Martin E. P. Seligman

Learned Helplessness in Humans: Critique and Reformulation

The learned helplessness hypothesis is criticized and reformulated. The old hypothesis, when applied to learned helplessness in humans, has two major problems: (a) It does not distinguish between cases in which outcomes are uncontrollable for all people and cases in which they are uncontrollable only for some people (univervsal vs. personal helplessness), and (b) it does not explain when helplessness is general and when specific, or when chronic and when acute. A reformulation based on a revision of attribution theory is proposed to resolve these inadequacies. According to the reformulation, once people perceive noncontingency, they attribute their helplessness to a cause. This cause can be stable or unstable, global or specific, and internal or external. The attribution chosen influences whether expectation of future helplessness will be chronic or acute, broad or narrow, and whether helplessness will lower self-esteem or not. The implications of this reformulation of human helplessness for the learned helplessness model of depression are outlined.

Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions.

Positive psychology has flourished in the last 5 years. The authors review recent developments in the field, including books, meetings, courses, and conferences. They also discuss the newly created classification of character strengths and virtues, a positive complement to the various editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (e. g., American Psychiatric Association, 1994), and present some cross-cultural findings that suggest a surprising ubiquity of strengths and virtues. Finally, the authors focus on psychological interventions that increase individual happiness. In a 6-group, random-assignment, placebo-controlled Internet study, the authors tested 5 purported happiness interventions and 1 plausible control exercise. They found that 3 of the interventions lastingly increased happiness and decreased depressive symptoms. Positive interventions can supplement traditional interventions that relieve suffering and may someday be the practical legacy of positive psychology.

Learned helplessness: Theory and evidence

\, SUMMARY In 1967, Overmier and Seligman found that dogs exposed to inescapable and unavoidable electric shocks in one situation later failed to learn to escape shock in a different situation where escape was possible. Shortly thereafter Seligman and Maier (1967) demonstrated that this effect was caused by the uncontrollability of the original shocks. In this article we review the effects of exposing organisms to aversive events which they cannot control, and we review the explanations which have been offered. There seem to be motivational, cognitive, and emotional effects of uncontrollability. (a) Motivation. Dogs that have been exposed to inescapable shocks do not subsequently initiate escape response in the presence of shock. We review parallel phenomena in cats, fish, rats, and man. Of particular interest is the discussion of learned helplessness in rats and man. Rats are of interest because learned helplessness has been difficult to demonstrate in rats. However, we show that inescapably shocked rats do fail to learn to escape if the escape task is reasonably difficult. With regard to man, we review a variety of studies using inescapable noise and unsolvable problems as agents which produce learned helplessness effects on both instrumental and cognitive tasks, (b) Cognition. We argue that exposure to uncontrollabl e events interferes with the organisms tendency to perceive contingent relationships between its behavior and outcomes. Here we review a variety of studies showing such a cognitive set. (c) Emotion. We review a variety of experiments which show that uncontrollable aversive events produce greater emotional disruption than do controllable aversive events. We have proposed an explanation for these effects, which we call the learned helplessness hypothesis. It argues that when events are uncontrollable the organism learns that its behavior and outcomes are independent, and that this learning produces the motivational, cognitive, and emotional effects of uncontrollabi lity. We describe the learned helplessness hypothesis and research which supports it. Finally, we describe and discuss in detail alternative hypotheses which have been offered as accounts of the learned helplessness effect. One set of hypotheses argues that organisms learn motor responses during exposure to uncontrollabl e shock that compete with the response required in the test task. Another explanation holds that uncontrollable shock is a severe stressor and depletes a neurochemical necessary for the mediation of movement. We examine the logical structure of these explanations and present a variety of evidence which bears on them directly.

The attributional Style Questionnaire

Of current interest are the causal attributions offered by depressives for the good and bad events in their lives. One important attributional account of depression is the reformulated learned helplessness model, which proposes that depressive symptoms are associated with an attributional style in which uncontrollable bad events are attributed to internal (versus external), stable (versus unstable), and global (versus specific) causes. We describe the Attributional Style Questionnaire, which measures individual differences in the use of these attributional dimensions. We report means, reliabilities, intercorrelations, and test-retest stabilities for a sample of 130 undergraduates. Evidence for the questionnaires validity is discussed. The Attributional Style Questionnaire promises to be a reliable and valid instrument.

The Effectiveness of Psychotherapy The Consumer Reports Study

Consumer Reports (1995, November) published an article which concluded that patients benefited very substantially from psychotherapy, that long-term treatment did considerably better than short-term treatment, and that psychotherapy alone did not differ in effectiveness from medication plus psychotherapy. Furthermore, no specific modality of psychotherapy did better than any other for any disorder; psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers did not differ in their effectiveness as treaters; and all did better than marriage counselors and long-term family doctoring. Patients whose length of therapy or choice of therapist was limited by insurance or managed care did worse. The methodological virtues and drawbacks of this large-scale survey are examined and contrasted with the more traditional efficacy study, in which patients are randomized into a manualized, fixed duration treatment or into control groups. I conclude that the Consumer Reports survey complements the efficacy method, and that the best features of these two methods can be combined into a more ideal method that will best provide empirical validation of psychotherapy.

Beyond Money Toward an Economy of Well-Being

Policy decisions at the organizational, corporate, and governmental levels should be more heavily influenced by issues related to well-being—peoples evaluations and feelings about their lives. Domestic policy currently focuses heavily on economic outcomes, although economic indicators omit, and even mislead about, much of what society values. We show that economic indicators have many shortcomings, and that measures of well-being point to important conclusions that are not apparent from economic indicators alone. For example, although economic output has risen steeply over the past decades, there has been no rise in life satisfaction during this period, and there has been a substantial increase in depression and distrust. We argue that economic indicators were extremely important in the early stages of economic development, when the fulfillment of basic needs was the main issue. As societies grow wealthy, however, differences in well-being are less frequently due to income, and are more frequently due to factors such as social relationships and enjoyment at work. Important noneconomic predictors of the average levels of well-being of societies include social capital, democratic governance, and human rights. In the workplace, noneconomic factors influence work satisfaction and profitability. It is therefore important that organizations, as well as nations, monitor the well-being of workers, and take steps to improve it. Assessing the well-being of individuals with mental disorders casts light on policy problems that do not emerge from economic indicators. Mental disorders cause widespread suffering, and their impact is growing, especially in relation to the influence of medical disorders, which is declining. Although many studies now show that the suffering due to mental disorders can be alleviated by treatment, a large proportion of persons with mental disorders go untreated. Thus, a policy imperative is to offer treatment to more people with mental disorders, and more assistance to their caregivers. Supportive, positive social relationships are necessary for well-being. There are data suggesting that well-being leads to good social relationships and does not merely follow from them. In addition, experimental evidence indicates that people suffer when they are ostracized from groups or have poor relationships in groups. The fact that strong social relationships are critical to well-being has many policy implications. For instance, corporations should carefully consider relocating employees because doing so can sever friendships and therefore be detrimental to well-being. Desirable outcomes, even economic ones, are often caused by well-being rather than the other way around. People high in well-being later earn higher incomes and perform better at work than people who report low well-being. Happy workers are better organizational citizens, meaning that they help other people at work in various ways. Furthermore, people high in well-being seem to have better social relationships than people low in well-being. For example, they are more likely to get married, stay married, and have rewarding marriages. Finally, well-being is related to health and longevity, although the pathways linking these variables are far from fully understood. Thus, well-being not only is valuable because it feels good, but also is valuable because it has beneficial consequences. This fact makes national and corporate monitoring of well-being imperative. In order to facilitate the use of well-being outcomes in shaping policy, we propose creating a national well-being index that systematically assesses key well-being variables for representative samples of the population. Variables measured should include positive and negative emotions, engagement, purpose and meaning, optimism and trust, and the broad construct of life satisfaction. A major problem with using current findings on well-being to guide policy is that they derive from diverse and incommensurable measures of different concepts, in a haphazard mix of respondents. Thus, current findings provide an interesting sample of policy-related findings, but are not strong enough to serve as the basis of policy. Periodic, systematic assessment of well-being will offer policymakers a much stronger set of findings to use in making policy decisions.

Causal explanations as a risk factor for depression: Theory and evidence.

The attributional reformulation of the learned helplessness model claims that an explanatory style in which bad events are explained by internal, stable, and global causes is associated with depressive symptoms. Furthermore, this style is claimed to be a risk factor for subsequent depression when bad events are encountered. We describe a variety of new investigations of the helplessness reformulation that employ five research strategies: (a) cross-sectional correlational studies, (b) longitudinal studies, (c) experiments of nature, (d) laboratory experiments, and (e) case studies. Taken together, these studies converge in their support for the learned helplessness reformulation.

Phobias and preparedness

Some inadequacies of the classical conditioning analysis of phobias are discussed: phobias are highly resistant to extinction, whereas laboratory fear conditioning, unlike avoidance conditioning, extinguishes rapidly; phobias comprise a nonarbitrary and limited set of objects, whereas fear conditioning is thought to occur to an unlimited range of conditioned stimuli. Furthermore, phobias, unlike laboratory fear conditioning, are often acquired in one trial and seem quite resistant to change by “cognitive” means. An analysis of phobias using a more contemporary model of fear conditioning is proposed. In this view, phobias are seen as instances of highly “prepared” learning ( Seligman, 1970 ). Such prepared learning is selective, highly resistant to extinction, probably noncognitive and can be acquired in one trial. A reconstruction of the notion of symbolism is suggested.

Self-Discipline Outdoes IQ in Predicting Academic Performance of Adolescents

In a longitudinal study of 140 eighth-grade students, self-discipline measured by self-report, parent report, teacher report, and monetary choice questionnaires in the fall predicted final grades, school attendance, standardized achievement-test scores, and selection into a competitive high school program the following spring. In a replication with 164 eighth graders, a behavioral delay-of-gratification task, a questionnaire on study habits, and a group-administered IQ test were added. Self-discipline measured in the fall accounted for more than twice as much variance as IQ in final grades, high school selection, school attendance, hours spent doing homework, hours spent watching television (inversely), and the time of day students began their homework. The effect of self-discipline on final grades held even when controlling for first-marking-period grades, achievement-test scores, and measured IQ. These findings suggest a major reason for students falling short of their intellectual potential: their failure to exercise self-discipline.

Predictors and consequences of childhood depressive symptoms : a 5-year longitudinal study

A 5-year longitudinal study investigated the interrelationships among childrens experiences of depressive symptoms, negative life events, explanatory style, and helplessness behaviors in social and achievement situations. The results revealed that early in childhood, negative events, but not explanatory style, predicted depressive symptoms; later in childhood, a pessimistic explanatory style emerged as a significant predictor of depressive symptoms, alone and in conjunction with negative events. When children suffered periods of depression, their explanatory styles not only deteriorated but remained pessimistic even after their depression subsided, presumably putting them at risk for future episodes of depression. Some children seem repeatedly prone to depressive symptoms over periods of at least 2 years. Depressed children consistently showed helpless behaviors in social and achievement settings.