Impression management and testing for control locus in an alcoholic sample

In response to a debate as to whether alcoholics as a group score in an internal or an external direction on Rotter's I-E Scale, a projective, TAT measure of locus of control was proposed. In this pilot study a multivariate storytelling measure was used to test the hypothesis that alcoholics may resort to "impression management" when responding to questionnaires and that a "projective" device may yield different results regarding personality variables like locus of control. An internal score on the I-E was observed for 30 alcoholic subjects to shift to an external score on the Thematic Locus of Control (TLC). Spearman's rho for I-E and TLC was .47 (p less than .001). Six subjects had markedly incongruent ranks across instruments; three of these were extreme I-E "internals" who shifted to extreme TLC "externals."