Exploring Locus of Control in Offender Cognition and Recidivism Paradigms

Working with four Washington State county jails to administer surveys to currently incarcerated inmates, we investigated locus of control and beliefs in the likelihood of continued legal involvement as possible antecedents to criminal recidivism. The surveys examined whether there was any connection between legal involvement frequency and the externalization of locus of control. We investigated external locus of control with specific respect to involvement with the law, the prospect of future incarceration, and feelings concerning the overall cause of original and/or sustained legal involvement utilizing the Revised Causal Dimension Scale (McAuley, Duncan, & Russell, 1992). We identified statistically significant interactions between these variables and built a significant predictive path model beginning with elements of locus of control and terminating on increased legal involvement.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (MS)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Experimental Psychology

Year dc:date.available

2019

Authors dc:creator

• Lightning, Anistasha
• Polage, Danielle

Contributors dc:contributor

• Danielle Polage
• Megan Matheson
• Ralf Greenwald

• criminal
• psychology
• jail
• hopelessness
• incarceration
• stress
• Cognitive Psychology
• Counseling
• Counseling Psychology
• Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminology
• Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Health Law and Policy
• Law and Psychology
• Law Enforcement and Corrections
• Legal Studies
• Other Psychology
• Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance
• Social Psychology

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd/1198

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.cwu.edu:etd-2195