Abstract
Operations of decision latitude have been regarded as effective for the reduction of work stress. However, individuals who think that most situations are controlled by powerful others may rather feel stress in high latitude situations. The present study was designed to examine the effect of locus of control on the stress reduction effect of latitude. Latitude was operationalized as whether subjects could select three tasks out of five by themselves or not. For part of the subjective indices, Externals reported more stress than Internals. On the other hand, all indices of stress show no effect of latitude. This result suggests that the operation of decision latitude managed by the task selection might have no effect of stress reduction.
