Rotter test: know your character and responsibility

Rotter’s scale and responsibility: Are you in control?

Do you master your life and surf any wave? Or do you always seem to sink because of bad luck? With the Rotter’s scale and responsibility test, you can know your character better and understand how you face life’s challenges.

The usual answer would be “it depends”, admitting that we are not in control of everything that happens and are not blindly tossed around by fate. Using the Rotter’s scale and responsibility framework helps us find the balance between these two extremes.

Responsibility comes from the Latin verb respondeo, to respond. It means to give an answer for what one does. For this, it is necessary to recognize that we have a task or mission and someone to whom to give that answer.

Not everything is good or bad luck

Whoever thinks that everything that happens to him is due to good or bad luck, will not strive to achieve a result. Nor will he think that someone is waiting for an answer, because everything moves by a blind and deaf chance.

At the other extreme, he who thinks that he and he alone is the author of his destiny, will not find anyone to whom he should give an answer. One could speak of a hyper-responsibility or an egocentric responsibility.

TAKE THE TEST (5 minutes)

Rotter personality test: Internalists and Externalists

The result is presented on a scale from 1 to 23, from internalism to externalism. Distinction depends on where we consider the “control” of what happens to be: in us or outside of us.

Both extremes of Rotter’s scale are detrimental, but the range of normality and health is shifted toward the internalist pole, with a value between 4 and 11.

Internalism and externalism mark your mindset

Why do you put up with everything that happens or why do you rebel?
Why do you think that you are to blame or why do you hold others responsible?
If something goes well, to whom do you attribute the credit?

The answer is partly conditioned by the inherited temperament.

The Locus of Control and its influence on health

Two different personality characteristics are determined: internal or external (Rotter speaks of Locus of Control).

Internalist Locus

Externalist Locus

Evolution and change in the Locus of Control

Modifications are possible when circumstances change. For example, after a divorce, one may become more externalist. However, the locus of control shifts towards the internal as one becomes more aware that responsibility facilitates success.