the purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between attempts made by overweight women to lose weight and the internal-external (i-e) personality dimension. it was hypothesized that: 1) overweight women who joined a weight reducing club would tend to be more internal than a control group of overweight women who had not joined a weight reducing club; 2) overweight women who were relatively internal would lose more weight than those who were relatively external; 3) decreases in individual i-e scores over a 4-6 week period would correlate with the degree of personal success at losing weight.