Human helplessness : an investigation of cognitive and motivational deficits
Human helplessness : an investigation of cognitive and motivational deficits
Learned helplessness theory (Seligman, 1975; Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) postulates that a generalised expectation of uncontrollability may be induced by a prior objective experience of, or subjective belief in, uncontrollability. Such an expectation leads to helplessness, characterised by motivational, cognitive, emotional, and self-esteem deficits, in subsequent controllable situations. The two primary components of learned helplessness are the motivational deficit, commonly defined as a retardation in the initiation of voluntary responses, and the cognitive deficit, defined as a difficulty in perceiving or recognising control over outcome when it does in fact occur. A series of four experiments was performed to investigate the motivational and cognitive components of learned helplessness in humans. A helplessness-induction procedure involving uncontrollable aversive noise was found to produce reductions in subjects' expectations of future control, and marked deficits in escape/avoidance performance on a human shuttle-box test task. These performance deficits appeared to be purely motivational in nature. Furthermore, the induced expectations prevailed over contradictory information given to subjects about the difficulty and importance of the test task. There were indications that the helplessness demonstrated was of a personal rather than a universal nature. However, contrary to the cognitive hypothesis of learned helplessness, when required to estimate their control over contingent or noncontingent outcomes in a contingency judgement task (previously employed by Alloy and Abramson, 1979), helpless-induced subjects did not have difficulty in perceiving control. In this purely cognitive task, both helpless and non-helpless subjects perceived their control over outcomes equally accurately. It was concluded that, while the motivational hypothesis of learned helplessness was supported by the results of the present experiments, there was no evidence for the proposed cognitive deficit of learned helplessness.
University of Southampton
1985
Bush, Nigel Edward
(1985)
Human helplessness : an investigation of cognitive and motivational deficits.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
Learned helplessness theory (Seligman, 1975; Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) postulates that a generalised expectation of uncontrollability may be induced by a prior objective experience of, or subjective belief in, uncontrollability. Such an expectation leads to helplessness, characterised by motivational, cognitive, emotional, and self-esteem deficits, in subsequent controllable situations. The two primary components of learned helplessness are the motivational deficit, commonly defined as a retardation in the initiation of voluntary responses, and the cognitive deficit, defined as a difficulty in perceiving or recognising control over outcome when it does in fact occur. A series of four experiments was performed to investigate the motivational and cognitive components of learned helplessness in humans. A helplessness-induction procedure involving uncontrollable aversive noise was found to produce reductions in subjects' expectations of future control, and marked deficits in escape/avoidance performance on a human shuttle-box test task. These performance deficits appeared to be purely motivational in nature. Furthermore, the induced expectations prevailed over contradictory information given to subjects about the difficulty and importance of the test task. There were indications that the helplessness demonstrated was of a personal rather than a universal nature. However, contrary to the cognitive hypothesis of learned helplessness, when required to estimate their control over contingent or noncontingent outcomes in a contingency judgement task (previously employed by Alloy and Abramson, 1979), helpless-induced subjects did not have difficulty in perceiving control. In this purely cognitive task, both helpless and non-helpless subjects perceived their control over outcomes equally accurately. It was concluded that, while the motivational hypothesis of learned helplessness was supported by the results of the present experiments, there was no evidence for the proposed cognitive deficit of learned helplessness.
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Published date: 1985
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Local EPrints ID: 461979
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/461979
PURE UUID: ce72391f-aa31-4bd1-b368-03ef696162ca
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Date deposited: 04 Jul 2022 18:59
Last modified: 04 Jul 2022 18:59
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Author:
Nigel Edward Bush
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