Technical Report 1182 

Locus of Control, Attribution Theory, and the “Five 

Deadly Sins” of Aviation 

 

John E. Stewart II 

U.S. Army Research Institute 

 May 2006 

 United States Army Research Institute 

for the Behavioral and Social Sciences 

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. 
U.S. Army Research Institute 

for the Behavioral and Social Sciences 

A Directorate of the Department of the Army 

Deputy Chief of Staff, G1 

Authorized and approved for distribution: 

 

 MICHELLE SAMS ZITA M. SIMUTIS 

 Technical Director Director 

Technical review by 

Richard E. Christ, U.S. Army Research Institute 

Lawrence C. Katz, U.S. Army Research Institute 

NOTICES 

DISTRIBUTION: Primary distribution of this Technical Report has been made by ARI. 

Please address correspondence concerning distribution of reports to: U.S. Army 

Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, Attn: DAPE-ARI-MS, 

2511 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, Virginia 22202-3926 

FINAL DISPOSITION: This Technical Report may be destroyed when it is no longer 

needed. Please do not return it to the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral 

and Social Sciences. 

NOTE: The findings in this Technical Report are not to be construed as an official 

Department of the Army position, unless so designated by other authorized documents. 
i 

REPORT DOCUMENTATION PAGE 

1. REPORT DATE (dd-mm-yy)

May 2006 

2. REPORT TYPE 

 Final 

3. DATES COVERED (from. . . to) 

October, 2005-April, 2006 

5a. CONTRACT OR GRANT NUMBER

 

4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE: 

 Locus of Control, Attribution Theory, and the “Five Deadly Sins” 

 of Aviation 5b. PROGRAM ELEMENT NUMBER 

622785 

5c. PROJECT NUMBER 

 A790 

6. AUTHOR(S) 

John E. Stewart II (U.S. Army Research Institute) 5d. TASK NUMBER 

 231 

5e. WORK UNIT NUMBER 

H01

7. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) 

U.S. Army Research Institute Rotary-Wing Aviation Research Unit 

ATTN: DAPE-ARI-IR (RWARU) 

Bldg 5100 

Fort Rucker, AL 36362-5354 

8. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION REPORT NUMBER 

 

10. MONITOR ACRONYM 

 ARI 

9. SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) 

U. S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral & Social 

Sciences, 2511 Jefferson Davis Highway, 

Arlington, VA 22202-3926 

 

11. MONITOR REPORT NUMBER

Technical Report 1182 

12. DISTRIBUTION/AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Approved for Public Release; distribution is unlimited. 

13. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES 

 

Subject Matter POC: John E. Stewart II 

14. ABSTRACT (Maximum 200 words): 

The construct of Locus of Control (LOC) has been shown to predict a broad range of attitudes and behaviors, including risk 

taking and risk management, the performance of multiple tasks, distractibility, and the subjective perception of time. The 

above topics and many others have applicability to aviation settings. Over the past two decades, a few researchers have 

examined the relationship between LOC and hazardous attitudes, pilot errors, and other variables relating to safety and risk 

management. Most of this work has been correlational, and, in many instances, sample size has been quite small. The 

present paper reviews this work and other areas of research, which, though not specifically tied to aviation, have potential 

relevance to it. These include concepts from attribution theory, such as the optimism bias, in which people tend to attribute 

greater competency and lesser vulnerability to themselves than to similar others. Suggested applications of established 

and existing research in applied areas of social psychology are examined, with a focus on their relevance to aviation. 

15. SUBJECT TERMS 

 Locus of Control; Sense of Personal Control; Aviation; Pilots; Hazardous Attitudes; Risk Management; 

 Perception of Risks; Decision Making.

 SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF 19. LIMITATION OF 

ABSTRACT 

20. NUMBER 

OF PAGES 

21. RESPONSIBLE PERSON 

16. REPORT 

Unclassified 

17.ABSTRACT 

Unclassified 

18. THIS PAGE 

Unclassified Unlimited 37 

Ellen Kinzer, 

Technical Publication Specialist 

703-602-8047

 

 Standard Form 298 
ii 
iii 

 Technical Report 1182 

Locus of Control, Attribution Theory, and the “Five 

Deadly Sins” of Aviation 

John E. Stewart II 

U.S. Army Research Institute 

Rotary-Wing Aviation Research Unit 

William R. Howse, Chief 

U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences 

2511 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, VA 22202-3926 

May 2006 

Army Project Number Personnel Performance and

622785A790 Training Technology

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited 
iv 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Dr. David R. Hunter, formerly of ARI, provided me with copies of his work on 

locus of control and the hazardous attitudes. He was very encouraging and supportive 

of my research interests in this area. Hats off to my two esteemed colleagues: 

Dr. Richard E. Christ and Dr. Lawrence C. Katz, for their very thorough, painstaking 

reviews of an earlier manuscript upon which this final report is based. They found 

errors, inconsistencies and non sequiturs that I would have never found by myself. 

 
v 

LOCUS OF CONTROL, ATTRIBUTION THEORY, AND THE “FIVE DEADLY SINS” OF 

AVIATION 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

Research Requirement: 

 

Locus of Control (LOC), a concept based on social learning theory, has proven 

useful in predicting a broad range of behaviors. A small number of researchers have 

examined its relevance to attitudes and behaviors in aviation settings, with an emphasis 

on the five hazardous thought patterns (HTPs) which are believed to be related to poor 

judgment among pilots. Attribution theory, based upon field theory, imputes motives 

and expectancies to actors in various situations. It has received less attention than 

LOC from aviation researchers, although accident reports often attribute attitudes and 

motives as causal or contributing factors in aviation mishaps. 

Procedure: 

A critical review and analysis of the LOC and attribution research literature was 

conducted. Other research on attitudes, beliefs, and thought processes considered 

relevant to risk taking and decision making in aviation settings, such as the HTPs, were 

also explored. Throughout the review, potential application of these social psychological 

constructs to aviation was explored. 

Findings: 

Only a handful of research projects on LOC were located which dealt specifically 

with aviators. Even fewer studies employing attribution theory were located. Attempts 

to link individual differences to behavior in aviation settings (such as the five HTPs) 

were found to have considerable conceptual overlap with LOC, and with later 

attributional concepts having to do with the sense of personal control (e.g. the optimism 

bias). This would argue cogently for further research in the area, especially longitudinal 

research, over the career cycle of pilots. 

Utilization and Dissemination of Findings: 

 The findings of the present review point to the usefulness of LOC and attribution 

theory as aids in understanding pilot performance. Future research in aviation settings 

may reveal another aspect of these constructs that has not received much attention in 

other research settings: that an extreme internal LOC and 

self-attributions of optimism may be related to overconfidence, which has been shown 

to have a negative impact on aviation safety. In fact, aviation accident reports 
vi 

frequently cite the attribution of overconfidence. An early draft of this report was 

presented to the U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center at Fort Rucker, AL in February, 

2006, for informal review and reaction. A synopsis of this research was presented at 

the 55th Human Factors Engineering Technical Advisory Group Meeting in Las Vegas, 

NV, on 17 May 2006. 
vii 

LOCUS OF CONTROL, ATTRIBUTION THEORY, AND THE “FIVE DEADLY SINS” OF 

AVIATION 

CONTENTS 

Page

INTRODUCTION.............................................................................. 1

Perceived Control (Locus of Control)................................................ 1

LOC and Expectancy Theory.......................................................... 1

LOC AND COGNITIVE PROCESSES................................................... 4

Attention and Vigilance.................................................................. 

Relationship of LOC to the Five Hazardous Attitudes........................... 

4

5

LOC AND CONFIDENCE: THE DARK SIDE OF INTERNALITY?................ 11

Overconfidence: Overestimation of Control........................................ 11

Sense of Control Trends over the Career Cycle.................................. 12

Illusion of Unique Invulnerability....................................................... 13

DISCUSSION................................................................................... 14

Critical Research Issues................................................................. 14

Limitations of the Research............................................................. 17

CONCLUSIONS.................................................................................... 18

REFERENCES.................................................................................... 21

 
1

LOCUS OF CONTROL, ATTRIBUTION THEORY, AND THE “FIVE DEADLY SINS” 

OF AVIATION

Introduction 

“Don't be a show-off. Never be too proud to turn back. There are old pilots 

and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots.” 

E. Hamilton Lee, 1949

Perceived Control (Locus of Control) 

 Extensive research over the past three decades has shown Rotter's (1966) 

construct of Locus of Control (LOC) to be predictive of a broad range of human 

behaviors, including risk taking and risk management, the management of multiple 

tasks, distractibility and time estimation. Some of these behaviors, especially risk and 

workload management, may be pertinent to aviation situations. Pilots may face 

emergency situations in which they must choose between several alternatives under 

conditions of time pressure, in which the consequence could include a possible loss of 

the aircraft or even the crew. Likewise, it would seem worthwhile to investigate the 

relationship between the perception of control and pilot confidence. There has been no 

longitudinal research showing how perceived internal locus of control covaries with flight 

hours or other measures of flight experience. Only limited research has been done 

probing the relationship between LOC, hazardous attitudes, crew errors, and 

operational aviation accidents and incidents. Most of this work has involved correlations 

of self-report data, without behavioral measures. The present paper will examine 

several areas in which LOC research can be applied to aviation problems and issues. 

LOC and Expectancy Theory 

 

 One misconception about LOC that has pervaded the literature for many years is 

the assumption that it is a personality construct. This could be due to the fact that the 

popular notion of internality-externality (I-E) is superficially similar to introversionextraversion (Jung, 1928), a personality construct with similar descriptors. Based upon 

Rotter’s social learning theory conceptualization, it may not seem fitting to characterize 

LOC as a personality orientation, but instead as a set of outcome expectancies acquired 

through experience. LOC had its origin in Rotter's (1954) social learning theory, which 

is an outgrowth of reinforcement and expectancy or field theories. Whether personality 

is primarily genetically determined (Eysenck,1967), or due primarily to habits acquired 

as a result of social learning, is a controversial topic that is beyond the scope of this 

paper. Nevertheless, the concept of personality suggests relatively enduring 

dispositions, having constancy across time and situations. Rotter’s social learning 

orientation, by contrast, conceptualizes personality as more of a situational state than a 

dispositional trait, comprising self-attributions and expectancies which can change over 
2

time. LOC consists of a set of attitudes and beliefs about the relationship of one’s 

behavior to dispositional and situational factors. Broadly stated, Rotter’s social learning 

theory can be represented as: NP = f (FM + NV) where NP is need potential, FM is 

freedom of movement, and NV is need valence. To paraphrase Rotter, the potential for 

a behavior leading to the satisfaction of a need (NP) is a joint function of the expectancy 

that it will lead to reinforcement and the perceived value of the reinforcement. So the 

original concept of LOC was within the context of the expectation that reinforcement 

was under personal or environmental control. The reason why this dispositionalsituational distinction is important is because it has implications for the stability and 

change of LOC over time. Expectancies are influenced by situational factors and are 

therefore changeable, whereas stable dispositions tend to be resistant to change across 

situations. When one mentions LOC, the Rotter (1966) scale comes to mind. The 

reader should keep in mind that a large number of LOC scales, many of them adapted 

to specific age groups (e.g., children) and situations (e.g., health, safety) have evolved 

since the original Rotter scale. Hunter (2002) has developed and validated an LOC 

scale specific to aviation, derived from an industrial safety LOC scale (Jones & 

Wuebker, 1985). 

State vs. trait. Another explanation for the misconception of LOC as a trait, as 

opposed to a state, variable, could be founded in methodology. The Rotter I-E scale 

does not establish a typology. However, LOC scale score distributions are often 

dichotomized in order to create a between-subjects variable, for a typical mixed factorial 

design. Obviously, performing a median split to dichotomize the data sacrifices 

variation in the data set (hence, information) for simplicity and convenience. The 

present author must admit to having done this (Stewart & Moore, 1978). Lefcourt 

(1982, p.148) emphasizes that not surprisingly, the practice of dichotomizing the I-E 

continuum into internals and externals has led to the erroneous assumption by many 

that LOC is a stable dispositional trait within the person. This notion has been 

perpetuated in much of the literature where it is referred to as a personality trait. 

Consequently, it is not difficult to fall into the trap of assuming that LOC is more 

enduring and stable than it actually is. LOC scores are best interpreted as momentary 

samples of one's beliefs about causality, or rough expectancies regarding one's 

personal control. Thus, the terms: internals and externals, in summarizing research on 

LOC, should just be interpreted as characterizing those who scored above or below the 

median on a questionnaire purporting to measure LOC, at the time, and in the context in 

which the research was conducted. 

Change in LOC over time. Cross-sectional surveys of cohorts of college 

students have shown LOC scores to change over time, with a trend toward increasing 

externality (Phares, 1976, p. 163). More recently Twenge, Zhang, and Im (2004), in 

two meta-analyses of the LOC scores of college students and middle school-junior high 

school students in the United States, confirmed the trend toward increasing externality 

of these age cohorts over time. The reader should note that the lower the LOC score, 

the greater the level of internality (the Rotter LOC scale consists of 23 items, with only 

external responses scored, for a possible range from 0 to 23). The average college 
3

student in 2002-2003 was more external on the Rotter LOC Scale (M =11.38) than 80% 

of his or her counterparts in the 1960s (M = 8.70). Data consisted of 97 samples of 

college students (N = 18,310), and 41 samples of children, aged 9 to 14 years (N = 

6,554). The same trends found for college students were replicated for children, using 

the Nowicki-Strickland Children’s LOC Scale (Nowicki & Strickland, 1973). From an 

evaluative standpoint, implications of these findings are negative, in the sense that 

externality is associated with alienation, diminished sense of personal control, and lower 

achievement. Generational variations in social values between cohorts could explain 

these differences, or alternatively, unique historical events that happened to the 

different cohorts. These results are based on cross-sectional cohorts, so it cannot be 

determined what changes over time are life cycle changes and which ones are 

generational. A longitudinal study would be desirable, but to this author’s knowledge, 

none is currently in progress. The only published longitudinal studies of LOC known to 

the present author (Wilkins, 1975; Wolfle & List, 2004: Wolfle & Robertshaw, 1982) 

were limited in scope in that they only examined changes in LOC over a brief time 

period in the life cycle. Wilkins found no overall differences in total LOC scores, but a 

slight increase on the Personal Control subscale, between the ages of 19 to 29 years. 

Wolfle and Robertshaw, in their study on the effects of college attendance on LOC, 

using a sample of 8,650 Caucasian males, reported a small increase in internality in the 

four years immediately following high school. It is interesting to note that these 

researchers found that education beyond high school had negligible impact on LOC. It 

is understandable why few longitudinal studies have been done, and why these have 

had limited time perspectives. Cost and demands on the researcher’s time are probably 

the most salient deterrents to conducting this kind of research. 

Do specific experiences change LOC? A related question concerns itself with 

the degree to which LOC is modifiable due to direct intervention or life experiences. 

Research on college populations (Duke, Johnson & Nowicki, 1977; Phares, 1976) would 

indicate that it is. Likewise, Harvey (1971) discovered that the longer a person had 

occupied an executive government position, the more internal was his or her score on 

the Rotter LOC scale. Senior administrators with over 10 years’ experience had mean 

scores of 5.4 vs. 7.2 for those with ten or fewer years’ experience. Age has been 

shown to be another factor. Penk (1969), using the Bialer (1961) LOC Questionnaire, 

found internality to be positively and significantly correlated with chronological age. 

Consistent with this finding Hunter (2002), in a validation study of his Aviation Safety 

Locus of Control (ASLOC) scale, using a sample of 477 civilian pilots, found a 

significant trend of increasing internality with age. The ASLOC combined index ranges 

from 20 to 100, with higher scores keyed to internality. We should note that these 

studies were not longitudinal comparisons and that other differences between age 

cohorts besides experience could have accounted for this trend. Interestingly, Hunter 

found no significant correlations between LOC and total flight hours, though it would be 

a reasonable intuitive hypothesis that sense of personal control would grow with 

experience. 
4

 Studies that examined changes in LOC have not been truly longitudinal in design. 

 Also, very few have been conducted in military or aviation settings. Examining 

systematic changes of LOC at different stages of an aviator's career may serve to clarify 

some of the issues about the desirability of an internal control orientation. The 

treatment of LOC as a dichotomy, besides being artificial, obscures the possibility that 

the relationship between LOC and pilot performance may be curvilinear. In other words, 

the safe aviator may be one who believes himself/herself to be in control of the aircraft 

in most instances, but also recognizes realistically that situations exist over which he or 

she has no control. Such a person should strive to minimize the probability of 

encountering the latter situations. As we shall see, the illusion of invulnerability has 

been identified as a hazardous attitude among aviators. Self-confidence is valued in 

our society; however, it can become illusory if it is out of proportion to real-world odds of 

success and failure. 

LOC and Cognitive Processes 

Attention and Vigilance 

Attentiveness. A large number of studies on LOC have shown the internals' 

ability to attend to relevant cues as well as to ignore those that are not so relevant 

(DuCette & Wolk, 1973; Gregory & Nelson, 1978; Sanders, Halcomb, Fray & Owens, 

1976). Stewart and Moore (1978) discovered that those classified as internals (i.e., 

below the median on the Rotter LOC scale), were more capable than were externals in 

disregarding irrelevant and distracting cues while attempting to estimate the passage of 

time. In a postexperimental probe, Stewart and Moore found that external participants 

were significantly less likely to report awareness of the false cues, than were internals, 

implying that the former were more likely to be influenced by these cues because they 

were not vigilant enough to be aware of them. Internals were able to rely more on their 

own time sense, while externals’ time estimates seemed dependent upon deliberately 

false cues presented by the experimenter. Lefcourt (1982) in his comprehensive review 

of LOC, cites this and other studies as demonstrating how externals require that their 

environment be structured, while internals actively restructure ambiguous situations, 

looking for information that will assist them in solving problems and making decisions. 

This finding may have pertinence to the area of safety, since Hansen (1989), using a 

path-analytic model, found only two variables, distractibility and general social 

maladjustment, to be directly related to frequency of accidents among industrial 

workers. 

Error detection. Internals seem superior to externals in detecting errors while 

proofreading text, and in picking up subtle and incidental cues (Wolk & DuCette, 1974). 

This ability should be quite germane to aviation settings where malfunctions occur 

under conditions of high workload. Internals should be able to detect more quickly a 

system malfunction, and to concentrate only on those tasks critical to controlling the 

aircraft, if the malfunction turns out to be a serious one. 
5

 Simulated emergencies characterized by unanticipated malfunctions would seem 

to be well suited for an investigation into the effects of LOC on the pilot's ability to 

prioritize tasks quickly where the failure to do so may result in loss of situation 

awareness and consequently, control of the aircraft. Since cognitive performance of 

persons with high personal control beliefs tends to be better than for those with lesser 

control beliefs (Koivula, 1996; Soederberg-Miller & Lachman, 2000; Stewart & Moore, 

1978), it would also appear worthwhile to investigate the effects of LOC on task 

prioritization and the management of cockpit workload. Based upon this research, one 

could expect that internals would show smaller latencies in detecting and responding to 

possible emergency situations than would externals. 

Relationship of LOC to the Five Hazardous Attitudes 

 

The five deadly sins. As has been stated before, aviators can be susceptible to 

expectancies about their performance that can produce hazardous consequences. A 

typology of hazardous thought patterns, or attitudes (Berlin, et al.,1982 ; Federal 

Aviation Administration, 1991) has become popular in the aviation safety community. 

Based upon the work of Berlin et al., the FAA published a series of documents that 

contained a questionnaire: the Hazardous Attitudes Scale (HAS) aimed at identifying 

hazardous thought patterns. These consist of five attitude clusters: invulnerability 

("It won't happen to me"); macho ("I can do it"); resignation ("What's the use?"); 

impulsivity ("Do something, quickly"); antiauthority ("Don't tell me what to do"). These 

discrete types, especially macho and resignation, seem to correspond closely to 

differences in LOC. 

 Hunter (1995, 2005), explains that the format of the HAS is ipsative, which 

means that a high score on one subscale results in low scores on the other four. The 

questionnaire comprises ten scenarios, which require the participant to make a rapid 

decision under time pressure. Each alternative is keyed to one of the five hazardous 

attitudes. The participant is required to choose one of these alternatives. The 

alternatives are summed, thus providing a score for each hazardous attitude. The 

original purpose of the questionnaire was pedagogical, as a means of providing 

feedback to students. However, this dependency between subscales has serious 

psychometric implications that potentially detract from the validity of the questionnaire. 

This prompted Holt, et al. (1991) to design a new instrument employing a Likert-type 

format, the New Hazardous Attitudes Scale (New-HAS). For the validation study they 

used an equivalent form for drivers, administered to a sample of 238 undergraduate 

students (more accessible than pilots). The main advantage of the New-HAS was that 

evidence of the hazardous attitudes could be derived through factor analysis and not by 

fiat. They found four factors corresponding to macho, impulsivity, antiauthority, and 

resignation. Factor scores from the new instrument correlated significantly with several 

criteria, such as accident involvement, drinking while driving, moving violations, and 

seat belt use. Hunter (2005) conducted a web-hosted survey for general aviation and 

commercial pilots to validate and determine the factor structure of the New-HAS scales. 
6

 Exploratory factor analysis was followed by a Varimax rotation to simple structure. 

Analysis of the New-HAS revealed six factors, which seemed to support those found by 

Holt, et al. These were: macho, resignation, antiauthority, worry/anxiety, impulsivity, 

and self-confidence. Hunter discovered that items of similar content on the ipsative 

HAS (Old-HAS) and New-HAS scales yielded low correlations; he attributed this result 

to the ipsative nature of the Old-HAS, which makes interpretation of correlations difficult. 

Invulnerability. Whether invulnerability would seem at first blush to be an 

extreme form of internality or externality is difficult to say because of a paucity of 

empirical data. Lester and Bombaci, (1984) found pilots whose dominant thought 

pattern was invulnerability to be moderately internal, as did Lester and Connolly (1987). 

Hunter (2005), using a larger sample of aviators (198), found some evidence that 

invulnerability, as measured on the Old-HAS, was positively and significantly correlated 

with the externality subscale of his ASLOC scale. Hunter emphasizes, however, the 

problems involved in interpreting correlations from the Old-HAS. If we add to this the 

consistent findings that pilots tend to show a greater degree of internality than the 

general population, the relationship between invulnerability and LOC becomes even 

more difficult to specify. 

Macho and resignation. One could postulate that the macho and resignation 

attitude clusters represent polar extremes on the LOC scale; the first, an expectation of 

always being in control; the second, a classical description of the external mindset. 

Indeed, the original label for resignation was external control (see Lester & Bombaci 

1984; Murray, 1999). Hunter (2005) did find that the resignation dimensions of both the 

Old-HAS and the New-HAS correlated significantly with the externality subscale of the 

ASLOC. However, Hunter also found that the Old-HAS produced few significant 

correlations overall with any construct validation measures, and that the significant 

correlations showed no consistent pattern. This finding reinforces the positions of 

Hunter and other critics of the HAS, who, though acknowledging it as a useful 

pedagogical tool, have shown that it is psychometrically inferior to the New-HAS. 

 

Impulsivity. Impulsivity could likewise be a correlate of LOC. Rotter and Murly 

(1965) found internals to be more deliberative and less impulsive than externals when 

they were asked to make decisions having to do with skill and not luck. When subjects 

were led to believe that the outcome of the decision was chance-determined, the 

reverse was found. Thus, it could be that those high in impulsivity in a situation where 

flying skill is important, would be externals. Hunter (2005), in the previously referenced 

validation study, found impulsivity as measured by the New-HAS to be negatively and 

significantly correlated with the internality subscale of the ASLOC (Hunter, 2002), which 

seemed consistent with the notion that pilots who believe they are in control of 

situations would not endorse items denoting impulsivity. 

Antiauthority. These attitudes are somewhat difficult to characterize according 
7

to the LOC dimension. Much of the research literature shows that internals resist social 

influence to a greater degree than do externals (Biondo & MacDonald, 1971; Cravens & 

Worchel, 1977). On the other hand, McCollaum and Lester (1995) found that an 

antiauthority orientation was associated with externality on the Rotter LOC scale. 

Hunter (2005) found that scores on the Likert-based Hazardous Attitudes Scale (NewHAS; Holt, et al., 1991), correlated significantly with the external subscale of the 

ASLOC, and the Zuckerman (1994) Thrill and Adventure-Seeking scale (TAS). 

Concurrent validation of the New-HAS by Hunter appears consistent with the earlier 

research. One limitation noted by Hunter is that the number of respondents on the webbased survey answering the ASLOC and New-HAS scales was relatively small (n = 

33). For the Old-HAS, the corresponding n was 198. Hunter noted that although 200 

participants completed the New-HAS, few in this subsample completed any of the other 

scales in the online survey. This restriction of sample size is a detriment to any 

comparison as to concurrent validity of the HAS and New-HAS. 

How many deadly sins are there, actually? Consequently, the question 

emerges as to whether LOC is closely correlated with all or part of this typology, and 

indeed, whether five somewhat arbitrary and discrete categories are necessary (Lester 

& Connolly, 1987, suggest that they are not). Lester and Bombaci (1984) examined the 

relationship of LOC to the five hazardous attitudes, as indicated on the ipsative HAS, 

using a small sample of general aviation pilots. This study found that invulnerability was 

the predominant hazardous attitude among the general aviation pilots in the restricted 

sample (43%) followed by impulsivity (20%) and macho (14%). No participants fell into 

the remaining two categories. The investigators found that macho aviators were the 

most internal of all on the Rotter LOC scale (M = 3.4; n = 5), followed by invulnerability 

(M = 8.1; n = 15) and impulsivity (M = 10.3, n = 7). It is noteworthy that none of the 

means obtained for these three categories was in the direction that one could call 

external; only the impulsivity group scored close to the median (11.5) on the 

LOC scale. The extreme internality of the macho group is intriguing; unfortunately, the 

small sample size limits generalizability. Nevertheless, mean scores for macho and 

Invulnerable, compared with those of the impulsive participants, seem consistent with 

much of what is known about LOC, in that (relative) externality has been found to be 

associated with impulsivity. Impulsivity as indicated on the HAS may not be the same 

as that measured by personality inventories. Lester and Bombaci (1984) found no 

significant relationship between the impulsivity dimension from the Old-HAS and the 

impulsivity scale of the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire (16 PF [Cattell, Eber, & 

Tatsuoka ,1970]), but did find that macho participants scored significantly higher than 

invulnerables on the integration/self concept control scale of the 16 PF. 

 The results of Lester and Connolly (1987) appear to parallel closely those of 

Lester and Bombaci (1984). Again the predominant hazardous thought pattern was 

invulnerability (39%) followed by impulsivity (24%) and finally macho (19%). 

Resignation and antiauthority response patterns did not emerge. The investigators also 

found that these three attitudinal dimensions were significantly and positively correlated, 
8

which is hardly surprising, given the ipsative format of the Old-HAS. Unfortunately, 

Lester and Connolly performed multiple t -tests contrasting the LOC scores of macho (M 

= 7.1), impulsive (M = 10.1) and invulnerable (M= 9.8) participants (it would have been 

better to use a post hoc multiple comparison test which controls the experimentwise 

error rate). Macho participants were significantly more internal than invulnerables (p < 

.05), and were more likely to report involvement in hazardous situations or accidents (p 

< .05), even though showing more conscientiousness on the 16PF (p < .05). 

 Other research has shown that pilots exhibit more internality than externality 

(Hunter, 2002; Wichman & Ball, 1983). Hunter (2002) found a mean score of 81.7 (n

= 477) on the ASLOC, indicating overall internality. Wichman and Ball conducted a 

survey of 334 general aviation pilots, concerning safety attitudes and practices, using 

the Rotter LOC scale. They found these pilots to be significantly more internal than the 

general non-aviator population in the United States. For the three independent samples 

comprising this study, respective means on the Rotter LOC scale were: 6.9; 6.1; 6.2 (all 

in the internal direction). It is interesting that these pilots showed evidence of a selfserving bias (Ross, 1977) toward their own skill and safety. Those pilots with more 

flight hours showing more internality and bias than their less experienced counterparts. 

(The self-serving bias is a special case of attribution theory in which the person, or 

actor, attributes positive outcomes to his or her own efforts, and negative outcome to 

external factors, such as bad luck.) This finding provides a hint of overconfidence and 

the tendency to overestimate one’s own flying skill and to underestimate the chances of 

accident involvement. It is not clear, though, at what point confidence becomes 

overconfidence. Finally, we must ask if the most experienced pilots, who tended toward 

greater internality, and greater self-serving biases, were more cavalier than their cohorts 

on matters of safety? Apparently not, since these were more likely than their less 

experienced peers to actually attend an FAA safety clinic. This behavioral measure 

could indicate that they not only believed themselves to be safer than the average pilot, 

but also behaved in a way consistent with this concept of themselves. 

 One can overestimate his or her degree of control over the environment, and 

anecdotal accounts indicate that test pilots often do this. Werrell (2005), provides 

historical, anecdotal examples of overconfidence and its dangerous ramifications among 

U.S. Air Force pilots during the postwar transition from propeller-driven to jet-powered 

aircraft. Werrell notes that during this time period (1946-1953), the Air Force seemed to 

accept accidents as part of the cost of flying. He attributes part of this attitude to jet 

pilots who had survived combat in World War II. These pilots manifested attitudes that 

can best be characterized as a combination of machismo and invulnerability, believing 

that if the enemy had failed to get them, then nothing else would, especially in 

peacetime. Added to this was the belief that “real” fighter pilots should not carry 

checklists and that preflight checks should be kept to a minimum. 

 The author believes that many accidents that occurred during this period were due to a 

need on the part of pilots to prove their manhood, plus the belief that they were 

“bulletproof.” Werrell cites a concrete example of a veteran pilot who, eager to check 
9

out in the F-86, conceals the fact that he has had no time in the aircraft. He asked for 

minimal assistance on the flightline, used no checklist, and soon afterward survived a 

crash caused by his unfamiliarity with the aircraft’s fuel system. 

 A person can believe that repeated success is due to good luck rather than effort. 

 This may be a more realistic expectancy in hazardous situations such as war. Perhaps 

the stresses of war, in which chance does play a role in one’s survival, create situational 

pressures that move a person’s expectancies toward externality. (The early research of 

Phares [1957] showed that persons with external control orientations are more prone to 

the gambler's fallacy). Given the power of the situation, and the fact that in time of war 

pilots oftentimes fly a set number of missions before going home, it would be 

reasonable to expect even the most internally-controlled individual to be prone to the 

gambler’s fallacy, especially toward the end of one’s tour of duty. Anecdotal evidence 

abounds about pilots in combat becoming superstitious about their last mission. We 

can envision the aviator who has got out of tight situations in the past and has attributed 

this success to luck. One study by Gerbert and Kemmler (1986) seems to support this 

notion. They asked a sample of German pilots how they had managed to escape from 

hazardous situations they had encountered. Half attributed their success to luck, and 

30 % to the application of proper procedures. In short, there may be a weakness in the 

current and past research on LOC among aviators, in that participants in the research 

have been overwhelmingly general and commercial aviation pilots operating in 

peacetime environments. Perhaps they are more “in control” because they can rely on 

their training and skills, and not worry about hostile fire. 

 Hunter (2002), in his efforts to develop and concurrently validate the ASLOC 

scale, found a significant, negative correlation between internality and self-reported 

involvement in hazardous events, as indicated by the Hazardous Events Scale (HES; 

Hunter, 1995). He defined a hazardous event as an accident or an incident which could 

have easily become an accident. One must note that the HES is a subjective measure, 

and, drawing upon other safety-related LOC research (e.g., Arthur, Barrett, & 

Alexander, 1991), a much less sensitive criterion than archival records of accidents. 

Nonetheless, Hunter’s finding is of potential interest to the aviation safety community, in 

that it indicates that internal LOC may be a predictor of vigilance and avoidance of 

unreasonable risks. Since LOC is not conceptualized as a stable personality construct 

but as a set of expectancies about control over the environment, then these findings 

may also imply that the attitudes underlying the potential for hazardous behavior can be 

changed. Of course, an alternative explanation to Hunter’s results could be differences 

in self-disclosure between internals and externals. 

Locus of control, risk taking and accidents. Research relating LOC to risk 

taking and accidents is rare, and the preponderance of this research is concerned with 

ground vehicle and general industrial accidents. Salminen and Klen (1994) 

demonstrated a relationship between LOC and risk taking behavior on a non-aviation 

sample, consisting of Finnish construction and forestry workers. They found that 
10

forestry workers were more external in LOC than were construction workers. 

Regardless of between-group differences, externals tended to take more risks than did 

internals. This study is cited because it provides more evidence consistent with the 

construct validity of LOC, and has implications for research in aviation safety. Other 

researchers (Arthur, Barrett, & Alexander, 1991; Guastello & Guastello, 1986; Ozkan & 

Lajunen, 2005; Stanton & Young, 2005) have examined the relationship between LOC, 

accidents, situation awareness, and workload, for operators of ground vehicles. The 

Rotter scale and derivations specific to automobile driving behaviors were employed. 

Likewise, different criteria were used in these studies: archival reports of accidents, and 

self-reports of accident involvement. Arthur, Barrett, and Alexander performed a meta 

analysis of the vehicle accident involvement literature, which had previously yielded 

equivocal results. The investigators obtained marginally to moderately significant 

results for selective attention, regard for authority, and LOC. One very important 

moderator variable in the case of regard for authority and LOC was whether the criterion 

variable entailed self-report vs. archival data, with the latter showing more significant 

correlations. Consequently, it is likely that the low correlations where the Rotter LOC 

scale has been used to predict accident involvement were due largely to the use of selfreport measures. 

 

Validity of the hazardous attitudes. The question remains as to whether or not 

five distinct hazardous attitudes exist. If they were not orthogonal, then fewer 

categories would have the same explanatory value. Recall that Holt, et al. (1991), and 

Hunter (2005), found some confirmation that attitude clusters corresponded to four of 

these factors, excepting invulnerability. At this point it may be informative to note a 

factor analytic study by Shaw and Sichel (1971), which employed a variety of 

personality measures for the purpose of discriminating between high and low-risk 

accident-prone employees in a variety of industrial settings. The primary factor, which 

discriminated the accident-prone employee from the one less so disposed, was 

characterized by extreme extraversion with sociopathic features. In terms of traits, the 

high-risk employee was described as self-centered, overconfident, aggressive, 

irresponsible, resentful, intolerant, impulsive, antisocial, and antagonistic toward 

authority. One should note that at least the verbal labels of three of these traits 

(overconfident, impulsive, antagonistic toward authority) seem to have some degree of 

correspondence with those from both new and old versions of the HAS. In order to 

determine what unique behavioral dimensions underlie the hazardous thought patterns, 

a factor analytic study, with a large sample, should be undertaken. Additionally, 

longitudinal research is needed, to determine how experience and age moderate these 

attitudes. As was previously mentioned, archival records of accidents should be 

exploited, and less reliance placed upon self-reports. Otherwise little will be learned 

beyond what is known now. 

 

LOC and Confidence: The Dark Side of Internality?

Overconfidence: Overestimation of Control 
11

 A sense of personal control is usually considered to be socially desirable. It 

would seem reasonable to postulate that any training program intended to foster such 

as sense of control should have positive consequences on performance in situations 

where performance can directly affect outcomes. A caveat would be that such a 

program should instill an expectation of control but not overconfidence. The reason 

behind this last statement will become clear when we examine the more recent 

research on overconfidence in the context of the optimistic bias. Succinctly stated, 

one’s sense of personal control should be realistic and situationally appropriate.

 

 Unfortunately, most of the LOC research has not examined work environments 

where overconfidence can have fatal consequences, nor has it looked at long-term 

changes in LOC within an individual as the person acquires experience and progresses 

to higher levels of mastery. Unrealistically high perceptions of personal control may be 

maladaptive. One recent study (Anderson, Hattie, & Hamilton, 2005), purports to show 

evidence that, at least among school children, moderate levels of LOC are more 

adaptive than are extremely high or low levels. Rotter (1966) also acknowledged that, 

though he considered internals to be better adjusted psychologically than externals, it 

was nevertheless likely that those holding extreme beliefs in internality of control were 

just as maladjusted as those holding extreme beliefs in externality. Nonetheless, the 

concept of extreme internality has received little attention from researchers. 

 

 There has been much speculation in the aviation community that pilot 

overconfidence is related to accidents, even among high-time pilots; in fact, 

overconfidence is frequently cited as a contributing or causal factor in the U.S. Army 

Combat Readiness Center’s Risk Management Information System (RMIS). Is this just 

an ex post facto attribution or is there a point where aviators begin believing that they 

have more control over their fates than they actually have? In aviation, it is not 

unknown for thoroughly skilled and proficient pilots, with many hours to their credit, to 

have accidents. Is there a critical point in a pilot's career progression where the 

cumulative effects of thousands of hours of flight experience can lead to an illusion of 

invulnerability? What is being stated here is that another factor besides experience and 

skill may predict how safe a pilot is; a highly proficient pilot is more in control of an 

aircraft than one who is much less proficient. However, we need to ask if there is a 

point in time where the feeling of being in control becomes a feeling of infallibility. This 

is not to say that the more hours a pilot has, the more internal he or she is. Dunning, 

Heath, and Suls (2004), in a comprehensive monograph, demonstrated the 

pervasiveness of overconfidence and the illusion of control across institutions in settings 

as diverse as health, education, and the workplace. Few researchers have explored the 

interface of individual differences in LOC and the illusion of control. This may be due in 

part to the movement in social psychology toward conceptualizing the need for personal 

control more as a situationally determined expectancy than as a dispositional trait. 

Regardless of this, some evidence indicates that perceived control is a key mediator of 

one’s optimistic bias (Helweg-Larsen & Shepperd, 2001; Klein & Helweg-Larsen, 2002). 
12

 Klein and Helwig-Larsen performed a meta-analysis of 21 studies, which had explored 

the relationship between perceived personal control and the optimistic bias. Control 

was found to have a sizable impact upon risk perception (r = .49). Those who 

believed they could control negative events and prevent their occurrence believed 

themselves to be less at risk than most others. 

 Though evidence is accumulating that the illusion of control and overconfidence 

are major heuristic biases in Western society, there is scant evidence as to how LOC 

mediates these biases. This would seem to be fertile ground for research in the field of 

aviation, where overconfidence is frequently a factor related to accidents. On its face, 

the term: sense of personal control seems similar to internality, but this is not to be 

assumed in the absence of empirical support. The meta-analysis by Klein and HelwegLarsen is the most pertinent research in the context of what has been discussed thus 

far. The authors define optimistic bias as a perception that one’s risks of negative 

outcomes (e.g. accidents, alcoholism, disease, divorce) are less than those of 

similar others. The research literature has shown this bias to be quite robust 

(Weinstein, 1987; Weinstein & Klein, 1996). 

Sense of Control Trends over the Career Cycle 

 What should career cycle internality-externality look like for aviators? It would 

seem reasonable to expect a curvilinear relationship between LOC and flight hours, with 

internality peaking somewhere at mid-career. This may be due in part to a need to see 

oneself as in control, especially at the point where the pilot incurs increased status and 

responsibilities as he or she becomes an aircraft commander or pilot in command, or 

upgrades to more advanced aircraft. Past this point, it is possible that pilots begin to 

realize that an experienced aviator can still make errors. This may be attributable to a 

realization on the part of the aviator that he or she is not invulnerable, and that an 

accident could happen in spite of competence and proficiency. There is some evidence 

in the research literature (reviewed by Helweg-Larsen & Shepperd, 2001), that prior 

experience with a negative outcome can have a moderating effect on the optimistic 

bias. In short, persons can perceive themselves as being at greater risk than before, 

when it is discovered that bad things can happen, even if precautions are taken. 

 If this relationship actually exists, then it would be possible to design training 

programs to minimize the tendency for the perception of "being in control" in moderately 

experienced pilots from becoming the "illusion of unique invulnerability." According to 

Helweg-Larsen and Shepperd, there has been no empirical research into why prior 

experience reduces the optimistic bias. They do, however, see personal control as a 

potential moderator. The authors found evidence that a declining sense of personal 

control over negative events causes estimates of personal vulnerability to increase. 

This trend was found in the meta-analysis regardless of whether the sense of personal 

control was measured as an individual difference variable (e.g., LOC), self-ratings of 

controllability of a target event, or inferred from a person’s prior experience. One 
13

problem pointed out by Helweg-Larsen and Shepperd (2001) that makes these findings 

hard to explain, is the absence of any experimental research on the relationship 

between perceived control and prior experience on the optimistic bias. 

 Wilson and Fallshore (2001), who surveyed 160 commercial and general aviation 

pilots, found evidence for self-serving or optimistic biases among those pilots. 

Participants rated themselves, compared to other pilots, as less likely to experience 

accidents due to inadvertent flight into Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC), and 

overestimated their own ability to avoid and to escape these conditions. Though age 

and flight hours were unrelated to participants’ estimates of likelihood of having an 

accident, these were significantly related to their estimates of the ability to escape from 

inadvertent IMC. Likewise, flight hours predicted estimates of the pilots’ ability to avoid 

IMC altogether. Wilson and Fallshore admit that the latter findings were somewhat 

surprising, in that one would expect pilots to become more circumspect about hazards 

such as icing and IMC as they became more experienced. Unfortunately, actual flight 

hours are not reported in the study, making it difficult to determine just how experienced 

these pilots were. It should also be noted that these data consisted of self-reports, 

subject to self-presentation biases. 

Illusion of Unique Invulnerability 

Perloff and Fetzer (1986) posit the illusion of unique invulnerability as a cognitive 

process mediating excessive risk taking in people who should know better. This is 

similar to the optimism bias, but based more on cognitive consistency than on selfattribution. However, the assumptions and predictions that it makes seem to be highly 

similar. Perloff and Fetzer point to a mode of inconsistency resolution not unlike 

differentiation (Abelson, 1959). That is to say, actors make inappropriate and 

stereotyped interpersonal comparisons between themselves and those who fall victim to 

the hazards of the target behavior. Thus those who are seriously injured or killed in 

aviation accidents may be seen as different than those who survive the same hazards; 

they may be less intelligent, less skilled, or poorly trained when compared to the actor. 

As a means of maintaining cognitions that this is a just world, victims of accident and 

injustice are derogated. The less objective the evidence that that the victim of an 

accident or incident was negligent or incompetent, the greater the need for derogation. 

Consequently, the need to maintain cognitive consistency can compound the degree of 

injustice. This just world phenomenon is a well-established process known for decades 

among social psychologists (Lerner, 1997, 2003; Lerner & Miller; 1978). 

 The point of the preceding discussion is that Perloff and others offer an 

explanation of the illusion of unique invulnerability based upon actors’ needs to see 

themselves in control of the situation and not at the mercy of external environmental 

forces. This in turn serves as an anxiety-reducing mechanism. (It can't happen to me; I 

am a much better pilot than they are). Unfortunately, the illusion of unique 

invulnerability may do more than just reduce anxiety and bolster one's self esteem; it 
14

can lead to a cavalier attitude toward safety and consequent laxity in following safety 

precautions. 

 The concept of invulnerability seems closely linked to the expectancy of personal 

control. In fact, there is good evidence that people, or at least subjects in experiments, 

systematically distort their degree of control over positive (successful) outcomes, so as 

to give themselves a heightened sense of personal control (Alloy, Abramson & Viscusi, 

1981). This has been found to be particularly true of subjects who experience repeated 

successes. If the illusions of invulnerability and control also affect aviators, then we 

may have the "flipside" of internality of personal control; the point where a pilot begins to 

overestimate his or her abilities and underestimate personal and/or environmental 

limitations (and chances of falling victim to uncontrollable external forces). Some 

evidence that this may be true can be gleaned from a survey of general aviation pilots 

by Wichman and Ball (1983). 

 It would seem that LOC and the distortions that result in the illusion of control 

are parts of the same social learning process. A person strives to achieve a goal, 

learns that his or her efforts have been successful, and perceives a causal connection 

between effort and outcome. After repeated successes at the task, the sense of 

personal causation (being an origin rather than a pawn) becomes systematically 

distorted in the direction of greater personal causality. This conceptualization should 

provide a better view of the social learning-expectancy theory origins of LOC. 

Discussion 

Critical Research Issues 

Research addressing LOC in the context of aviation has concentrated primarily 

upon its relation to the five hazardous attitudes. Initially, researchers attempted to 

validate the Rotter LOC scale against the older, ipsative HAS scale. Subsequent 

research by Hunter (2002, 2005) developed and validated a new version of the LOC 

scale, with content items specific to aviation, along with the Likert-based New-HAS and 

HES scales. This research provided a much-needed concurrent validation of these 

psychometrically improved scales. Still, there are questions concerning the 

generalizability of all of the research, in that samples consisted of civil aviators. This 

alone could be cited as justification for future research on samples consisting of military 

as well as civil aviators. Other critical research issues have not been addressed, and 

this could be due to the fact that, though LOC is hardly a new concept, its application to 

aviation is quite recent. Research employing the new instruments such as the ASLOC 

and New-HAS should not be limited to their concurrent validation on military aviators. 

New areas should be explored, which can link hazardous attitudes and LOC to 

behavioral and attributional variables that would serve as means of construct validation. 

A rich heritage of research in applied social psychology exists (e.g., attributional biases, 

cognitive consistency, risk taking) which are eminently applicable to aviation. Some 

potential research issues will be discussed below. This is obviously not an exhaustive 
15

list, but it should provide a starting point for further research. 

 Perceived personal control and risk taking. It is clear that attitudes toward 

control over one’s environment are related to risk taking preferences and overt 

behaviors. What is not clear is their effects on the risk taking behaviors of military 

aviators at different stages of their careers. Are old pilots not bold pilots, due to object 

lessons from personal bad experiences, or from observing the misfortunes of others? 

Or can we say that young, inexperienced pilots are more prone to risk taking than their 

older and supposedly more mature, counterparts? Are differences in risk taking and 

risk-management by aviators related to any of the hazardous attitudes, and if so, to 

which ones (e.g. antiauthority, macho, or invulnerable)? It would be worthwhile knowing 

the trends in sense of personal control among aviators with different levels of 

experience. This could be ascertained by administration of Hunter’s ASLOC scale, but 

this would only provide a partial answer to the question. We would not learn the degree 

to which individual differences in ASLOC scores are influenced by situational factors. In 

fact, more recent research looks at sense of personal control as situationally 

determined, and therefore variable within the person (state) rather than as an enduring 

disposition (trait). 

Cross-sectional trends in sense of personal control. We have seen how 

instruments that purport to measure LOC and hazardous attitudes have been 

psychometrically refined over the past decade. Much of the research has been 

hampered by small sample sizes; replication on larger samples of aviators would 

determine the extent to which the relationships found are stable and reproducible. 

Likewise, a representative sample of military aviators would demonstrate if there are 

any consistent and stable differences that distinguish this group of aviators from the 

general and commercial aviation samples. One hypothesis that emerged in the course 

of this review is whether combat experience changes one’s perception of personal 

control and optimism when facing hazardous situations. The relationship between flight 

experience, age and sense of personal control, as well as risk taking, could also be 

investigated. This may answer some questions about LOC changes in response to 

aging (at what point in the life cycle does one become more cautious?). 

Although it would be highly desirable to perform a longitudinal study of changes 

over the career cycle of pilots, this would be very difficult, since such comprehensive 

tracking systems do not now exist, for civil or military aviation. Instead, researchers 

will have to make do with cross-sectional comparisons among cohorts, with age and 

flight hours as blocking variables. Sense of personal control can be measured as an 

individual difference by administering the ASLOC and LOC. Similarly, sense of 

personal control and optimistic bias can be measured as situationally determined 

attributional styles via questionnaires developed by Weinstein (1980). Similar to other 

studies of accident involvement, self-reports such as Hunter’s HES, as well as archival 

data, can be used. Chapin (2001) points out that the optimistic bias, though quite 

robust, may not be universal. To some degree, optimism grows with successful 
16

experience, but this can be tempered by the knowledge that one is not invulnerable to 

negative outcomes. The two dimensions of experience among military aviators, 

obviously correlated, are total flight hours and years as an aviator. 

Mediating variables. Confidence should grow with increased pilot experience, 

and with it, perceived control. Likewise, the optimistic bias should increase. The 

question emerges as to whether this is a linear or curvilinear trend. It could be 

curvilinear, insofar as experience can also make one more aware of potential hazards. 

Some of the research evidence shows that the optimistic bias is muted by the closeness 

of the comparison group (Klar, Medding, & Sarel, 1996). In short, the bias is stronger 

when comparing one’s possible fate with the abstract “average aviator” vs. another pilot 

from one’s own unit or a close friend. 

 Most of the previous research on LOC among aviators, it should be recalled, 

used samples of general and commercial aviation participants. It would be reasonable 

to suppose that exposure to the stresses of combat may directly affect one’s sense of 

control as well as expectancies about the probability of negative outcomes. Some 

researchable questions are whether combat experience among military aviators (a) 

diminishes the strength of the optimistic bias; (b) diminishes the degree of sense of 

personal control; (c) reduces the amount of risk taking, causing the aviator to take more 

precautions. 

 

Laboratory research on risk taking. The research proposed above would 

essentially be correlational; this should be supplemented by laboratory simulations and 

simple experiments to establish causality, based on the findings of these uncontrolled 

field studies. This would also serve as a means of convergent validation. Aviators 

differing on dimensions relevant to the previously stated hypotheses would serve as 

participants. The experiments would entail various choice dilemmas varying in degree 

of risk (high/low stakes; high/low payoffs). The scenarios used would be relevant to risk 

situations in which aviators often find themselves. Some would relate to hazards all 

pilots can encounter; others would be specific to threats encountered in combat. In 

these studies mixed-factorial designs would be employed, with LOC and contingency/ 

non-contingency of outcome would serve as blocking variables. Repeated trials would 

be run with trials varying in probability of success, with some outcomes contingent on 

subject input, others randomly determined. Participants would be asked to estimate 

probability of success after each trial. The primary question that this research would 

seek to answer is whether or not those with internal loci of control are more susceptible 

to the optimistic bias when compared to externals, and how quickly they detect noncontingencies between their own actions and outcomes. 

Limitations of the Research 

Range restriction and sample size. One possible limitation of any LOC 
17

research in aviation settings would be the strong possibility of a restriction in range of 

LOC scores among pilots, a highly select population whose survival depends upon the 

exercise of control over one's environment. This has been a recurrent finding in the 

small number of studies that have been conducted, using American civilian pilots (e.g., 

Hunter, 2002). However, the hypothesis that pilots are higher in the need for control 

than are other previously tested populations, though logically consistent, has not been 

conclusively demonstrated on samples of adequate size. This is true, to varying 

degrees, for all of the aviation LOC studies cited here. For example, Hunter (2005), in 

his online concurrent validation study, encountered sample size problems, chiefly 

because many participants dropped out before completing all of the scales. This 

resulted in small subsamples for some of the most critical intercorrelations, as between 

the ASLOC and the New-HAS. These limitations were probably due to the need to 

include large numbers of scales, to the point where respondents decided to quit after 

completing only a subset of them. This may also be a methodological issue for online 

data gathering, under conditions of anonymity. It is much easier to opt out of a survey 

in a situation where no one will see the person leaving the room. 

 

Military vs. civil aviation. Military pilots may differ in many ways from their 

general aviation and commercial airline counterparts. These may be dispositional 

differences, or situational (e.g., ex-military pilots currently flying for an airline). A few 

tentative hypotheses were presented concerning differences in orientation toward risk 

taking and self-perceptions of invulnerability and confidence. Besides concurrent 

validation of the ASLOC, New-HAS and HES scales, on samples of military pilots, 

another advantage of research in military settings is the availability of archival accident 

reports, which could be content analyzed for wording consistent with such variables as 

hazardous attitudes and overconfidence. 

Stability and change over time. Previous research does not tell us much about 

how the need for control is maintained over time, especially in the face of repeated 

success and failure. This would necessitate a theoretical underpinning, and a return to 

Rotter’s social learning-expectancy theory. Unfortunately, many researchers seem to 

have drifted away from the close relationship between LOC and expectancy theory. In 

order to demonstrate hypotheses derived from this theory, criterion measures other than 

self-reports (i.e., behavioral measures) are needed. Instead of factor-analytic and 

attitudinal studies, it would be worthwhile examining in situ behavioral differences 

between internals and externals. A positive outcome of this research would be 

additional insight into the relationship between LOC and more recent personal controlbased expectancy theories, which may be better suited for examining changes in 

expectancies concerning one’s control over the environment, as a function of time and 

experience. It could answer questions such as: how do behavioral outcomes and their 

valences affect LOC, and when is too much internality a bad thing? 

Conclusions
18

 The goal of the foregoing review and discussion of LOC was to illustrate that 

human performance situations in aviation lend themselves quite well to applications of 

this construct, as well as others from the social psychological research literature. Many 

of the skills required for flying an aircraft depend upon the development of a sense of 

control, as well as the ability to anticipate situations where one's control over the aircraft 

may be challenged by external circumstances such as weather. Similarly, I have stated 

in this paper that the tendency to endorse an internal LOC as the desirable state in a 

person may not hold true across all aviation situations. The hazardous attitudes, as we 

have seen, appear to suggest strongly that pilots can get into trouble if they 

overestimate their degree of control over the aircraft, and, concomitantly, over their fate. 

 

 Although extensive research has been done on the LOC construct, little has been 

said about the possible consequence of extreme internality: overconfidence. Perhaps a 

reason for this is that much of the research has involved mostly college undergraduates 

in laboratory settings far removed from the high workload and potentially dangerous 

situations that are inherent to aviation. In many social settings, exaggerating one's 

sense of personal control can result in positive outcomes such as an enhanced selfconcept and the rewards that go with it. It will not result in high-risk behaviors or risky 

decisions whose consequences could prove fatal. If we add to the potential risks of civil 

aviation settings the additional risks associated with combat, then the hazards of an 

exaggerated sense of personal control become even more apparent. Thus, the 

attributional style of the “internal” could foster the tendency to attribute a successful 

flight under dangerous conditions to piloting skill. Extreme internals may conclude that 

since they flew through a storm before and came out unscathed, they should be able to 

do this again under similar circumstances. The foregoing discussion of possible training 

countermeasures has suggested that with proper planning, the aviation training 

community can increase an aviator's level of awareness of the hazards concomitant to 

this kind of thinking, thus maintaining congruency between personal sense of control 

and the actual amount of control which the pilot has in the environment in which he or 

she must operate. 

 In short, the level of perceived personal control should be flexible and adaptable to 

the situation, allowing a pilot to maintain the vigilance and confidence required to 

perform successfully in a variety of potentially hazardous situations. Situations exist in 

which the “Can Do” (macho) attitudes that are prevalent in military aviation and other 

high-pressure professions may be appropriate; in others (e.g., peacetime aviation), 

much more cautious, deliberative attitudes are more appropriate. The key, then, is 

flexibility, in terms of both LOC and the other attitudes that we have discussed in this 

review. LOC and the hazardous attitudes should be variable and situation-appropriate. 

Making situation-specificity salient to pilots at all stages of their careers should become 

an important goal of aviation training. Risks acceptable in a military combat situation, 

where aircraft and crews may be expendable, are obviously not acceptable in noncombat or peacetime situations. There may also be a point in an aviator's career 

progression where repeated success and mastery of difficult situations foster an 
19

exaggerated sense of control, in an environment where this is no longer adaptive. 

 Since LOC has been shown to be influenced greatly by one's reinforcement 

history, the payoff from such research could be an understanding of conditions which 

would likely promote shifts in LOC, as well as systematic training interventions aimed at 

maintaining a pilot's sense of control a realistic level. Such research would be 

somewhat novel, since it would treat LOC as a dependent variable, with the 

independent variable being training interventions designed to influence the participant’s 

perception of personal control. It would also constitute longitudinal research, looking 

from short and intermediate term changes in LOC. At the present time, we know little 

about the variation in LOC among student pilots, journeyman pilots, or senior pilots. 

Knowing this could provide additional insight as to how flexible and adaptable these 

attitudes are, and at what stage of one’s professional life. Other potential dependent 

measures would be self-reports on the New-HAS, as well as behavioral measures of 

risk taking and decision making in laboratory tasks and gaming situations. 

Simply stated, research opportunities abound in an area that seems to relate quite 

closely to risk taking, the perception of self-efficacy, and decision making in aviation 

settings. 
20
21

 References 

Abelson, R. P. (1959). Modes of resolution of belief dilemmas. Journal of Conflict 

 Resolution 3, 343-352.

Alloy, L. B., Abramson, L. Y., & Viscusi, D. (1981). Induced mood and the illusion of 

 control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 1129-1140. 

Anderson, A., Hattie, J., & Hamilton, R. J. (2005). Locus of control, self-efficacy, and 

motivation in different schools: Is moderation the key to success? Educational 

Psychology, 25, 517-535. 

Arthur, W. A., Barrett, G. V. & Alexander, R. A. (1991). Prediction of motor vehicle 

 involvement: A meta-analysis. Human Performance, 4, 89-105. 

Berlin, J.I., Gruber, E. V., Holmes, C. W., Jensen, P. K., Lau, J. R., Mills, J. W., & 

O'Kane, J. M. (1982). Pilot judgment training and evaluation (DOT/FAA/CT-82/56). 

Daytona Beach, FL: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. 

Bialer, I. (1961). Conceptualization of success and failure in mentally retarded and 

 normal children. Journal of Personality, 29, 303-320. 

Biondo, J., & MacDonald, A. P. (1971). Internal- locus of control and response to 

 influence attempts. Journal of Personality, 39, 407-419. 

 

Cattell, R. B., Eber, W. H., & Tatsuoka, M. M. (1970). Handbook for the Sixteen 

Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF). Champaign, IL: Institute for Personality 

and Ability Testing. 

Chapin, J. (2001). Self-protective pessimism: Optimistic bias in reverse. North 

American Journal of Psychology, 3, 253-262. 

Cravens, R. W., & Worchel, P. (1977). The differential effects of rewarding and 

coercive leaders on group members differing in locus of control. Journal of 

Personality, 45, 150-168. 

DuCette, J., & Wolk, S. (1973). Cognitive and motivational correlates of generalized 

expectancies for control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 26, 420-

426. 

Duke, M., Johnson, T. C., & Nowicki, S. (1977). Effects of sports fitness camp 

 experience. The Research Quarterly, 48, 280-283. 
22

Dunning, D., Heath, C., & Suls, J. M. (2004). Flawed self-assessment: Implications for 

health, education, and the workplace. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 

5, 69-106. 

Eysenck, H. J. (1967). The biological basis of personality. Springfield, IL: Charles C. 

 Thomas, Publisher. 

Federal Aviation Administration (1991). Aeronautical decision making. U.S. Department 

 of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration Advisory Circular 60-22. 

Gerbert, K., & Kemmler, R. (1986). The causes of causes: determinants and 

 background variables of human factor incidents and accidents. Ergonomics, 29, 

 1439-1453. 

Gregory, W. L., & Nelson, D. V. (1978). Locus of control and cue explication. 

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 4, 248-251. 

Guastello, S. J., & Guastello, D. (1986). The relation between the locus of control 

construct and involvement in traffic accidents. Journal of Psychology, 120, 293-

297. 

Hansen, C. P. (1989). A causal model of the relationship among accidents, biodata, 

personality and cognitive factors. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74, 81-90. 

Harvey, J. M. (1971). Locus of control shift in administrators. Perceptual and Motor 

 Skills, 33, 980-982. 

Helweg-Larsen, M., & Shepperd, J. A. (2001). Do moderators of the optimistic bias 

affect personal or target risk estimates? A review of the literature. Personality and 

Social Psychology Review, 5, 74-95. 

Holt, R. W., Boehm-Davis, D. A., Fitzgerald, K. A., Matyuf, M. M., Baughman, W. A., 

& Littman, D. C. (1991). Behavioral validation of a hazardous thought pattern 

instrument. In Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 35th Annual Meeting, (pp. 

77-81). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors Society. 

Hunter, D. R. (1995, October). Airman research questionnaire: methodology and 

overall results. (Rep. No. DOT/FAA/AM-95/27). Washington, D.C.: Federal Aviation 

Administration. 

Hunter, D. R. (2002). Development of an aviation safety locus of control scale. 

Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, 73, 1184-1188. 
23

Hunter, D. R. (2005). Measurement of hazardous attitudes among pilots. International 

 Journal of Aviation Psychology, 15, 23-43. 

Jones, J. W., & Wuebker, L. (1985). Development and validation of the safety locus of 

 control scale. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 61, 151-161. 

Jung, C. G. (1928). Two essays on analytical psychology. London: Ballière Tindall. 

Klar, Y., Medding, A., & Sarel, D. (1996). Nonunique vulnerability: Singular versus 

distributional probabilities and unrealistic optimism in comparative risk judgments. 

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 67, 229-245. 

Klein, C. T. F., & Helweg-Larsen, M. (2002). Perceived control and the optimistic bias: 

 A meta-analytic review. Psychology and Health, 17, 437-446. 

Koivula, N. (1996). Estimation of time: effects of locus of control, mental arithmetic and 

 length of target interval. Personality and Individual Differences, 20, 25-32. 

Lefcourt, H. M. (1982). Locus of control: Current trends in theory and research. 

Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. 

Lerner, M. J. (1997). What does the belief in a just world protect us from: The dread of 

death or the fear of undeserved suffering? Psychological Inquiry, 8, 29-32. 

Lerner, M. J. (2003). The Justice motive: Where social psychologists found it, how they 

lost it, and why they may not find it again. Personality and Social Psychology 

Review, 7, 388-399. 

Lerner, M. J., & Miller, D. T. (1978). Just world research and attribution process: 

Looking back and ahead. Psychological Bulletin, 85, 1030-1051. 

Lester, L. F., & Bombaci, D. H. (1984). The relationship between personality and 

 irrational judgment in civil pilots. Human Factors, 26, 565-572. 

Lester, L. F., & Connolly, T. J. (1987). The measurement of hazardous thought patterns 

and their relationship to pilot personality. Proceedings of the Fourth 

 International Symposium on Aviation Psychology, 286-292. 

McCollaum, B., & Lester, D. (1995). Authoritarianism, anti-authoritarianism, and locus 

of control. Psychological Reports, 76, 418. 

Murray, S. R. (1999). FACE: Fear of loss of face and the five hazardous attitudes 

concept. International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 9, 403-411. 
24

Nowicki, S., & Strickland, B. R. (1973). A locus of control scale for children. Journal of 

 Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 40, 148-154. 

Ozkan, T., & Lajunen, T. (2005). Multidimensional traffic locus of control scale 

(T-LOC): Factor structure and relationship to risky driving. Personality and Individual 

Differences, 38, 533-545. 

Penk, W. (1969). Age changes and correlates of internal-external locus of control 

 scales. Psychological Reports, 25, 856. 

Perloff, L.S. and Fetzer, B.K. (1986). Self-other judgments and perceived 

 invulnerability to victimization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 

 502-510. 

Phares, E. J. (1957). Expectancy changes in skill and chance situations. Journal of 

 Abnormal and Social Psychology, 54, 339-342. 

Phares, E. J. (1976). Locus of control in personality. Morristown, N.J.: General 

Learning Press. 

Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the 

attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.) Advances in experimental social 

psychology (vol.10, pp.173-200). New York: Academic Press 

Rotter, J. B. (1954). Social learning and clinical psychology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: 

 Prentice-Hall. 

Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus control of 

reinforcement. Psychological Monographs 80 (1 Whole No. 609). 

Rotter, J. B., & Murly, R. C. (1965). Internal versus control of reinforcement and 

decision time. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2, 598-604. 

Salminen, S. & Klen, T. (1994). Accident locus of control and risk taking among 

 forestry and construction workers. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 78, 852-854. 

Sanders, M. G., Halcomb, C. G., Fray, J. M., & Owens, J. M. (1976). Internal-external 

locus of control and performance on a vigilance task. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 

42, 939-943. 

Shaw, L. & Sichel, H. S. (1971). Accident proneness. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 

Soederberg-Miller, L. M., & Lachman, M. E. (2000). Cognitive performance and the role 

 of control beliefs in midlife. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 7, 69-85. 
25

Stanton, N. A., & Young, M. S. (2005). Driver behaviour with adaptive cruise control. 

Ergonomics, 48, 1294-1313. 

Stewart, J. E., & Moore, K. P. (1978). Time perception as a function of locus of 

 control. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 4, 56-58. 

Twenge, J. M., Zhang, L. & Im, C. (2004). It’s beyond my control: A crosstemporal meta-analysis of increasing externality in locus of control, 1960-2002. 

Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8, 308-319. 

Weinstein, N. D. (1980). Unrealistic optimism about future life events. Journal of 

 Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 306-320. 

Weinstein, N. D. (1987). Unrealistic optimism about the susceptibility to health 

 problems: conclusions of a community-wide sample. Journal of Behavioral 

 Medicine, 10, 481-500. 

Weinstein, N. D., & Klein, W. M. (1996). Unrealistic optimism: present and future. 

Journal of Clinical and Social Psychology, 15, 1-8. 

Werrell, K. P. (2005, Winter). Those were the days: Flying safety during the transition to 

jets, 1944-1953. Air Power History, 52(4), 39-53. 

Wichman, H., & Ball, J. (1983). Locus of control, self-serving biases, and attitudes 

toward safety in general aviation pilots. Aviation, Space, and Environmental 

Medicine, 54, 507-510. 

Wilkins, W. E. (1975). Trends in powerlessness: A ten year follow-up. Journal of 

 Psychology, 91, 15-18. 

Wilson, D. R., and Fallshore, M. (2001). Optimistic and ability biases in pilots' 

decisions and perceptions of risk regarding VFR flight into IMC. Proceedings of the 

11th International Symposium on Aviation Psychology, Columbus, Ohio, March 5-8, 

2001.

Wolfle, L. M., & List, J. H. (2004). Temporal stability in the effects of college attendance 

 on locus of control. Structural Equation Modeling, 11, 244-260. 

Wolfle, L. M., & Robertshaw, D. (1982). Effects of college attendance on locus of 

control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43, 802-810. 
26

Wolk, S., & DuCette, J. (1974). Intentional performance and incidental learning as a 

function of personality and task dimensions. Journal of Personality and Social 

Psychology, 29, 90-101. 

Zuckerman, M. (1994). Behavioral expressions and biosocial bases of sensation 

 seeking. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.