[Applause]
yeah Oh Johnny you don’t listen I told
you to pick up all these toys an hour
ago
what happened weren’t you supposed to
get your report card today come on hand
it over let me see
oh okay well I guess your sister can be
our honor student
Johnny aren’t you home late today where
were you
detention again this is the third time
oh my god you’re so stupid you don’t
listen
oh here you’re gonna get detention again
and again and again and then get
suspended well where’s your father
Michael come down here you have a
disappointing son so we’ve all heard
these phrases sometimes and they can be
pretty funny but we know that the work
we say can make an impact on others so
throughout me for years I’ve had a lot
of opportunities to get involved in
research and become a research assistant
in different labs and before starting
any research of my own I mainly helped
grad students in seniors collect data
for their experiments and usually this
involved experimenting on little kids
which is a lot of fun so parents would
come with their child and they come into
the lab they’d watch me administer the
experiment and in the end they would ask
me a question they say oh well how did
they do or they say oh you know they
would have done better if they were at
home the worst question was how do we
make the smarter they did so horrible
what should I do
I think oh no not this question again
but I would always have the same answer
I’d say oh they did so great they’re so
hard-working why because their child is
standing right beside them and what I
said could impact the way that that
child perceived themselves and maybe
what I said could impact the way that
that parent perceived their child so his
first introduced to the term locus of
control one summer when I was doing
research with dr. Stephen vici he has
dedicated a great portion of his career
talking about locus of control locus of
control is the debris
which people believe that they can
control the outcomes of events in their
lives so how much you believe that you
can control your life and locus of
control is abbreviated as LOC now this
isn’t about bugs locusts of control its
locusts as in a point or position on a
spectrum so before I continue I’ll
demonstrate so how many of you have seen
the water bottle flipping trend on the
Internet now if you haven’t it’s ok it’s
really simple
basically you tried to flip a water
bottle and make it land up right so this
might take me a few tries forgive me but
I’ll try my best
ok let’s see ok whoa thank you thank you
ok so that was exciting
so this wasn’t an April Fool’s joke this
wasn’t something that was for no reason
I have a question to ask you guys do you
think I was able to do this because of
luck or because I had practiced
beforehand
so how many think luck and how many
think I’d practice beforehand ok great
so if you thought that I was able to do
this because I practiced beforehand you
would get a point towards internal on
our scale because you believed that I
had control over the situation I
practiced and I was able to do this if
you answered Luck you would get a point
towards external on our scale because
you believe that outside forces other
things chance impacted this outcome
overall when you take a full locus of
control questionnaire if you answer more
points internally your internal or you
think you can control most things in
your life and if you get more points for
its external you think other people
other things powerful others chance
impacts most of your life now what do I
think
I’m very internal I know that what I do
can affect my outcome so I practice this
as much as I could before coming here I
looked up how to do this figured out a
way that this would work for me figured
out little hacks and tips so I picked a
water bottle with a big surface area at
the bottom I figured out how much water
to fill only one thirds of the way
I kind of figured out when to release I
just practice this annoyed my roommate
yeah the whole works
so overall is it more beneficial to be
internal or external overall studies
show internal now before any of you get
upset because you pick luck in this
situation don’t worry this is just one
question and you have to take a full
locus of control questionnaire to figure
out if you’re more internal or external
if you take the full questionnaire it
takes many factors into account also you
want to remember that locus of control
is measured on a continuum so scoring
exclusively internal or external is very
rare and you don’t want a really score
exclusively internal thinking more
externally can help in situations where
being to internal would be inappropriate
so for example if you put out your
recycling and it was never picked up by
your waste management company that
wouldn’t be your fault right but if you
were to internal and you blamed yourself
and you thought you can control
everything
then you’d be thinking to internally and
thinking more externally and realizing
that other things impacted your
situation would be beneficial now if you
put your recycling out on the wrong day
but you blame the company for not
picking it up then you’d be thinking to
externally you wouldn’t realize that you
were to blame you were the cause of the
problem
so why was i interested in this what
initially attracted me did this so I’ll
give you an example say there are two
students in the classroom and one is
internal and one is external but they
both failed their exam if you ask them
why did you fail your exam the internal
student would say that this was because
they didn’t study hard enough and that’s
why they didn’t do really well if you
ask the external student they would say
they hated their professor and they
weren’t wearing their lucky shirt so on
the next exam
what would you see you would most likely
see that that internal student studied
harder and received a better score that
external student would have just worn
their lucky shirt and not seen a change
in their grade and studies reflect this
studies show that locus of control is
the single most important factor in
determining academic achievement and six
even when IQ is controlled for so since
the 50s hundreds of thousands of
experiments have been conducted about
this concept an academic achievement is
just one of the things that they studied
overall being internal F helps in many
many areas of life and yeah academic
achievement is one of them so my first
example is elite athletes and I’m just
gonna be mentioning my favorite studies
but you can go look and find some more
of your own
so elite athletes are significantly more
likely to be internal and Muhammad Ali
is my favorite example he has quotes
that go I am the greatest I said that
before I knew I was he also says I hated
every minute of training but I said
don’t quit suffer now and live the rest
of your life as a champion great
internal phrasing to drug and alcohol
addiction is significantly less common
amongst internals why because they’re
less likely to be coerced to is bullying
internal students are less likely to
face bullying so as an internal student
if a bully came up to me and said oh I
hate your shoes what are those I would
say these are my Crocs and I like them
lastly dialysis patients are
significantly more likely to adhere to
treatment because if their internal why
because they believe what they do will
impact their health so if they follow
treatment they’ll see better health
outcomes so after reading these papers
and hundreds of others the papers I
think there was something missing I
couldn’t find something why wasn’t
anyone trying to make people think more
internally or just change locus of
control so I looked for more studies I
couldn’t find anything but I thought if
someone could find an intervention if
someone could change locus of control
this would open up a whole new realm of
locus of control research so funny
enough I was taking a psych methods
class and I had to pick an experiment to
study that semester I had some time I
thought well why not so I talked to my
group and we decided to see if we could
change locus of control in a short
period of time
four minutes to be exact why four
minutes because shorter interventions
are easier to implement and that’s what
we wanted is this work to work we wanted
it to be implemented so what do we do
we had a pretest the measured locus of
control and then we had our intervention
video and that was only four minutes
long and then we had a post-test that
measured what happened to locus of
control afterwards so the intervention
was a valence video and valence means
charge so charged with positive language
and imagery or negative language and
imagery so our positive video was a
workout motivation video people were
waking up early to go to the gym they
were climbing up mountains living off
heavy weights and the external video was
negative it was about climate change and
how nothing could be done to change the
climate people were crying floods were
washing away homes and politicians
weren’t able to come up with the
consensus on what to do so we
hypothesized that after watching the
positive video our participants on
average would become more internal and
realized they did have control over
their lives after watching the negative
video they would become more external
realizing that there were some things
that that were out of their control
so what do we find I’ll show you with
some of the data with this table so on
our y-axis we see locus of control score
so the higher the score the more
external the lower the score more
internal on our x-axis we see which
participant group they were in they
either watch a positive video or the
negative video so this blue bar shows
our pretest for locus of control before
they watch the positive video and our
post tests we see that scores became
statistically significantly more
internal after watching the positive
video this blue bar shows what our locus
of control scores were before watching
the negative video and those
participants became more external but
this wasn’t statistically significant
so overall the good news is it’s pretty
easy to think more internally but it’s
more challenging to think externally so
why am I here today why are you here
today why do I need your help so we have
to change our locus of control
we know that by just the way we’re
thinking that’s going to impact our
outcomes so it would be my dream to
implement an intervention in workplaces
in schools and hospitals but
intervention is very difficult without
community support so I thought we would
implement some ideas amongst ourselves
so I’ve come up with some ideas through
my research to help you think and act
more internally but you can apply these
to other areas of your life of course so
the first one is parenting I’m not a
parent so I don’t want to tell parents
what to do but we can all change the way
we interact with kids this is important
because locus of control is learned so
we want to teach kids the thought
process of being internal while they’re
young so if your child did really well
don’t tell your son oh you’re so smart
I’m so proud of you
tell them you’re so hard-working I’m so
proud of you why because being smart is
out of a child’s control but being
hard-working isn’t being hard-working
shows that what you do impacts your
outcome and that’s exactly how it
internal things also if your child wants
to try something new
encourage them motivate them don’t tear
them down make them think that they can
do anything they set their minds to
as long
they put in the effort health so when
trying to achieve a new fitness goal
it’s important to believe in yourself
now I believe in setting attainable
goals but if you know you can’t do
something don’t do it if I wanted to do
a backflip right now that would be very
bad idea because I had scoliosis surgery
as a kid you would have to take me to
the hospital across the street no no no
but I know I could run a 10k so if my
goal was to run an eight-minute mile or
run a 10-minute mile but I didn’t think
I could even run a 15-minute mile then I
wouldn’t run it all and I wouldn’t reach
anywhere close to my goal number two if
you or someone you know has been
diagnosed with an illness it’s important
to try and believe that your treatment
will work so consult your health care
providers come up with a treatment plan
and most importantly practice it and
also believe it’ll work
so the placebo effect kind of comes into
this so the placebo effect is is really
interesting to me if a lot of times
medications work just as well as
placebos drugs that are just sugar pills
they don’t really do anything depression
medications have been shown to work just
as well as perceived placebos and even
activate the same regions of the brain
as SSRIs so it’s important to Regis
believe that something will work it
might actually work for you so lastly
our environment so it’s important to
make sure that you encourage others who
are going through a difficult time
empower them motivate them create a
positive environment why because our
environment really impacts our
perceptions if you surround yourself
with external people who blame others
who victimize themselves and don’t take
responsibility for their actions it’s
going to be harder to remain as internal
as you could be lastly try and change
your perceptions and realize that
there’s some things that you could
actually change just by the way that
you’re thinking so for example if you
have a situation and you need to realize
that you’d actually didn’t do so well
think could I have done something
differently change your person
options really be self-actualized so
overall I want you to take a few
messages with you surround yourself with
positivity and encouragement also be
more more self-aware just know that how
you perceive your situations matter if
you need help thinking more internally
just know it may only take four minutes
so let’s share more inspiring stories
let’s empower others and ourselves
because ultimately you can change your
life just by changing the way you’re
perceiving it thank you
[Applause]
yeah Oh Johnny you don’t listen I told
you to pick up all these toys an hour
ago
what happened weren’t you supposed to
get your report card today come on hand
it over let me see
oh okay well I guess your sister can be
our honor student
Johnny aren’t you home late today where
were you
detention again this is the third time
oh my god you’re so stupid you don’t
listen
oh here you’re gonna get detention again
and again and again and then get
suspended well where’s your father
Michael come down here you have a
disappointing son so we’ve all heard
these phrases sometimes and they can be
pretty funny but we know that the work
we say can make an impact on others so
throughout me for years I’ve had a lot
of opportunities to get involved in
research and become a research assistant
in different labs and before starting
any research of my own I mainly helped
grad students in seniors collect data
for their experiments and usually this
involved experimenting on little kids
which is a lot of fun so parents would
come with their child and they come into
the lab they’d watch me administer the
experiment and in the end they would ask
me a question they say oh well how did
they do or they say oh you know they
would have done better if they were at
home the worst question was how do we
make the smarter they did so horrible
what should I do
I think oh no not this question again
but I would always have the same answer
I’d say oh they did so great they’re so
hard-working why because their child is
standing right beside them and what I
said could impact the way that that
child perceived themselves and maybe
what I said could impact the way that
that parent perceived their child so his
first introduced to the term locus of
control one summer when I was doing
research with dr. Stephen vici he has
dedicated a great portion of his career
talking about locus of control locus of
control is the debris
which people believe that they can
control the outcomes of events in their
lives so how much you believe that you
can control your life and locus of
control is abbreviated as LOC now this
isn’t about bugs locusts of control its
locusts as in a point or position on a
spectrum so before I continue I’ll
demonstrate so how many of you have seen
the water bottle flipping trend on the
Internet now if you haven’t it’s ok it’s
really simple
basically you tried to flip a water
bottle and make it land up right so this
might take me a few tries forgive me but
I’ll try my best
ok let’s see ok whoa thank you thank you
ok so that was exciting
so this wasn’t an April Fool’s joke this
wasn’t something that was for no reason
I have a question to ask you guys do you
think I was able to do this because of
luck or because I had practiced
beforehand
so how many think luck and how many
think I’d practice beforehand ok great
so if you thought that I was able to do
this because I practiced beforehand you
would get a point towards internal on
our scale because you believed that I
had control over the situation I
practiced and I was able to do this if
you answered Luck you would get a point
towards external on our scale because
you believe that outside forces other
things chance impacted this outcome
overall when you take a full locus of
control questionnaire if you answer more
points internally your internal or you
think you can control most things in
your life and if you get more points for
its external you think other people
other things powerful others chance
impacts most of your life now what do I
think
I’m very internal I know that what I do
can affect my outcome so I practice this
as much as I could before coming here I
looked up how to do this figured out a
way that this would work for me figured
out little hacks and tips so I picked a
water bottle with a big surface area at
the bottom I figured out how much water
to fill only one thirds of the way
I kind of figured out when to release I
just practice this annoyed my roommate
yeah the whole works
so overall is it more beneficial to be
internal or external overall studies
show internal now before any of you get
upset because you pick luck in this
situation don’t worry this is just one
question and you have to take a full
locus of control questionnaire to figure
out if you’re more internal or external
if you take the full questionnaire it
takes many factors into account also you
want to remember that locus of control
is measured on a continuum so scoring
exclusively internal or external is very
rare and you don’t want a really score
exclusively internal thinking more
externally can help in situations where
being to internal would be inappropriate
so for example if you put out your
recycling and it was never picked up by
your waste management company that
wouldn’t be your fault right but if you
were to internal and you blamed yourself
and you thought you can control
everything
then you’d be thinking to internally and
thinking more externally and realizing
that other things impacted your
situation would be beneficial now if you
put your recycling out on the wrong day
but you blame the company for not
picking it up then you’d be thinking to
externally you wouldn’t realize that you
were to blame you were the cause of the
problem
so why was i interested in this what
initially attracted me did this so I’ll
give you an example say there are two
students in the classroom and one is
internal and one is external but they
both failed their exam if you ask them
why did you fail your exam the internal
student would say that this was because
they didn’t study hard enough and that’s
why they didn’t do really well if you
ask the external student they would say
they hated their professor and they
weren’t wearing their lucky shirt so on
the next exam
what would you see you would most likely
see that that internal student studied
harder and received a better score that
external student would have just worn
their lucky shirt and not seen a change
in their grade and studies reflect this
studies show that locus of control is
the single most important factor in
determining academic achievement and six
even when IQ is controlled for so since
the 50s hundreds of thousands of
experiments have been conducted about
this concept an academic achievement is
just one of the things that they studied
overall being internal F helps in many
many areas of life and yeah academic
achievement is one of them so my first
example is elite athletes and I’m just
gonna be mentioning my favorite studies
but you can go look and find some more
of your own
so elite athletes are significantly more
likely to be internal and Muhammad Ali
is my favorite example he has quotes
that go I am the greatest I said that
before I knew I was he also says I hated
every minute of training but I said
don’t quit suffer now and live the rest
of your life as a champion great
internal phrasing to drug and alcohol
addiction is significantly less common
amongst internals why because they’re
less likely to be coerced to is bullying
internal students are less likely to
face bullying so as an internal student
if a bully came up to me and said oh I
hate your shoes what are those I would
say these are my Crocs and I like them
lastly dialysis patients are
significantly more likely to adhere to
treatment because if their internal why
because they believe what they do will
impact their health so if they follow
treatment they’ll see better health
outcomes so after reading these papers
and hundreds of others the papers I
think there was something missing I
couldn’t find something why wasn’t
anyone trying to make people think more
internally or just change locus of
control so I looked for more studies I
couldn’t find anything but I thought if
someone could find an intervention if
someone could change locus of control
this would open up a whole new realm of
locus of control research so funny
enough I was taking a psych methods
class and I had to pick an experiment to
study that semester I had some time I
thought well why not so I talked to my
group and we decided to see if we could
change locus of control in a short
period of time
four minutes to be exact why four
minutes because shorter interventions
are easier to implement and that’s what
we wanted is this work to work we wanted
it to be implemented so what do we do
we had a pretest the measured locus of
control and then we had our intervention
video and that was only four minutes
long and then we had a post-test that
measured what happened to locus of
control afterwards so the intervention
was a valence video and valence means
charge so charged with positive language
and imagery or negative language and
imagery so our positive video was a
workout motivation video people were
waking up early to go to the gym they
were climbing up mountains living off
heavy weights and the external video was
negative it was about climate change and
how nothing could be done to change the
climate people were crying floods were
washing away homes and politicians
weren’t able to come up with the
consensus on what to do so we
hypothesized that after watching the
positive video our participants on
average would become more internal and
realized they did have control over
their lives after watching the negative
video they would become more external
realizing that there were some things
that that were out of their control
so what do we find I’ll show you with
some of the data with this table so on
our y-axis we see locus of control score
so the higher the score the more
external the lower the score more
internal on our x-axis we see which
participant group they were in they
either watch a positive video or the
negative video so this blue bar shows
our pretest for locus of control before
they watch the positive video and our
post tests we see that scores became
statistically significantly more
internal after watching the positive
video this blue bar shows what our locus
of control scores were before watching
the negative video and those
participants became more external but
this wasn’t statistically significant
so overall the good news is it’s pretty
easy to think more internally but it’s
more challenging to think externally so
why am I here today why are you here
today why do I need your help so we have
to change our locus of control
we know that by just the way we’re
thinking that’s going to impact our
outcomes so it would be my dream to
implement an intervention in workplaces
in schools and hospitals but
intervention is very difficult without
community support so I thought we would
implement some ideas amongst ourselves
so I’ve come up with some ideas through
my research to help you think and act
more internally but you can apply these
to other areas of your life of course so
the first one is parenting I’m not a
parent so I don’t want to tell parents
what to do but we can all change the way
we interact with kids this is important
because locus of control is learned so
we want to teach kids the thought
process of being internal while they’re
young so if your child did really well
don’t tell your son oh you’re so smart
I’m so proud of you
tell them you’re so hard-working I’m so
proud of you why because being smart is
out of a child’s control but being
hard-working isn’t being hard-working
shows that what you do impacts your
outcome and that’s exactly how it
internal things also if your child wants
to try something new
encourage them motivate them don’t tear
them down make them think that they can
do anything they set their minds to
as long
they put in the effort health so when
trying to achieve a new fitness goal
it’s important to believe in yourself
now I believe in setting attainable
goals but if you know you can’t do
something don’t do it if I wanted to do
a backflip right now that would be very
bad idea because I had scoliosis surgery
as a kid you would have to take me to
the hospital across the street no no no
but I know I could run a 10k so if my
goal was to run an eight-minute mile or
run a 10-minute mile but I didn’t think
I could even run a 15-minute mile then I
wouldn’t run it all and I wouldn’t reach
anywhere close to my goal number two if
you or someone you know has been
diagnosed with an illness it’s important
to try and believe that your treatment
will work so consult your health care
providers come up with a treatment plan
and most importantly practice it and
also believe it’ll work
so the placebo effect kind of comes into
this so the placebo effect is is really
interesting to me if a lot of times
medications work just as well as
placebos drugs that are just sugar pills
they don’t really do anything depression
medications have been shown to work just
as well as perceived placebos and even
activate the same regions of the brain
as SSRIs so it’s important to Regis
believe that something will work it
might actually work for you so lastly
our environment so it’s important to
make sure that you encourage others who
are going through a difficult time
empower them motivate them create a
positive environment why because our
environment really impacts our
perceptions if you surround yourself
with external people who blame others
who victimize themselves and don’t take
responsibility for their actions it’s
going to be harder to remain as internal
as you could be lastly try and change
your perceptions and realize that
there’s some things that you could
actually change just by the way that
you’re thinking so for example if you
have a situation and you need to realize
that you’d actually didn’t do so well
think could I have done something
differently change your person
options really be self-actualized so
overall I want you to take a few
messages with you surround yourself with
positivity and encouragement also be
more more self-aware just know that how
you perceive your situations matter if
you need help thinking more internally
just know it may only take four minutes
so let’s share more inspiring stories
let’s empower others and ourselves
because ultimately you can change your
life just by changing the way you’re
perceiving it thank you
[Applause]
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