Learned Helplessness and Learned Optimism

Learned Helplessness and its Explanation

Researchers first described learned helplessness in the 1960s (Overmier & Seligman, 1967; Seligman & Maier, 1967). Dogs were immobilized and exposed to a series of electric shocks. Regardless of what the dogs did or did not do, the shocks went on and off. Twenty-four hours later, these animals were placed in a long box with a barrier in the middle. Shocks were periodically delivered through the floor of the box, and the dogs could escape them by jumping over the barrier and running to the other end of the box. Researchers found that animals previously exposed to uncontrollable shock acted passively when placed in a shuttle box. They simply sat there and endured the shocks. In contrast, animals without prior experience with uncontrollable shocks had no difficulty learning to escape the shocks.

These investigators proposed that the dogs had learned to be helpless: When originally exposed to uncontrollable shock, they learned that nothing they did mattered because the shocks came and went independently of their behaviors. The investigators hypothesized that this learning of response-outcome independence was represented cognitively as an expectation of future helplessness that was generalized to new situations to produce a variety of deficits: motivational, cognitive, and emotional.

The deficits that follow in the wake of uncontrollability have come to be known as the learned-helplessness phenomenon, and their cognitive explanation as the learned-helplessness model (Seligman, 1975). Learned helplessness in animals continues to interest experimental psychologists, in large part because it provides an opportunity to investigate the interaction between mind and body (Peterson, Maier, & Seligman, 1993).

The learned-helplessness model is at odds with a stimulus-response (S-R) view of learning because it proposes that the helpless animal learns not specific responses, but rather general expectations affecting responses across a variety of situations. The helplessness model is a cognitive account of learning, and in the 1960s, it was a radical theory in a field long dominated by strict behaviorism.

Accordingly, much of the early interest in learned helplessness stemmed from its clash with the tenets of traditional S-R theories (Maier & Seligman, 1976). Alternative accounts of learned helplessness were proposed by theorists who saw no need to invoke mentalistic constructs. Different alternatives were proposed, many of which emphasized an incompatible motor response learned when animals were first exposed to uncontrollable shocks. This response was presumably generalized to the second situation, where it interfered with performance at the test task. Said another way, the learned-helplessness phenomenon is produced by an inappropriate response learned in the original situation rather than an inappropriate expectation (of response-outcome independence). For example, perhaps the dogs learned that holding still when shocked somehow decreased pain. If so, then they held still in the second situation as well, because this response was previously reinforced.

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