External Locus Of Control And Adolescence Essay

Adolescence is a sensitive period with many transitions experienced by teens. This is the time of immense changes in physical, social, and emotional development. Research suggests that adolescents are very influential of their environment. They are constantly trying to fit in with certain groups, while searching for their identities. These processes influence their behavior, both external and internal, as they tend to form some schemas based on their experiences with their immediate environment.

Thus, many factors exert influence on an individual during adolescence. Among all, these influences may be psychological or physical in nature. Influence of (and influence on) perceptions of an adolescent play a crucial role in an individual’s development.

For example, studies have indicated that people experiences perceived decrease in control share assumptions of disinterest, disapproval, or threat from others (Greeno, Jackson, Williams and Fortmann, 1977). Other correlation of decreased perceived control includes depression, anxiety and hostility (Rezek and Leary, 1991). The idea of external locus of control can be related to the health behaviors (King, 1989; Roth and Armstrong, 1990). Other studies exhibit high correlations between externality and depression, introversion, neuroticism, emotional liability, suspiciousness, insecurity, undisciplined self-conflict, and tensions (Hood et.al, 1982; King, 1989). Thus, understanding an adolescent’s health locus of control might help in understanding many connected behavioral aspects of adolescents.

Peers play a crucial role in a person’s life, especially during adolescence. It is a time where the focus of an individual shifts primarily to being a part of a certain group; to have the feeling of belonging, of being accepted. In order to be or to continue to be a part of some group, the individual tends to follow its norms, values, beliefs, etcetera. This adaptation of values is not always by personal intellectual choice, but most of the times, it is due to the pressure exerted by peers on the individual to adapt to its culture in order to be a part of

Beck said that there are certain types of maladaptive or negative thoughts that are present in depression. These negative thoughts, he said, are primarily for three categories: the self, the world, and the future. These three categories thus form the cognitive triad. According to Beck, the negative thoughts concerning the three dimensions of life gradually form the thought process as such that they affect the perception of everyday stimuli in respect to the schemas formed by the negative thought processes. In turn, these negative schemas, once formed, guide the concepts about the self, the world, and the future. Thus, cognitive triad is the permanent result of the negative schemas formed in the beginning that later becomes the basis of cognitive triad. In other words, people tend to form a systematic negative bias in their thinking, in relation to the self, the world, or the