Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Learned helplessness is the group of motivational, cognitive, and emotional deficits that can result from repeated exposure to events if they are perceived to be uncontrollable. The phenomenon was discovered serendipitously in the laboratory of Richard Solomon by his students including Seligman, Maier, Leaf, and Overmier ( Overmier & Seligman 1967 ; Seligman & Maier 1967 ). During experiments in which dogs in Pavlovian hammocks (harnesses used to restrict movement) were exposed to a tone (conditioned stimulus) paired with an electric shock (unconditioned stimulus), researchers realized that the dogs were unable to learn to escape shocks in a later controllable situation. In order to examine the hypothesis that deficits were due to exposure to non-contingent (uncontrollable by the dogs) events, researchers designed “triadic design” experiments where animals were first exposed to one of three training phases: (1) no training; (2) training with outcomes that were not controllable by the animals; and (3) training with controllable outcomes. In the control condition, dogs were not exposed to any shock. In the second condition, experimenters shocked the dogs for 5 seconds 64 times. The dogs were able to cut the shocks short by pressing panels on either side of their heads. Dogs in the third condition were “yoked” to dogs in the second condition. Yoked means that the dogs were ... log in or subscribe to read full text