CONCEPT
Locus of Control (Rotter)
Julian Rotter's 1960s construct measuring whether people believe outcomes are determined by their actions (internal locus) or by external forces—the single best predictor of addiction resistance in Peele's framework.
Locus of control, introduced by social psychologist Julian Rotter in the 1960s, describes a fundamental dimension of personality: the degree to which individuals attribute life outcomes to their own agency versus external circumstances. People with internal locus believe their actions matter and that effort influences results; those with external locus experience outcomes as determined by luck, fate, powerful others, or systems beyond their control. Decades of research established that internal locus correlates with better health, greater resilience, higher achievement, and—crucially for Peele's framework—lower rates of addiction. The mechanism is straightforward: people who believe they can shape their circumstances are less likely to seek artificial means of coping with circumstances experienced as unshapeable. Peele incorporated this finding into his core addiction theory: the addictive experience always provides a simulation of agency to someone whose life denies genuine agency. For AI productive addiction, the pattern inverts—the tool provides real agency, genuine capacity to shape outcomes, making the addiction simultaneously more compelling and more justified.
