Locus of control and effects of failure on perfomance and perceived competence

Reactions to related performance feedback of 117 internal and external eighth-grade children were investigated under conditions which made denial of personal responsibility for outcomes difficult. Both internals and externals were equally pleased by success feedback and displeased by failure and their competence judgement was influenced by the feedback received. However, internals exhibited more effective coping with failure than did externals. They improved their performance following failure feedback relatively more than after success and no external feedback conditions, and their percieved competance did not decrease in comparison with externals.