Learned Helplessness and Positive Psychology

Flashcards covering the origins, experimental designs, criticisms, and applications of learned helplessness and learned optimism as discussed in the lecture.

Learned Helplessness

A behavioral phenomenon where an individual gives up or stops showing motivation to escape aversive stimuli because they believe that nothing they do makes a difference.

Martin Seligman

The researcher whose team developed the theoretical basis for learned helplessness, learned optimism, and positive psychology.

Meyer

The researcher who conducted shuttle box experiments in the late 1960s using dogs in harnesses to demonstrate the learned helplessness phenomenon.

Shuttle Box Experiment

An enclosure or box used in research where animals (like dogs) learn to jump over a barrier to escape an electrified floor when a light goes out.

Three Group Design

The original experimental structure for learned helplessness consisting of a control group (no pre-training), a controllable group (experienced escape), and an uncontrollable group (exposed to shocks in a harness).

Yoked Design (Triadic Design)

An experimental design where the level of punishment in the uncontrollable group is mapped exactly to the exposures received by the controllable group to ensure the effect is due to lack of control, not the amount of punishment.

Motivational Deficit

One of the two primary deficits in learned helplessness where an animal or person loses the drive to fight back or respond to aversive situations.

Emotional Deficit

A component of learned helplessness where an individual feels beaten down and stops trying to fight back, often described as a sense of giving up.

Perception of Non-Contingency

The belief that the probability of success or escape given a specific response is equal to the probability of success given no response, represented as $P(\text{escape}|\text{response}) = P(\text{escape}|\text{no response})$.

Human Learned Helplessness Observations

Unlike animals, humans typically show a decline in performance rather than a total loss of control, manifesting as slower responding, poor accuracy, or taking longer to reach criterion levels.

Last Trials Bias

A confounding effect in yoked designs where raw mapping of outcomes can look like learning (repeated success at the end), which is addressed by randomizing the sequence of yoked outcomes.

Weinfeld (1960s study)

A study that attempted to separate failure feedback from controllability, finding that performance deficits were greatest when participants received both uncontrollable tasks and negative feedback.

Matute Study

A study demonstrating that when outcomes are uncontrollable but involve high positive reinforcement (randomly successful 75% of the time), people develop an illusion of control rather than helplessness.

Illusion of Control

The tendency to overestimate control over outcomes, often seen in gambling or during high rates of reinforcement, which contradicts learned helplessness expectations.

Marika Tigerman

A researcher who investigated the generalization problem, finding that helplessness effects are stronger when the test task and training task are similar (e.g., both involving anagrams).

John Teaser

A speaker at a talk in Cambridge who questioned Seligman on why one-third of dogs did not develop learned helplessness, leading to the reformulated theory.

Reformulated Theory of Learned Helplessness

An updated theory that includes attributional style, suggesting that how people interpret the reason for failure (internal vs. external, global vs. specific, stable vs. unstable) determines if they become helpless.

Healthy Attribution Style

Attributing positive events to internal, stable, and global factors while attributing negative events to external, unstable, and specific factors.

Learned Optimism

A construct and movement by Seligman focused on learning positive attributional styles to build resilience and potentially inoculate individuals against depression.

Optimism Bias

A cognitive bias where individuals are overly optimistic in situations where it may not be adaptive, such as in risk-taking or gambling.