Different demands in different situations call forth different aspects of personality. .
There are a few tests available which help in finding one's personality characteristics. The test I am going to discuss is the locus of control test. Locus of control is defined as the degree to which people believe they are masters of their own fate (Robbins, Millett, Cacioppe & Waters-Marsh, 2001). The outcome of this test divides people into two categories, internal and external locus of control, though a mixture of both can be found in some people. After performing the test (see appendix for test), my result was a score of six which according to this test defines me a person with an internal locus of control and as stated by Judge, Erez, Bono & Thoresen (2003), beliefs about the causes of events in one's life-locus is internal when individuals see events as being contingent on their own behavior. In other words, people with internal locus of control believe that they control what happens to them.
This theory of internal locus of control applies to me to a certain extent as I find my self to have a strong internal locus of control. For example, when I am not satisfied with my marks on an assignment, I believe that is because I did not put in the enough effort needed for the satisfactory marks. I believe that if I had put in enough effort, I would have got the marks that satisfy me and don't go on blaming the person who marked my assignment or a friend who forced me to go out when I am supposed to be working on my assignment. Moorhead and Griffin (1989) state that people with internal locus of control believe that what happens to them will depend on how well they control their environment. .
In comparison, Aiken (1996) states that people with external locus of control tend to think that what happens to them is a function of fate or luck and they see little or no connection between their own behaviour and subsequent events.
