ABSTRACT
An early exponent of the ‘social learning’ or behavioural approach to personality was J. B. Rotter, but his work is now best known not for his behavioural approach, but for an offshoot of his earlier work, the dimension of internal versus external control of reinforcement. Apparently he never regarded this as a personality dimension, but this is exactly how it has been used by other psychologists. The consequences of a person’s behaviour establish an expectancy that the same consequences will result from similar behaviour in the future; if different consequences occur, the expectancy will be reduced, but if similar consequences consistently follow, the expectancy will be strengthened. Several ways of measuring internal-external orientation have been developed, and the most intensively investigated is that of Rotter. Trends again differed amongst the diagnostic groups, the schizophrenics and manies becoming more external, the depressives and others becoming more internal.
