Control theory: A useful conceptual framework for personality–social, clinical, and health psychology.

TLDR

Control theory is a long‑standing model of self‑regulation, originating from cybernetic ideas and formalized by Wiener, that has influenced diverse fields such as engineering and mathematics. The authors aim to illustrate control theory’s broad applicability by presenting its core discrepancy‑reducing feedback loop and exploring its implications across personality‑social, clinical, and health psychology, concluding with its integrative potential and future research directions. They describe the basic construct of control theory—a discrepancy‑reducing feedback loop—and discuss how it applies to theory in three distinct areas of human psychology. The construct aligns well with known phenomena and recent theories in personality‑social, clinical, and health psychology, and uniquely contributes to each field.

Abstract

Control theory provides a model of self-regulati on that we believe is useful in the analysis of human behavior. As an illustration of the breadth of its applicability, we present the basic construct of control theory—the discrepancy-reducing feedback loop—and discuss certain of its implications for theory in three separate areas of human psychology. In personality-s ocial, clinical, and health psychology, the construct proves to fit well with known phenomena and with the theories most recently developed to account for the phenomena. Moreover, in each case control theory appears to make a distinct and unique contribution to the state of the area. We conclude by noting the integrative potential that is suggested by these illustrations and by noting some issues that should receive attention in future work. Cybernetic or control theory is a general approach to the understanding of self-regulating systems. Its central ideas have been around for a long time (see, for example, Cannon's 1929, 1932, discussion of homeostatic physiological mechanisms), but its birth as a distinct body of thought is usually traced to the publication of Wiener's (1948) book, Cybernetics: Control and communication in the animal and the machine. Since then, control theory (in various forms) has had a major impact on areas of work as diverse as engineering (e.g., Dransfield, 1968; Ogata, 1970), applied mathematics (e.g.,