermining our little country. We were in a situation not of our own making, and expected powerful outsiders, the British government, the Irish government or the EU and USA to step in and solve everything.

For some of us within the unionist community the messianic figure of Ian Paisley Snr was our early prototype of Donald Trump. Those days are gone but other messiahs are waiting.

So much is wrong with N. Ireland – look at our Health Service. We receive £15,371 per person to fund our Health Service, compared to only £12,625 per person for England but our waiting times and outcomes are far worse. Listening to our politicians, you get the inaccurate impression that the problem lies outside N. Ireland, rather than with our reluctance to make difficult choices.

You won’t win votes as a politician by pointing out that we have too many hospitals and that providing a better, but slightly more distant service is the answer. It is much easier to keep complaining and offer no solution.

Populist parties like Trump’s Maga, or Farage’s Reform benefit from an external locus of control, they blame outsiders for their problems. In the USA it is immigrants from Mexico and Columbia, in the UK it is the boat people and increasingly in Ireland we are targeting immigrants in Ballymena, Moygashel or Coolock in Dublin. An external locus of control leads us to expect no change from our own community but to blame outsiders for our problems.

I fear this danger will grow unless we take responsibility for our own futures and accept that we need the courage to make changes within our own communities to help this place function better.