Learned helplessness in humans: A frustration-produced response pattern.

Abstract

Two experiments test the learned helplessness model versus Amsel's behavioral persistence model to explain response deficits following uncontrollable loud-noise exposures. College students exposed to uncontrollabl e loud noise showed performance deficits relative to controllable and no-preexposure groups. Analyses of these findings indicated that the performance deficits were directly related to response-outcome relations learned during uncontrollable preexposure. This finding was interpreted as being in agreement with Amsel's behavioral persistence model and is in contradition to the learned helplessness model. Causal explanations of clinical depression continue to be diverse, yet a comparatively large amount of research has been generated by Seligman's (1975) learned helplessness model. Helplessness is the behavior manifested when an organism learns that an outcome and response are independent. The learned helplessness paradigm was developed in the laboratory and has served as an analogue model of clinical depression. In this paradigm a group preexposed to uncontrollable outcome events is expected to display certain performance deficits (learned helplessness) on a soluble transfer task relative to controllable and no-preexposure groups. The critical stage of this process for the helpless organism presumably is a developed cognitive expectation that response and outcome are independent events. Coincidental with this cognitive expectation is a reduction in the organism's motivation to respond, with the resultant behavioral deficits. Seligman (1975) extended the human and infrahuman (Maier & Seligman, 1976) This article is based on portions of a doctoral dissertation submitted in 1978 to the Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Binghamton. I am especially grateful to Donald J. Levis, who served as chairman of my committee, and to Harold Babb, Stephen A. Lisman, and Norman E. Spear, who served as members of my committee. I am grateful also to William J. House, who provided helpful comments on earlier drafts on this manuscript.