Recent research suggests that the personality trait Locus of Control(LOC) can
be a reliable predictor of performance when learning a new visualization
tool. While these results are compelling and have direct implications to
visualization design, the relationship between a user's LOC measure and their
performance is not well understood. We hypothesize that there is a dependent
relationship between LOC and performance; specifically, a person's
orientation on the LOC scale directly influences their performance when
learning new visualizations. To test this hypothesis, we conduct an
experiment with 300 subjects using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. We adapt
techniques from personality psychology to manipulate a user's LOC so that
users are either primed to be more internally or externally oriented on the
LOC scale. Replicating previous studies investigating the effect of LOC on
performance, we measure users' speed and accuracy as they use visualizations
with varying visual metaphors. Our findings demonstrate that changing a
user's LOC impacts their performance. We find that a change in users' LOC
results in performance changes.