Monday, January 28, 2019, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EST

STEPHEN NOWICKI, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Psychology Emeritus

“Choice or Chance: Locus of Control”

Anything but ‘retired” after 50 much lauded years of teaching psychology at Emory—and comparably distinguished years of clinical practice and research in the field—Steve Nowicki is ready to report on the results of a three-year grant from the Templeton Foundation, a grant enabled by a prior Heilbrun grant from our own College of Arts and Sciences that has allowed him to pursue his long-time interest in the impact of “locus of control” with extensive work in England. What is “locus of control” you ask? Well, as Steve explains,

Our locus of control reflects how much we expect what happens to us is due to our own choices or to chance.  I have studied the implications of locus of control on the personal lives of children and adults for decades and concluded it is a key to personal, social, and academic successes.  With the help of [the Heilbrun] in 2012, I was able to obtain a Templeton grant to study locus of control in the lives of all children born in 1991 in Bristol, England, and their parents over the past 27 years.  What I found has profound implications for the way we live our lives and raise our children.

And what he found, he’ll share with us today. Since we are still “living our lives” (and still “raising” our children, and grandchildren, and, in some cases, great-grandchildren) we may find Steve’s report useful, in this happy new year, as well as intere