Influence of locus of control on interpersonal attraction and affective reactions in situations involving reward and punishment.
Ninety-six subjects with either high or low I-E Scale scores participated in individual discussions with an experimental who either (a) rewarded and then punished, (b) punished and then rewarded, or (c) gave no evaluative feedback after the subject's responses. Because previous research has suggested that internally controlled subjects attend primarily to rewards while externally controlled subjects attend primarily to punishments, it was hypothesized (a) that the internally controlled subjects, as compared to externally controlled subjects, would be more attracted to the experimenter in the conditions involving rewards and punishments regardless of the sequencing and (b) that the reverse would be true in the nonevaluative control condition. The prediction was consistently supported and subjects' feelings of anger and anxiety during the discussions generally complemented the attention and attraction hypotheses. The results indicate that individual differences influence attraction in situations involving rewards and punishments and they offer a prescription for developing interpersonal attraction and minimizing anger: Offer rewards to internally controlled persons and remain neutral with externally controlled persons.
D000339:Affect; D000786:Anger; D001007:Anxiety; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D010551:Personality; D011678:Punishment; D012201:Reward; D012649:Self Concept; D012938:Social Perception