Avoidance Learning and Learned Helplessness

Avoidance Learning

• Definition: A process where an organism learns to avoid a negative stimulus through specific responses.
• Example: A student studies hard to avoid bad grades after experiencing one. Behavioral pattern persists even without new negative outcomes.

Learned Helplessness

• Definition: A deficit in avoidance learning where an organism feels it has no control over negative outcomes due to exposure to uncontrollable aversive stimuli.
• Origin: First identified by Martin Seligman and colleagues through experiments with dogs.
• Findings: Dogs exposed to inescapable shocks failed to learn to avoid shocks later, indicating persistent learned helplessness.
• Implications: Explains inability to escape negative situations in humans, such as depression or abusive relationships, and why some students give up after failure.