Immunization against learned helplessness in the cockroach (Periplaneta americana)

Cockroaches exposed to one day of escapable shock prior to three days of inescapable shock did not become helpless on a shuttlebox-escape task. Like dogs and rats, cockroaches are immunized against learned helplessness by prior experience with escapable shock.     

Learned helplessness in the cockroach (Periplaneta americana)

For 3 consecutive days cockroaches (Periplaneta americana) were exposed to either escapable, inescapable, or no shock in an escape task. Twenty-four hours later they were tested in a shuttlebox escape task. There were reliable differences between escapable and inescapable animals and between inescapable and control animals in both escape latencies and the number of failures to escape.     

Persistence of learned helplessness in humans

The duration of the effects of a common learned helplessness induction procedure, exposure to insoluble concept-formation problems, was assessed by varying the interval between the induction procedure and subsequent exposure to soluble anagrams. Participants tested immediately or 30 min after the induction procedure exhibited reliable helplessness deficits on all dependent measures. These effects, relative to the performance of a nonhelpless control group, were absent in subjects who experienced delays of 2 or 6 hr before anagram testing. The implications of these results for the development of more enduring helplessness effects and for the conducting of research into analogue intervention are discussed.     

The generality of learned helplessness in the rat

Two experiments were simultaneously conducted in which two different groups of 40 rats each were exposed to one of two different stressors. In both experiments half the subjects were pretreated with shock, half with underwater exposure. For each pretreatment stressor, half the subjects were allowed to escape, the other half were not. The experiments differed in the test task used. Approximately 24 hr after pretreatment, one-half the subjects from each pretreatment group received 20 water-escape trials in an underwater maze, the other half received 20 shock-escape trials in a two-way shuttle box. The subjects in each of the inescapable pretreatment conditions were slower to escape in the subsequent shock-escape and water-escape tasks when compared with subjects in the corresponding escapable pretreatment condition. The “learned helplessness” effect appeared to be no smaller when aversive stimuli were changed between pretreatment and test than when they remained the same.     

Three accounts of the learned helplessness effect

Two experiments tested predictions drawn from test anxiety theory, learned helplessness theory, and Wortman and Brehm's (1975) integration of helplessness and reactance theories. Experiment 1 demonstrated that performance deficits predicted by learned helplessness do not rely on experimenter-induced failure. It also showed such deficits to be unrelated either to negative affect following exposure to pretreatment or to causal attributions about pretreatment task performance. Experiment 2 showed that experience of uncontrollability need not result in impaired performance, because failure on an unimportant task did not produce the deficits predicted by learned helplessness theory. This result provides qualified support for the integrative model. Finally, because the subjective measures used in Experiment 2 were not consistent with performance measures, the reliability of self-reports is questioned.     

Sex differences in attributions and learned helplessness

This investigation assessed the hypothesis that girls are more likely to be learned helpless in math than boys. Students in grades 5 through 11 completed questionnaires assessing their causal attributions for success and failure in mathematics, their self-concepts of math ability, and their expectations for both current and future success in math. Results indicated that sex differences in attributions depended on the type of methodology used (open-ended or rank-ordered questions). The most consistent difference involved the differential use and ranking of ability, skills, and consistent effort. No sex differences were found in either students' perceptions of their own math ability or in their current achievement expectations. Girls, however, rated their future expectations slightly lower than did boys. Taken together, these results provide little support for the hypothesis that girls are generally more learned helpless in mathematics than are boys.     

Reconsideration of the role of competing responses in demonstrations of the interference effect (learned helplessness)

In Experiment 1a, rats trained to escape shock by performing a 2-s inactive response were less impaired on a subsequent 2-way shuttle response than their yoked counterparts that received inescapable shock. In contrast, in Experiment 1b, rats trained to escape shock by performing a longer duration inactive response were more impaired on the subsequent escape task than their inescapably shocked counterparts. In Experiment 2, the results of Experiments 1a and 1b were replicated, and the inactive responses performed during pretreatment by both the escapable and inescapable shock groups were assessed and correlated with test stage 2-way shuttle escape performance. These activity data indicate that inactivity during pretreatment shock in both escapable and inescapable shock groups was a highly reliable predictor of subsequent 2-way shuttle performance, irrespective of the pretreatment shock contingency to which these Ss were exposed.     

Attributional style and the generality of learned helplessness

According to the logic of the attribution reformulation of learned helplessness, the interaction of two factors influences whether helplessness experienced in one situation will transfer to a new situation. The model predicts that people who exhibit a style of attributing negative outcomes to global factors will show helplessness deficits in new situations that are either similar or dissimilar to the original situation in which they were helpless. In contrast, people who exhibit a style of attributing negative outcomes to only specific factors will show helplessness deficits in situations that are similar, but not dissimilar, to the original situation in which they were helpless. To test these predictions, we conducted two studies in which undergraduates with either a global or specific attributional style for negative outcomes were given one of three pretreatments in the typical helplessness triadic design: controllable bursts of noise, uncontrollable bursts of noise, or no noise. In Experiment 1, students were tested for helplessness deficits in a test situation similar to the pretreatment setting, whereas in Experiment 2, they were tested in a test situation dissimilar to the pretreatment setting. The findings were consistent with predictions of the reformulated helplessness theory.     

Situation similarity and the generalization of learned helplessness

An experiment is reported which investigated the effects of situation similarity on learned helplessness. After initial pretreatment strong helplessness effects were found on a similar, but not on a dissimilar, test task. It was concluded that situation similarity is an important determinant of the generalization of the learned helplessness phenomenon.     

A re-view of cognitive mediators in learned helplessness

The findings of Oakes and Curtis (1982), Tennen, Drum, Gillen, and Stanton (1982), and Tennen, Gillen, and Drum (1982) provide a challenge to learned helplessness theory's focus on cognitive mediators of the helplessness phenomenon. In response to these findings, Alloy (1982) argues that these studies do not challenge helplessness theory because they do not measure expected control and because they confuse necessary and sufficient causes of learned helplessness. Silver, Wortman, and Klos (1982) contend that these studies provide an inadequate test of the model because subjects are confronted with experiences which are unlike those in their natural environment. The present article argues that by Alloy's (1982) criteria, an adequate test of the learned helplessness model has not yet been conducted. Previous studies which measured expected control have not supported the model's predictions. Moreover, if perceived response–outcome independence is a sufficient, but not a necessary cause of learned helplessness, the model loses much of its heuristic value. In response to the argument that these studies lack ecological validity, this article clarifies the distinction between experimental realism and mundane realism. While real-world studies have discovered intriguing relations between perceptions of control, attributions, and coping with illness or victimization, they have not tested predictions of the learned helplessness model.     

A parametric study of learned helplessness in humans

In two experiments designed to assess the effect of varying amounts of exposure to noncontingency training, it was discovered that performance decrements could be produced after relatively brief training and again after extended training. Between these conditions was a period of recovery during which no performance deficits were evident. There was also a tendency for individual differences in motivation to moderate deficits following brief but not extended training. A four-stage model is proposed to account for these results. In response to uncontrollable outcomes, individuals are said to pass through a phase of no effect, followed by temporary helplessness, recovery, and final helplessness. The model also proposes that motivational differences and perceptions of noncontingency exert independent and opposing influences on learned helplessness deficits.     

Assessment of adolescents' learned helplessness in achievement situations

Three studies are reported that describe the development, reliability, and initial validation of the Mastery Orientation Inventory (MOI; Reynolds & Miller, in press) as a measure of generalized learned helplessness in adolescents. In Study 1, an initial version of 50 items was administered to a sample of 112 adolescents. A revised 40-item scale with an internal consistency reliability of .94 was then constructed, which correlated significantly with measures of locus of control and depression. Study 2 involved the administration of the 40-item MOI to 645 adolescents. In this study, the reliability of the MOI was .92, and MOI scores were significantly correlated with subjects' depression scores and with self-reported grade point average. Factor analysis of the MOI items produced a strong first factor with high loadings for every item. In Study 3, the 112 subjects who participated in Study 1 were, 3 months later, readministered the MOI, locus of control, and depression measures. As an external criterion variable, 13 teachers provided global ratings of learned helpless/mastery-oriented behaviors for 99 of these subjects. The MOI demonstrated high internal consistency (r alpha = .95) and adequate test-retest (rtt = .77) reliability. Validity was supported by significant correlations between the MOI and the three criterion variables (/rs/ = .49-.58). The results of these investigations provide initial support for the reliability and validity of the MOI as a measure of learned helplessness.     

Repression-sensitization differences in recovery from learned helplessness.

The performance of repressors and sensitizers on a solvable anagram task was assessed after either a short delay (0 to 30 min) or a long delay (2 to 6 hr) following a standard learned helplessness induction. Results indicated that all subjects exposed to the learned helplessness induction exhibited performance deficits, compared with control subjects exposed to no induction. Furthermore, subjects who were tested after the short delay did not perform as well as subjects tested after a long delay. No difference in overall anagram performance was found between repressors and sensitizers. Consistent with theoretical predictions, however, the anagram performance of repressor subjects was significantly better in the long-delay than in the short-delay condition; this significant recovery effect between short- and long-delay conditions was not obtained for sensitizer subjects. Possible theoretical mechanisms for these effects and implications for future research are noted.