Learned Helplessness

Question 1

Learned Helplessness

Answer 1

Learned Helplessness

1. not a general theory of learning
2. applies to the cognitive processes associated with depression.
3. tendency to give up any effort to control events in the environment.
4. first observed with animals exposed to uncontrollable electric shock and subsequently did not even try to escape the shock when it was possible to do so!
5. etiological factor in some forms of depression

Reformulated Version (attributional reformulation) of the learned helplessness model

• depression occurs when a person makes internal, stable, and global attributions for negative events.
• depressed people attribute the cause of negative events to themselves (internal), believe that they will always cause negative events to happen to them (stable) and think they cause negativity in all aspects of their lives (global).
• revised again: acknowledge role of attributions in depression, but proposed that attributions are important only to the extent to which they contribute to the person’s sense of hopelessness.