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Learned Helplessness: Theory and Evidence
Abstract
Reviews the literature which examined the effects of exposing organisms to aversive events which they cannot control. Motivational, cognitive, and emotional effects of uncontrollability are examined. It is hypothesized that when events are uncontrollable the organism learns that its behavior and outcomes are independent, and this learning produces the motivational, cognitive, and emotional effects of uncontrollability. Research which supports this learned helplessness hypothesis is described along with alternative hypotheses which have been offered as explanations of the learned helplessness effect. The application of this hypothesis to rats and man is examined. (114 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... The model, in its current form, has contributed to our understanding of PTSD [143,144], learned helplessness [145][146][147][148][149][150][151], stress [152,153], stress-induced analgesia [129, 150,154], and mechanisms underlying behavioral and physiological responses to exposure to aversive stimuli, including anxiety-like defensive behavioral responses [129, 150,154], nociceptive signaling [154][155][156][157], addiction [127,158], and depressive-like behavioral responses [159][160][161][162][163][164]. ...
... The model yields highly consistent results across several rat strains and lines, highlighting the model's potential versatility in the greater context of genetic models [169][170][171][172][173]. Additionally, IS yields similar but distinct physiological responses in female versus male rats, potentially allowing the model to help explore sex differences in endophenotypes relevant to PTSD [174][175][176][177][178][179][180][181]. The distinction between endophenotypes that are (1) "conditioned," when responses are paired with context cues [182]; (2) "trans-situational" or "generalized," when responses are generalized to other contexts [148,[183][184][185][186][187][188]; (3) "sensitized," when response severity is increased or exaggerated [185, [189][190][191][192]; and (4) characterized by "incubation," when sensitization and or generalization increase over time is potentially important in translational research given the stressor generalization, sensitization, and incubation observed in some psychiatric disorders that may have similar etiology [193][194][195][196]. As such, the fact that the shuttle-box escape task [185,197,198], auditory startle response [193], and juvenile social exploration (JSE)/social avoidance test [199] all show clear transsituationality or generalized responses to IS underscore the potential utility of IS. ...
... The JSE test, in its current form, when paired with IS, has played a vital role in our understanding of endophenotypes relevant to PTSD [143,144], learned helplessness [145][146][147][148][149][150][151], physiological stress responses [152,153], stress-induced analgesia [129, 150,154], and mechanisms underlying resilience to behavioral and physiological responses to exposure to aversive stimuli, including as assessed by anxiety-like behavioral responses [129, 150,154], nociceptive signaling [154][155][156][157]239], addiction [127,158], and depressive-like behavior [159][160][161][162][163][164], as well as developmental stress exposure [240], the impacts of the time of day of stress exposure (diurnal rhythm mediated) [165], and the impact of circadian misalignment on stress responses [241]. ...
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a trauma- and stressor-related disorder that is a source of significant societal and economic costs. Although it is not possible to fully model human psychiatric disorders using animal models, physiological responses to trauma and stressors, including hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis responses, autonomic nervous system responses, and immune responses, are highly conserved across mammalian species. Each of these physiological response systems, in turn, has been implicated in determining risk of development of PTSD symptoms, or contributing to PTSD severity, in humans, suggesting that understanding mechanisms underlying these responses may lead to novel therapeutic strategies for the prevention or treatment of PTSD. Furthermore, individual variability in physiological responses to trauma and stressors is thought to be an important determinant of stress vulnerability or stress resilience; therefore, understanding mechanisms underlying individual variability in physiological responses to trauma or stressor exposure has promise to increase our understanding of mechanisms underlying vulnerability to development of PTSD and persistence of PTSD symptoms. Here we describe a model of inescapable stress exposure in rats that has contributed to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying stress vulnerability and stress resilience. Given that PTSD is more common in females than males, we also highlight the need for increased focus on inclusion of both males in females in future studies.Key wordsAnxietyImmunoregulationInflammasomeInflammationMicrobiomeOld FriendsPTSDResilienceStressTrauma
... From here the "learned helplessness hypothesis" was developed (7). It should be noted that in 1967 very little was known about stressors, and "stress" itself was not a frequent topic within psychology. ...
... Research in this area quickly switched from dogs to rats. Several other behavioral explanations were offered that did not entail any new principles such as sensitivity to contingency, and we conducted experiments to test these alternative behaviorist views [see review in (7)]. (iii) New sequelae of non-contingent shock other than poor escape/passivity. ...
... Further evidence that the protection derived from ES is an active rather than passive process comes from studies of immunization. Initial experience of behavioral control potently blocks the deficits produced by later exposure to uncontrollable shock that occur in a very different environment (transsituational) (7,51). Behavioral control immunizes against the outcomes of both uncontrollable shock and other kinds of adversity (transstimulus). ...
“Learned helplessness” refers to debilitating outcomes, such as passivity and increased fear, that follow an uncontrollable adverse event, but do not when that event is controllable. The original explanation argued that when events are uncontrollable the animal learns that outcomes are independent of its behavior, and that this is the active ingredient in producing the effects. Controllable adverse events, in contrast, fail to produce these outcomes because they lack the active uncontrollability element. Recent work on the neural basis of helplessness, however, takes the opposite view. Prolonged exposure to aversive stimulation per se produces the debilitation by potent activation of serotonergic neurons in the brainstem dorsal raphe nucleus. Debilitation is prevented with an instrumental controlling response, which activates prefrontal circuitry detecting control and subsequently blunting the dorsal raphe nucleus response. Furthermore, learning control alters the prefrontal response to future adverse events, thereby preventing debilitation and producing long-term resiliency. The general implications of these neuroscience findings may apply to psychological therapy and prevention, in particular by suggesting the importance of cognitions and control, rather than habits of control.
... The fear-avoidance model (Vlaeyen et al., 1995) explains how negative expectations lead to a lack of agency, which is seen as a crucial step in pain persistence. Finally, the learned helplessness model (Maier and Seligman, 1976), originally developed in the context of stress and depression, posits that when being exposed to repeated aversive stimuli (e.g. pain) that are out of control, the individual does not attempt to escape or avoid the aversive stimulus. ...
... To overcome this limitation, we developed an integrative model ( Figure 1) explaining pain by combining the motivation-decision model (blue) (Fields, 2006), the fear-avoidance model (green) (Vlaeyen et al., 1995), learned helplessness (orange) (Maier and Seligman, 1976) and a Bayesian expectation integration model (amber) and follow up on earlier integrative models (Ingvar, 2015;Borsook et al., 2018). Importantly, the presented model has a dimension of time, which allows it to capture the dynamic nature of pain persistence and makes explicit predictions about its temporal development ( Figure 2). ...
... Acute pain is an important signal for imminent tissue damage and usually entails an action sequence, targeted at limiting or stopping the pain. However, if over long periods of time pain cannot be controlled (Crombez et al., 2012), a lack of self-efficacy and control emerges, which leads to a state of helplessness (Maier and Seligman, 1976). Self-efficacy is an important cognitive factor in Figure 1. ...
Chronic, or persistent pain affects more than 10% of adults in the general population. This makes it one of the major physical and mental health care problems. Although pain is an important acute warning signal that allows the organism to take action before tissue damage occurs, it can become persistent and its role as a warning signal thereby inadequate. Although per definition, pain can only be labeled as persistent after 3 months, the trajectory from acute to persistent pain is likely to be determined very early and might even start at the time of injury. The biopsychosocial model has revolutionized our understanding of chronic pain and paved the way for psychological treatments for persistent pain, which routinely outperform other forms of treatment. This suggests that psychological processes could also be important in shaping the very early trajectory from acute to persistent pain and that targeting these processes could prevent the development of persistent pain. In this review, we develop an integrative model and suggest novel interventions during early pain trajectories, based on predictions from this model.
... According to the model, under these circumstances, our predictive brains and bodies begin to infer an inability to exercise control effectively, giving rise to a new model of relationship with the world and with oneself, a model incapable of guiding our future actions (Clark, 2013). Ultimately, the systematic experience of a volatile environment or circumstances can result in a state of learned helplessness (a concept brought by Maier & Seligman, 1976). Specifically, a state that results from exposure to unavoidable adversity and that leads the organism to learn that its behavior and the consequences that result from it, are independent (Fincham & Cain, 1986;Maier & Seligman, 1976). ...
... Ultimately, the systematic experience of a volatile environment or circumstances can result in a state of learned helplessness (a concept brought by Maier & Seligman, 1976). Specifically, a state that results from exposure to unavoidable adversity and that leads the organism to learn that its behavior and the consequences that result from it, are independent (Fincham & Cain, 1986;Maier & Seligman, 1976). ...
Using a humanistic and qualitative approach, the present study aims to (1) bring light on 1 the impact of clown doctors’ artistic work in pediatric oncology and, as a consequence, (2) contribute 2 to the refinement and improvement of the clown doctors’ intervention quality, in the context of 3 pediatric oncology, bringing hypotheses of reflection hardly met with quantitative approaches. We 4 are interested in the subjective experience of the artists, and the perceived subjective experience of 5 the child as reported by the clown doctors. The present analysis was developed from the clown 6 doctors’ final reports, their narrative, after visiting the pediatric oncology ward in a Portuguese public 7 hospital, for a continuous period of six months. The visits were performed by a clown doctor dyad, 8 and the audience was a young adolescent girl, with cancer, and her constant mother.9
... Existing research primarily focuses on individuals assessing the personal benefits of participating in discussions (e.g., Geiger et al., 2017). However, since discussions are inherently social interactions (Swim et al., 2018), if an individual's participation fails to contribute to the other person's knowledge, they may feel helpless (Maier and Seligman, 1976). Therefore, examining response efficacy solely from a self-assessment perspective overlooks the interactive nature of discussions. ...
... Although the response efficacy of others did not facilitate discussions, it is noteworthy that the high climate change perceptions group was motivated to discuss climate change irrespective of whether it benefitted others. This is promising because individuals who prioritize climate action encourage collective engagement and are not hindered by learned helplessness (Maier and Seligman, 1976). ...
Public discussions on climate change, as a form of social interaction, are widely recognized as effective tools for promoting collective action. However, there is limited research on examining the factors that influence climate change discussions from a social interaction perspective. In the present study, we conducted a large sample ( N = 1,169) survey to investigate personal (such as self-efficacy and personal response efficacy) and others' (such as perceived others' response efficacy and social norms) factors influencing climate change discussions from a social interaction perspective. The results showed that (i) for people with high climate change perceptions, personal response efficacy, self-efficacy, and social norms have positive effects on climate change discussions, but the effect of perceived others' response efficacy on climate change discussion is not significant; (ii) for people with low climate change perceptions, self-efficacy and social norms have positive effects on climate change discussions, but the effects of personal response efficacy and perceived others' response efficacy on climate change discussion are not significant; (iii) irrespective of individuals' high or low perceptions of climate change, social norm remains the most important predictor of climate change discussions. These findings make valuable contributions to the theoretical literature and intervention efforts regarding climate change discussions from a social interaction perspective.
... One of the most important enduring experimental models of depression (learned helplessness) is the direct descendant of studies of animal learning (Seligman, 1975;Miller & Seligman, 1975;Maier & Seligman, 1976). ...
... The learned helplessness paradigm is based on a modification of escape or avoidance conditioning. A wide variety of species, ranging from goldfish to humans, can readily learn to avoid or escape from a setting when given advance notice (e.g., a light or tone) of an impending noxious event (e.g., a painful shock) (Maier & Seligman, 1976). However, when escape is impossible (e.g., a dog is harnessed, or the walls of the experimental box are too high to be scaled), the animal is observed to be passive and inactive. ...
... In animal models, predictability supports the development of hippocampal/limbic and rewardrelated brain circuitry (Bolton et al., 2018;Johnson et al., 2018;Molet et al., 2016), impacting prefrontal-subcortical development and maturation of the stress response system (Bolton et al., 2019;Tottenham, 2020). This does not pertain exclusively to positive features of caregiving, as predictability of aversive stimuli has been shown to reduce fear in infants (Gunnar et al., 1984) and increase perceived control (Maier & Seligman, 1976;Wang & Delgado, 2021). Conversely, unpredictability has been shown to have lasting adverse effects on neurodevelopment, disrupting the development of effortful control, memory, and stress responses (Davis et al., 2017;Granger et al., 2021;Noroña-Zhou et al., 2020). ...
... Unpredictability in reciprocal interactions was understood in terms of inconsistent maternal availability, characterized by mothers' noncontingent responses to children's bids, relatively low availability and direct interference during infants' exploration (Ainsworth et al., 1978;Cassidy & Berlin, 1994). Attachment theory, as well as early empirical studies of inconsistent parenting in the 1970s and 1980s (Gardner, 1989;Stern, 1971), and Seligman's learned helplessness theory (Maier & Seligman, 1976), served as the underpinnings for Ross and Hill's conceptual introduction of family unpredictability (2000). In unpredictable families, caregivers did not provide consistent affective nurturance and exercised discipline inconsistently (Ross & Hill, 2004). ...
There has been significant interest and progress in understanding the role of caregiver unpredictability on brain maturation, cognitive and socioemotional development, and psychopathology. Theoretical consensus has emerged about the unique influence of unpredictability in shaping children's experience, distinct from other adverse exposures or features of stress exposure. Nonetheless, the field still lacks theoretical and empirical common ground due to difficulties in accurately conceptualizing and measuring unpredictability in the caregiver-child relationship. In this paper, we first provide an overview of the role of unpredictability in theories of caregiving and childhood adversity and present four issues that are currently under-discussed but are crucial to the field. Focusing on how moment-to-moment and day-to-day dynamics are at the heart of caregiver unpredictability, we review three approaches aiming to address some of these nuances: Environmental statistics, entropy, and dynamic systems. Lastly, we conclude with a broad summary and suggest future research directions. Systematic progress in this field can inform interventions and policies aiming to increase stability in the lives of children.
... [10][11][12][13] Seligman proposes that LH is not a direct result of a traumatic event but rather is learned by the individual in response to a traumatic event. 14 LH interacts with various variables. When individuals experience a stressful event (eg, dialysis), LH can be dynamic, which increases the complexity of their self-management interventions. ...
... When individuals experience a stressful event (eg, dialysis), LH can be dynamic, which increases the complexity of their self-management interventions. 14 Therefore, a longitudinal study of LH in MHD patients can inform the allocation of mental health resources and health-related behavioural interventions. Given that the current studies have been conducted based on variable-centred analysis, they are not conducive to clarifying the characteristics of individual LH growth. ...
Background:
Learned helplessness (LH) is an essential psychological factor influencing maintenance haemodialysis (MHD) patients' health behaviour and is closely related to prognosis of the disease. This study aimed to identify potential trajectories of LH in MHD patients and assess their predictive role in self-management.
Methods:
This study was conducted in strict compliance with national laws, the Declaration of Istanbul, and the Declaration of Helsinki. A total of 347 MHD patients at a blood purification centre in Hunan Province, China, were selected as the study population. Four longitudinal surveys (baseline and second/fourth/sixth month after baseline) were conducted using the General Information Questionnaire for MHD patients, the Chinese version of the Learned Helplessness Scale for MHD patients, and the Self-Management Scale for Haemodialysis. Latent growth mixture model (LGMM) analysis was used to identify LH trajectories, and their predictors were analysed using multinomial logistic regression. The predictive role of LH trajectory on self-management was analysed using linear regression.
Results:
This study identified three LH trajectories in MHD patients, named the "high-decreasing group" (57.9%), "low-increasing group" (21.3%), and "low-stability group" (20.7%). The results of the univariate analysis showed that sex (χ2=33.777, P < 0.001), age (χ2=10.605, P<0.05), and subjective social status (SSS) (χ2=12.43, P<0.01) were associated with LH trajectory classes. Multinomial logistic regression further demonstrated that gender, age, and SSS were predictors of different LH trajectories. The intercept and slope of the overall LH trajectory were negatively correlated with self-management (β=-0.273, P<0.001; β=-0.234, P<0.01).
Conclusion:
MHD patients show three different LH trajectories. The initial level and developmental rate of LH can negatively predict future self-management. It is necessary to screen MHD patients' LH and develop targeted interventions for them with different LH trajectories at specific stages.
... Among the options, the one that is most often considered is an integrative model [35,36]. In it, pain could be explained by combining a motivation-decision model, a fear-avoidance model, adding the learned helplessness, and, in the end, a Bayesian expectation integration model [35,37,38]. ...
Orofacial pain represents one of the most common health problems that negatively affects the activities of daily living. However, the mechanisms underlying these conditions are still unclear, and their comprehensive management is often lacking. Moreover, even if pain is a common symptom in dentistry, differential diagnostic procedures are needed to exclude other pain origins. Misinterpretation of the pain origin, in fact, can lead to misdiagnosis and to subsequent mismanagement. Pain in the orofacial area is the most common reason for patients to visit the dentist, but this area is complex, and the pain could be associated with the hard and soft tissues of the head, face, oral cavity, or to a dysfunction of the nervous system. Considering that the origins of orofacial pain can be many and varied, a thorough assessment of the situation is necessary to enable the most appropriate diagnostic pathway to be followed to achieve optimal clinical and therapeutic management.
... The Dalai Lama (Piburn, 1990, p. 40) Another theory that builds off CDT is motivated helplessness (Lifshin et al., 2020). According to this theory, although helplessness is usually associated with negative emotional states (e.g., Maier & Seligman, 1976;Mikulincer, 1998), helplessness in face of specific threats may function as a protective shield that buffers against cognitive dissonance, guilt and anxiety (Lifshin et al., 2020;. As the quote from the Dalai Lama above suggestsif you cannot do anything to fix a problem, why worry about it? ...
Human beings harm and kill countless numbers of non-human animals each year and deny them of protective rights. Although this behavior may serve a variety of necessary societal functions, there is evidence to suggest that this behavior is also driven by, rather implicit, human motivations to avoid feelings of dissonance, anxiety, and existential concerns. In this chapter I briefly review the terror management and cognitive dissonance theories explanations for human negativity, apathy and hostility towards non-human animals, and the supporting empirical evidence. I also present the novel motivated helplessness hypothesis for the continued denial of animal rights and support for their demise. Finally, I outline serval promising directions for applying these theories in order to better understand, moderate and even reverse some of the negative effects that these psychological forces have on human thought and behavior, in an effort to promote and advance the welfare and protection of non-human animals.
... The expression of volition through our actions affecting the external world can help us achieve a wanted outcome and/or avoid an unwanted outcome, thus gaining a sense of agency and self-efficacy (Bandura & Wood, 1989;Haggard, 2017Haggard, , 2019 and motivating subsequent behavior (Luo et al., 2022a, b;Patall et al., 2008;Ryan & Deci, 2006). Restriction of the expression of volition, however, leads to suffering, which is related to learned helplessness, depression (Huys & Dayan, 2009;Maier & Seligman, 1976;Mineka & Hendersen, 1985), and schizophrenia (Daprati et al., 1997). ...
It has been shown that cognitive performance could be improved by expressing volition (e.g., making voluntary choices), which necessarily involves the execution of action through a certain effector. However, it is unclear if the benefit of expressing volition can generalize across different effectors. In the present study, participants made a choice between two pictures either voluntarily or forcibly, and subsequently completed a visual search task with the chosen picture as a task-irrelevant background. The effector for choosing a picture could be the hand (pressing a key), foot (pedaling), mouth (commanding), or eye (gazing), whereas the effector for responding to the search target was always the hand. Results showed that participants responded faster and had a more liberal response criterion in the search task after a voluntary choice (vs. a forced choice). Importantly, the improved performance was observed regardless of which effector was used in making the choice, and regardless of whether the effector for making choices was the same as or different from the effector for responding to the search target. Eye-movement data for oculomotor choice showed that the main contributor to the facilitatory effect of voluntary choice was the post-search time in the visual search task (i.e., the time spent on processes after the target was found, such as response selection and execution). These results suggest that the expression of volition may involve the motor control system in which the effector-general, high-level processing of the goal of the voluntary action plays a key role.
... The social settings in which people are embedded can be conducive to structuring particular norms, aspirations, access to resources, and the breadth and nature of available choice sets, all of which can have implications for how people interpret and react to various social situations (Foster and O'Mealey, 2022;Freese 2017;MacLeod 2009). For example, previous research finds that material privation can cause patterned responses to stressful experiences, such as fear conditioning and learned helplessness (Lissek et al., 2005;Maier and Seligman, 1976). Similarly, affluence can shape differential responses, for instance by modulating how much people savor a positive experience (Quoidbach et al., 2010) or how sensitive they are to minor environmental annoyances (Hao and Farah 2020). ...
Adverse life events are often understood as having negative consequences for mental health via objective hardships, which are worse for persons with less income. But adversity can also affect mental health via more subjective mechanisms, and here, it is possible that persons with higher income will exhibit greater psychological sensitivity to negative events, for various reasons. Drawing on multiple sociological literatures, this article theorizes potential mechanisms of increasing sensitivity with income. The proposition of differential sensitivity is tested using the strategic case of spousal and parental bereavement among older US adults. The analyses find consistent evidence of increasing sensitivity of depressive symptoms with income. A series of robustness checks indicate that findings are not due to endogenous or antecedent selection. Further, exploratory analyses of mechanisms suggest that higher sensitivity among the affluent was driven by greater expectations and better relationship quality with the deceased. These findings problematize the conceptualization and assessment of human suffering in economically stratified societies.
... The second problem concerns LH consequences, which are: behavioral, such as passivity, giving up, and procrastination; cognitive, such as decreased problem-solving ability, frustration, and lowered self-esteem; and affective, such as fear, dysphoria, and depression (Maier & Seligman, 1976;McKean, 1994). As some of its consequences trace back to depression symptoms and previous studies presented a high correlation between LH and depression (see McKean, 1994;Quinless & Nelson, 1988), the theory became known as a depression theory. ...
The present study aimed to adapt the Learned Helplessness Scale (LHS) to Brazilian Portuguese and assess its psychometric properties and nomological network in a Brazilian sample. Participants completed an online survey that consisted of the LHS, Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale, and the Perceived Stress Scale. 429 people participated, aged 18-79, mostly women, from multiple regions of Brazil and socioeconomic status. Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis suggested a unidimensional solution with 18 items as appropriate. Correlations between the LHS and the other instruments also provided evidence of the expected nomological relationships. And we assessed the differences in LHS scores by sociodemographic data. These findings are favorable to the use of this instrument in Brazilian samples.
... We set all the extrinsic reward probabilities associated with the different fractal targets to P = 0.75. Since all 2 nd -stage actions had the same expected value, the experiment was objectively uncontrollable because the probability of reward was independent of all actions [18]. Moreover, equal reward probabilities ensured that outcome diversity [38,39], outcome entropy [40], and instrumental divergence [41] did not contribute to choice preference since these were all equal between the forced and free options. ...
When deciding between options that do or do not lead to future choices, humans often choose to choose. We studied choice seeking by asking subjects to first decide between a choice opportunity or performing a computer-selected action, after which they either chose freely or performed the forced action. Subjects preferred choice when these options were equally rewarded, even deterministically, and traded extrinsic rewards for opportunities to choose. We explained individual variability in choice seeking using reinforcement learning models incorporating risk sensitivity and overvaluation of rewards obtained through choice. Model fits revealed that 28% of subjects were sensitive to the worst possible outcome associated with free choice, and this pessimism reduced their choice preference with increasing risk. Moreover, outcome overvaluation was necessary to explain patterns of individual choice preference across levels of risk. We also manipulated the degree to which subjects controlled stimulus outcomes. We found that degrading coherence between their actions and stimulus outcomes diminished choice preference following forced actions, although willingness to repeat selection of choice opportunities remained high. When subjects chose freely during these repeats, they were sensitive to rewards when actions were controllable but ignored outcomes -even positive ones- associated with reduced controllability. Our results show that preference for choice can be modulated by extrinsic reward properties including reward probability and risk as well as by controllability of the environment.
... It is seen that the participants exhibit behaviours towards adaptation not only in their Some participants refer to the phenomenon of "learned helplessness" by expressing the reason for their unresponsiveness to disturbing situations as "whatever I do, the behavior of these people will not change". 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 uncontrollability (Maier and Seligman, 1976). ...
The study aims to examine the disturbing situations, and the emotions and thoughts of the participants while using instant messaging. Disturbing situations of the users in the group are violations of privacy, harassment, hurtful words and behaviors, and gender discrimination. The main reasons why users accept these situations are primarily various fears; another is the cultural structure they are in and the personal characteristics of the users. To take precautions against these actions, it has been revealed that training on the use of instant messaging applications and social media should be disseminated, awareness-raising activities should be organized and reactions should be taken to establish the right communication.
... Snyder (2002) defines hopefulness as a cognitive, goaloriented way of thinking, in which individuals come up with different paths to achieve their goals. It is an active process, in contrast to learned helplessness, in which individuals are passive and lack the initiative to control their surroundings (Maier & Seligman, 1976). ...
Peer victimization is a pervasive problem that contributes to increased emotional dysfunction (e.g., loneliness, depression, helplessness) in children and adolescents. Importantly, not all students respond to peer victimization the same way. The current study examined the role of hopefulness as a possible protective mechanism that mediates the relationship between different forms of peer victimization (i.e., relational; RV and physical; PV) and emotional dysfunction among adolescents. One hundred eleven adolescents (Mage = 11.4 years; 54% male) completed measures assessing hopefulness, emotional dysfunction, and exposure to RV and PV. Mediation analyses revealed significant direct effects for RV and PV on emotional dysfunction. However, when adding hopefulness as a mediator, these effects were diminished, suggesting partial mediation. Findings revealed that hopefulness partially explains the relationship between both forms of peer victimization and emotional dysfunction. Results suggest that targeting students’ hopefulness may serve as a protective mechanism to reduce the negative impacts of relational and physical peer victimization on adolescents’ emotional dysfunction. Implications for prevention and intervention work are discussed.
... Feedback theories suggest that behavioral improvements generally occur in response to negative feedback, although this has been shown to trigger a myriad of unexpected reactions (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). Similar to learned helplessness (Maier & Seligman, 1976), people may simply dismiss negative feedback and disengage from the task at hand, which in turn could result in negative emotions (Belschak & Den Hartog, 2009). When people fall short of the standard, a range of situational and individual factors modulate the motivation to respond to feedback (Ilgen & Davis, 2000;Nease et al., 1999). ...
Creativity can be seen as the interplay of various cognitive factors, such as associative, executive, and metacognitive processes. Here, we test the specific role of metacognitive monitoring and how external feedback can support creative ideation. In a series of three studies, we show the benefits of a novel automated technique that uses semantic analysis to assess originality and provides real-time feedback as ideas are generated. In two divergent thinking tasks (alternate uses tests), participants who received feedback outperformed those who received no feedback (Study 1, n= 120, preregistered), random feedback (Study 2, n =250), or
repeated be-creative instructions (Study 3, n =264). In all studies, an appreciation scale showed that the feedback was perceived as helpful, valid, motivating, and clear. Random feedback was found to be less valid, supporting the validity of the original intervention. Self-reported levels of positive and negative emotions
were examined as a competing explanation for the feedback effect. Receiving feedback did not result in different levels of emotions compared to receiving no feedback or be-creative instructions. However, an interaction showed that higher levels of positive emotion were associated with greater originality when receiving feedback. Random feedback resulted in lower levels of positive emotion, but no interaction. These studies highlight the role of metacognition in divergent thinking, as well as the applied potential of semantic analysis and the use of technology-assisted feedback interventions for creativity. The role of possible emotional and motivational factors, as well as limitations in the use of semantic analysis, is discussed.
... For example, work on learned helplessness has demonstrated that motivation to engage in a behavior and learning are impaired when people experience outcomes as independent of their choice of actions and consequently feel they have no control over a situation (Seligman, 1975). Furthermore, mental health suff ers under conditions of learned helplessness; in particular, depression and anxiety result when an individual experiences life choices as irrelevant (e.g., Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989;Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978;Maier & Seligman, 1976;Peterson, Maier, & Seligman, 1993;Peterson & Seligman, 1984;Seligman, 1975). When choice does not support perceptions of control because the chooser feels insuffi ciently informed or overly rushed to make decisions, choice may be experienced as stressful and can diminish self-confi dence (Paterson & Neufeld, 1995;Rodin, Rennert, & Solomon, 1980). ...
Motivation is that which moves us to action. Human motivation is thus a complex issue, as people are moved to action by both their evolved natures and by myriad familial, social, and cultural influences. The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation aims to capture the current state-of-the-art in this fast developing field. The book includes theoretical overviews from some of the best-known thinkers in this area, including articles on Social Learning Theory, Control Theory, Self-determination Theory, Terror Management Theory, and the Promotion and Prevention perspective. Topical articles appear on phenomena such as ego-depletion, flow, curiosity, implicit motives, and personal interests. A section specifically highlights goal research, including chapters on goal regulation, achievement goals, the dynamics of choice, unconscious goals and process versus outcome focus. Still other articles focus on evolutionary and biological underpinnings of motivation, including articles on cardiovascular dynamics, mood, and neuropsychology. Finally, articles bring motivation down to earth in reviewing its impact within relationships, and in applied areas such as psychotherapy, work, education, sport, and physical activity.
... Especially in the context of the learned helplessness theory, control perception (CP) was subject to extensive research in regard to its protective properties against stress and disease (e.g., Burger and Arkin, 1980;Alloy and Abramson, 1982). In the theory's beginnings, to stimulate further research on the topic of learned helplessness/hopelessness, Maier and Seligman Seligman, 1976, Maier andSeligman, 2016) provided an influential definition for the emergence of subjective CP. The authors hypothesize control perception to ground on the estimated ratio between two perceived probabilities: First, the probability of a specified outcome following some kind of action by the subject. ...
Being able to control inner and environmental states is a basic need of living creatures. The perception of such control is based on the perceived ratio of outcome probabilities given the presence and the absence of agentic behavior. If an organism believes that options exist to change the probability of a given outcome, control perception (CP) may emerge. Nonetheless, regarding this model, not much is known about how the brain processes CP from this information. This study uses low-intensity transcranial focused ultrasound neuromodulation in a randomized-controlled double blind cross-over design to investigate the impact of the right inferior frontal gyrus of the lateral prefrontal cortex on this process. 39 healthy participants visited the laboratory twice (once in a sham, once in a neuromodulation condition) and rated their control perception regarding a classical control illusion task. EEG alpha and theta power density were analyzed in a hierarchical single trial-based mixed modeling approach. Results indicate that the litFUS neuromodulation changed the processing of stimulus probability without changing CP Furthermore, neuromodulation of the right lPFC was found to modulate mid-frontal theta by altering its relationship with self-reported effort and worrying. While these data indicate lateral prefrontal sensitivity to stimulus probability, no evidence emerged for the dependency of CP on this processing.
... Withholding effort has a different quality depending on the context in which it occurs, as does achievement as a motivator. Both from an individual and a societal perspective, withholding effort in a context in which achievement is highly relevant to life success can be viewed as an instance of the learned helplessness that attribution theory aims to explain (Maier & Seligman, 1976). However, this seems inappropriate in the context of amateur esports, as it is not highly relevant to life success. ...
This paper examines the folk theory of ELO Hell, which stems from the community of esports players. ELO Hell is a causal explanation for the failure to achieve which is prominent but controversial in esports. Within the community, the belief in the existence of ELO Hell associated with lower skill. We aim to explain the persistence of this folk theory despite the debate within the community using psychological theories. We find this folk theory relevant for investigation because the blame placed on other players could escalate to patterns of harmful behavior, known as toxicity. Given the association with lower-ranked players, we predict this could be an operationalization of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a tendency for lower-skilled performers to overestimate themselves, and its associated motivational biases. Surveying 267 players of
the esports League of Legends and triangulating the quantitative, qualitative, and mined data collected, we find evidence of lower-skilled players overestimating their skills more so than higher-skilled players. Further, we find that motivational biases regarding causal attributions for failure and success did explain significant variance in the degree of overestimation. However, we also found some players withdraw their effort from competitive play and we use self-determination theory to categorize their reason for losing motivation. Taken together, we show the psychological mechanisms which lead to the formation of the folk theory of ELO Hell and the motivational biases that uphold the conflict about its existence.
... Par ailleurs, ces résultats pourraient s'expliquer par le fait que les filles qui éprouvent de l'anxiété d'évaluation peuvent progressivement développer la croyance qu'elles n'ont que peu ou pas de contrôle sur leurs résultats scolaires. Les filles pourraient penser que les résultats de leurs évaluations sont indépendants de leurs actions lorsqu'elles sont exposées à des épisodes répétés d'anxiété lors des évaluations (Deuser et Anderson, 1995;Maier et Seligman, 1976). ...
... Likewise, additional risks may have prompted couples to mobilize resources to cope with various stressors (Hill, 1949), which weakened the impact of maladaptive communication patterns. Conversely, although speculative, the accumulation of risks may make stressors less salient as individuals already feel a lack of control and subsequent helplessness in combating cumulative risk exposure (Maier & Seligman, 1976). Although similar saturation effects have been observed in other longitudinal risk research with children (Mrug et al., 2008;Sameroff, 1998), within the current study, these interactive effects were not robust across risk factors. ...
Singular risk factors elicit negative relational outcomes for couples, yet the accumulation of risk factors can be especially detrimental to relationship functioning. Few studies, however, have explored the long-term effects of cumulative risk exposure on intimate relationships as well as examined whether relationship education (RE) protects couples from adverse effects of cumulative risk exposure. Accordingly, the present study examined the long-term association between cumulative risk and relationship satisfaction, potential interaction effects between cumulative risk and exposure to singular risks, and if RE protected couples from the effects of cumulative risk exposure. Participants included 6298 couples in the Supporting Healthy Marriages Project. Lagged regression analyses of the participants in the control condition who did not receive relationship education ( n = 3160) indicated that men and women under greater cumulative risk exposure experienced greater decreases in relationship satisfaction 2.5 years later. The impact of singular risk factors on relationship satisfaction did not consistently differ as a function of cumulative risk exposure. A multi-group analysis indicated that RE did not protect against the adverse effect of cumulative risk on later relationship satisfaction. Results highlight the long-term detrimental consequences of cumulative risk exposure for relationship satisfaction. Future efforts to enhance relationship functioning may benefit from addressing the accumulation of factors that erode relationship functioning.
... However, his sense of expertise remained strong and gradually increased. We might have expected a decline in performance, either a progressive disengagement, boredom or possible learned helplessness [62], due to a loss of marks of success or supportive feedback [25] or lassitude. Associated with the lack of correlation observed between the taskrelated "challenge" component with accuracy, these results raise the question of the importance of dissociating the effects related to the extrinsic (received feedback) or the intrinsic motivation (positive sense of expertise and eudemonic emotions) on BCI accuracy, all the more so faced with i) a subject who already masters the task, ii) repetitive tasks performed over a long period. ...
... (Nagy et al., 1977) Fear conditioning emotional/ aversive memory, associative memory Animals need to associate a neutral conditional stimulus with an aversive unconditional stimulus and then demonstrate a particular response (freezing). (Kim and Fanselow, 1992) (Maier and Seligman, 1976;Shirayama et al., 2015;Worthen et al., 2020) Chronic unpredictable mild stress anhedonia, despair, apathy, sleep disturbance, psychomotor abnormalities, impaired recognition, emotional, spatial, and working memory Animals are exposed for several weeks to a variety of mild inescapable stressors every day for several weeks in a random manner. (Gumuslu et al., 2014;Willner et al., 1987) Social defeat stress anxiety, anhedonia, despair, increased social avoidance, body weight loss, eating behavior abnormalities, impaired recognition, emotional, spatial, and working memory This model induces emotional and psychological stress using a social conflict between one animal and an older, agressive, dominant intruder. ...
More than 80% of depressed patients struggle with learning new tasks, remembering positive events, or concentrating on a single topic. These neurocognitive deficits accompanying depression may be linked to functional and structural changes in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. However, their mechanisms are not yet completely understood. We conducted a narrative review of articles regarding animal studies to assess the state of knowledge. First, we argue the contribution of changes in neurotransmitters and hormone levels in the pathomechanism of cognitive dysfunction in animal depression models. Then, we used numerous neuroinflammation studies to explore its possible implication in cognitive decline. Encouragingly, we also observed a positive correlation between increased oxidative stress and a depressive-like state with concomitant memory deficits. Finally, we discuss the undeniable role of neurotrophin deficits in developing cognitive decline in animal models of depression. This review reveals the complexity of depression-related memory impairments and highlights the potential clinical importance of gathered findings for developing more reliable animal models and designing novel antidepressants with procognitive properties.
... The EPs appear to be approaching the idea of fatigue with a sense of learned helplessness. The idea of learned helplessness is that when individuals feel as if they have no control over their environment and cannot escape the aversive nature of that environment they give in and accept the inevitability of what is to come [28]. This can lead to decreased performance and increased burnout and depression at the individual level, but it can also impact organizational outcomes [29]. ...
Research has shown that shiftworkers experience poor sleep and high levels of fatigue. Although considerable research has been performed on fatigue within many shift-work occupations, very little has been done with emergency physicians (EPs). This qualitative study was conducted with the goal of gaining insight into EPs’ perceptions of fatigue at work. Twenty EPs from an academic medical center participated in virtual interviews, with nine open-ended questions asked in a semi-structured interview format. Twelve common topics with four main themes emerged from the interviews. Three of these common themes included sources of fatigue (including both work- and home-related sources), consequences of fatigue (including impacts on individuals and performance), and prevention and mitigation strategies to cope with fatigue. The fourth main theme was the belief in the inevitability of fatigue due to high cognitive load, emotionally taxing work experiences, work unpredictability, and the 24/7 shift-work nature of emergency medicine. EPs’ experiences with fatigue are consistent with but extend those of other types of shiftworkers. Our findings suggest that EPs tend to incorporate the inevitability of fatigue at work into their identity as EPs and experience a sense of learned helplessness as a result, suggesting areas for future interventions.
... A principal diferença entre a teoria de autoeficácia e outros modelos de controle está na atenção à competência, à convicção de que as habilidades individuais podem ser utilizadas para alcançar um resultado (Weems & Silverman, 2006). Finalmente, o modelo de desamparo aprendido corresponde às dificuldades de aprendizagem de esquiva em decorrência de história prévia de exposição a estímulos aversivos inevitáveis (Maier & Seligman, 1976), sendo que o principal ponto de distinção dessa teoria reside na compreensão sobre controle real e crenças sobre o controle exercido (Weems & Silverman, 2006 (Barlow, 2002). Uma metanálise realizada com 51 estudos e 11.218 pacientes identificou uma associação significativa e negativa tanto com medidas de traço de ansiedade quanto de transtornos ansiosos. ...
... Controllability has been studied from drastically different perspectives in various fields such as psychology, sociology, management, and political science (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012;Huys and Dayan, 2009;Magee and Galinsky, 2008;Maier and Seligman, 1976;Moscarello and Hartley, 2017;Schaerer et al., 2018). Briefly, these studies have examined two aspects of controllability: (1) controllability that emerges from a situation or context ("contextual controllability") and (2) an agent's internal model of how much control or influence they could have ("perceived controllability"). ...
Controllability, or the influence one has over their surroundings, is crucial for decision-making and mental health. Traditionally, controllability is operationalized in sensorimotor terms as one's ability to exercise their actions to achieve an intended outcome (also termed "agency"). However, recent social neuroscience research suggests that humans also assess if and how they can exert influence over other people (i.e., their actions, outcomes, beliefs) to achieve desired outcomes ("social controllability"). In this review, we will synthesize empirical findings and neurocomputational frameworks related to social controllability. We first introduce the concepts of contextual and perceived controllability and their respective relevance for decision-making. Then, we outline neurocomputational frameworks that can be used to model social controllability, with a focus on behavioral economic paradigms and reinforcement learning approaches. Finally, we discuss the implications of social controllability for computational psychiatry research, using delusion and obsession-compulsion as examples. Taken together, we propose that social controllability could be a key area of investigation in future social neuroscience and computational psychiatry research.
... S. Bruner & Potter, 1964;Darley & Fazio, 1980;C. D. Gilbert & Li, 2013;Greenwald & Banaji, 1995;Hilton & von Hippel, 1996;Kveraga et al., 2007;Maier & Seligman, 1976;Mervis & Rosch, 1981;Roese & Sherman, 2007). Furthermore, people (as well as some animals) generate beliefs about the world even when it is inappropriate because there is actually no systematic pattern that would allow for expectations (e.g., A. Bruner & Revusky, 1961;Fiedler et al., 2009;Hartley, 1946;Keinan, 2002;Langer, 1975;Riedl, 1981;Skinner, 1948;Weber et al., 2001;Whitson & Galinsky, 2008). ...
One of the essential insights from psychological research is that people's information processing is often biased. By now, a number of different biases have been identified and empirically demonstrated. Unfortunately, however, these biases have often been examined in separate lines of research, thereby precluding the recognition of shared principles. Here we argue that several-so far mostly unrelated-biases (e.g., bias blind spot, hostile media bias, egocentric/ethnocentric bias, outcome bias) can be traced back to the combination of a fundamental prior belief and humans' tendency toward belief-consistent information processing. What varies between different biases is essentially the specific belief that guides information processing. More importantly, we propose that different biases even share the same underlying belief and differ only in the specific outcome of information processing that is assessed (i.e., the dependent variable), thus tapping into different manifestations of the same latent information processing. In other words, we propose for discussion a model that suffices to explain several different biases. We thereby suggest a more parsimonious approach compared with current theoretical explanations of these biases. We also generate novel hypotheses that follow directly from the integrative nature of our perspective.
... In addition to increased effort, (chronic and short-term) exposure to background noise can affect the motivational component of learned helplessness [17,18], with children persisting less when required to perform a task and giving up more easily [19]. The role of motivation in effortful listening is acknowledged by the FUEL [12]. ...
Abstract: Students learn in noisy classrooms, where the main sources of noise are their own voices. In this sound environment, students are not equally at risk from background noise interference during lessons, due to the moderation effect of the individual characteristics on the listening conditions. This study investigates the effect of the number of competing speakers on listening comprehension and whether this is modulated by selective attention skills, working memory, and noise sensitivity. Seventy-one primary school students aged 10 to 13 completed a sentence comprehension task in three listening conditions: quiet, and two or four competing speakers. Outcome measures were accuracy, listening effort (response times and self-reported), motivation and confidence in completing the task. Individual characteristics were assessed in quiet. Results showed that the number of competing speakers has no direct effects of the task whilst the individual characteristics were found to moderate the effect of the listening conditions. Selective attention moderated the effects on accuracy and response times, working memory on motivation, and noise sensitivity on both perceived effort and confidence. Students with low cognitive abilities and high noise sensitivity were found to be particularly at risk in the condition with two competing speakers.
... Dies würde aufgrund der lebensbedrohlichen Wirkung eines zu großen Ressourcenverbrauchs zu einem Herunterfahren und somit zu einem Verstärkerverlust nach Lewinsohn (1974) [80] führen. Oder es entwickelte sich aufgrund der wahrgenommenen Unabhängigkeit von Verhalten und Ergebnis hinsichtlich sozialer Interaktion eine Hilflosigkeit gepaart mit einer Stressreaktion bei sozialen Reizen und in der Folge sozialer Rückzug, also eine Hyperreaktivität der HPA-Achse, was mit einer erlernten (sozialen) Hilflosigkeit gleichzusetzen wäre [81]. So könnte die allostatische, oxytocinvermittelte Einstellung auf soziale Interaktionen die teilweise heterogene Befundlage zum Zusammenhang zwischen Depression und Cortisol (erhöhte Cortisolwerte oder lediglich eine verstärkte HPA-Reaktivität) erklären [82][83][84][85]. ...
ZUSAMMENFASSUNG
Oxytocin erregte aufgrund seiner Rolle für das menschliche Sozialverhalten in den letzten Jahren vermehrt Aufmerksamkeit hinsichtlich der Erforschung der Ätiologie depressiver Erkrankungen. Aktuelle Forschungsergebnisse legen die Komplexität des Oxytocinsystems und sowohl pro- als auch antisoziale Effekte des Neuropeptids offen, weshalb seine Rolle für die Salienz sozialer Reize oder allgemeiner für allostatische Prozesse diskutiert wird. Diese Arbeit fasst Befunde zu den Zusammenhängen zwischen Oxytocin und belastenden Lebensereignissen sowie zwischen Oxytocin und der Verstärkung sozialer Interaktionen zusammen. Ausgehend von diesen Verknüpfungen des Oxytocinsystems mit dem körperlichen Stresssystem und dem Belohnungssystem stellt diese Arbeit einen Versuch dar, aktuelle Theorien zur Funktion von Oxytocin auf die Depression anzuwenden, um so eine Hypothese zur Rolle des Oxytocinsystems hinsichtlich des Ursprungs der biologischen und behavioralen Korrelate dieser Störung aufzustellen.
... However, the added psychological pressure due to ACEs, and the physical and mental health burden, compounds year on year. This can greatly overpower agency and potentially contribute to 'learned helplessness' (Maier & Seligman, 1976), among other long-term concerns. As these studies tested the same individuals, it is clear that the environment itself overwhelms the individual or the family. ...
This paper aimed to determine the prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in Payatas, an urban poor community in Quezon City, Philippines. In total, 260 people were surveyed in two areas of Payatas. The results of these surveys were then compared with existing ACE Surveys in other communities. Results found that ACEs were reported at significantly higher levels than in existing surveys, which were typically made of Middle-Class populations. The discrepancy grew at higher ACE Scores. Moderate childhood trauma, ACE Scores of 4 or more, was reported as two to five times more common in our Payatas populations than in the existing survey populations. Severe childhood trauma Scores are less available; however, these trends appear to grow at higher ACE Scores. These results suggest that ACEs are far more common in urban poor communities. That ACE Scores are higher in poorer communities is not a surprising finding. However, the scale of the problem is highly significant. As ACEs are a major root cause of many social problems, including, but not limited to, addiction, teen pregnancy, domestic violence, depression, attempted suicide, and drug abuse, it does indicate a strong area for effective support. The potential for improving the well-being, quality of life, and life expectancy through this framework is large, provided appropriate investment is made in these communities.
... Helplessness equated with failure to cope with a specific life situation is a concept that, like many others, can be included in the specific vocabulary of a period of change and a time of uncertainty. The classic model of learned helplessness shows that being in an uncontrolled situation, the so-called helplessness training (when no individual behaviour changes the probability of occurring events), causes learning the lack of relationship between actions and desired results (Seligman, 1974;Maier & Seligman, 1976). The long-term lack of event control causes the subject to learn to expect the ineffectiveness of future actions. ...
Learning in unknown circumstances is a great challenge for young people, particularly those who lack the ability to regulate their emotions. This text presents the results of research on the image of the life of students in higher grades of primary school, measured by the sense of self-efficacy and the sense of helplessness. The research was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic among 303 students. It was found that (1) students rather express their belief in their own effectiveness (agency), and, at the same time, (2) half of the students indicated the feeling of helplessness; (3) helplessness is significantly higher among girls; (4) in the case of girls, there is a clear and strong negative relation between the sense of effectiveness and the helplessness.
... It refers to a person's belief that they have the ability, resources, or opportunity to achieve positive outcomes or avoid negative effects through their actions (Coffee et al., 2009;Thompson, 1981), and it is regarded a secondary crucial assessment factor for coping with stress (Li et al., 2020). The learned helplessness model highlights the importance of controllability (Maier & Seligman, 1976). According to this model, perceived uncontrollability is the factor that determines feelings of helplessness and inability to properly respond. ...
By providing health information through visual communication, public health organizations can effectively guide and persuade people to adopt healthy behaviors, which is critical in the context of public health crises. In this study, drawing upon congruity theory and the premise of visual communication, we examined how information source and emoji may shape people's preventive and self-protective behaviors through perceived fear (PF) and perceived controllability (PC). Using a convenience sample of 210 participants, we conducted a 2 (emoji: with versus without) × 2 (information source: official versus unofficial) between-subject experiment. The results indicated that, compared with nonuse, the use of emoji in information resulted in higher PF, stronger preventive behavioral intention (PBI), and lower PC. In addition, a strong interaction effect was observed between emoji and the source of information on PBI. When emoji were added to health information released by an unofficial organization, the text outperformed that from an official agency in persuading people to adopt preventive behaviors. Furthermore, we determined that PF mediated the effect of emoji on PBI, but only for unofficial information sources. These results provide a reference for enhancing the effectiveness of health information including visual cues, such as emoji.
The article is the review of chosen researches and theories that relates to individual differences in susceptibility of learned helplessness (LH). In the first part of the article the specificity of the learned helplessness syndrome is outlined. Next the theories that are relevant when individual differences in susceptibility of LH are concerned, are presented. Then the researches related to the role of three individual differences: attributional style, Locus of Control and sex, in susceptibility of LH are presented and discussed. In the last part of the article there are some conclusions from the presented researches. Also some conclusions about the possible directions of the future researches to help to separate the reactions to single failure from the reactions to helplessness training.
While it is commonly assumed that stressful events are vividly remembered, it remains largely unknown whether all aspects of memory for a stressful episode are enhanced. In this preregistered study, we tested whether stress enhances later remembering of individual elements of a stressful episode at the cost of impaired processing of the association between these elements. Therefore, male and female participants ( N = 122) underwent a stressful (or control) episode during which they encoded a series of stimuli. To investigate stress effects on the memory for individual events and the links between these, we used temporal sequence effects in recognition memory tested 24 h after encoding. Specifically, we tested whether stress would affect the memory enhancement for a target item if this is preceded by another item that also preceded the target during encoding (recognition priming). Our results showed that participants recalled single events encoded under stress better than those encoded under nonstressful conditions, but were less able to leverage the temporal sequence of events encoded under stress to cue memory at delayed recall, reflected in reduced memory for items preceded by the item that preceded them also during encoding. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy further revealed that encoding under stress was accompanied by opposite changes in inferotemporal and dorsolateral prefrontal areas. Together, our data suggest that acute stress induces a mode of memory formation that results in strong but less integrated memories.
The concept of learned helplessness is related to the learning process. This situation which is hard to dealt with can lead to motivational, cognitive and emotional changes and may leave irremediable traces. Therefore, measuring this construct especially in youngsters is thought to be important. That’s why the Learned Helplessness Tendency Scale was developed. 30 items were developed on the basis of Causal Attribution Theory. Item pool was presented to the expert group. In order to provide data-based evidence of validity and reliability, data were collected from secondary school students. EFA group consists of 299 observations while the CFA consists of 210. As a result of the explanatory and confirmatory factor analyzes, a 3-factor structure consisting of 14 items was accepted. For criterion validity study, its correlation with the Beck Hopelessness Inventory was examined. All validity studies show that the developed scale produces valid results. Composite reliability coefficient proved that the scale produced reliable results. The Learned Helplessness Tendency Scale produces valid and reliable scores for secondary school students. The developed Learned Helplessness Tendency Scale is thought to be used to determine the learned helplessness levels of secondary school students.
Research with human participants has shown that the choice of a smaller-sooner reinforcer (SS) over a larger-later reinforcer (LL) is more frequent in aversive than non-aversive contexts (e.g., presence versus absence of non-contingent intense noise; Flora et al., 1992, 2003). This study aimed to test the generality of this disruptive effect in rats.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, we set out to observe the psychological responses caused by the lockdown situation, focusing on the predictive importance of perceived control and sociodemographic variables in the occurrence of depression, anxiety, and stress. Data collection was conducted online via google forms, between 6 and 29 April 2020. A total of 303 people between 18 and 74 years old participated. According to the confinement status, the prevalence ranged between 23% and 42% for anxiety, 24% and 51% for depression, and between 26% and 45% for stress. The perceived lack of control and the change of professional situation, layoff, job loss, and online study, proved to be predictors and risk factors for depression, anxiety, and stress. Being female and having a low level of education proved to be predictors of anxiety and stress. Maintaining a professional situation, perceived control, being male (except for depression) and having higher education proved to be protective factors. These results require interventions that improve perceived control, fair policies, and support to suppress insecurity.
Keywords: COVID-19, outbreak, lockdown, depression, anxiety, perception of control.
The presence of the global pandemic in the United States of America has presented significant professional and personal challenges for higher education faculty. In particular, the socioeconomic, political, and cultural changes have exacerbated pre-existing challenges for Black women who are also early career faculty members in academia. Black women are significantly underrepresented in all ranks of higher education and face disproportionate obstacles in advancing through academic ranks. Additionally, early career faculty are in a critical time professionally where it is paramount that they establish balance among their teaching, research and service, while racing against the tenure clock. The mental health and well-being of Black women in academia are in jeopardy as many are plagued with the “Strong Black Woman Syndrome.” Many struggle to maintain the status quo at work and family responsibilities while neglecting their own physical and mental health. However, the literature is sparse documenting the experiences of early career faculty at the intersection of gender and race as they navigate the global pandemic. The current study aims to explore the experiences of three Black female psychology faculty members. These Black women were employed within the same department at their university, as they navigated emergency remote learning/teaching, work-life balance, and academia, during their first and second years as tenure track professors, while in the early stages of the pandemic. Through collective autoethnographic methodology, the current work explores the challenges experienced, strategies utilized, and lessons learned, as they navigated the teaching, scholarship and service demands of academia. Furthermore, cultural and systematic differences were surveyed to explain the multicultural perspectives of each faculty member. Major themes that emerged across scholars included mental health, caregiving, vulnerability, time management, mentorship, and social networks. Recommendations are made regarding coping skills and best practices for Black female early career faculty faced with significant challenges, and leveraging those challenges to create opportunities for growth, development, and resilience.KeywordsBlack women facultyEarly career facultyPandemicCollective autoethnographyResilience
Despite broad interest in how children and youth cope with stress and how others can support their coping, this is the first Handbook to consolidate the many theories and large bodies of research that contribute to the study of the development of coping. The Handbook's goal is field building - it brings together theory and research from across the spectrum of psychological, developmental, and related sciences to inform our understanding of coping and its development across the lifespan. Hence, it is of interest not only to psychologists, but also to neuroscientists, sociologists, and public health experts. Moreover, work on stress and coping touches many areas of applied social science, including prevention and intervention science, education, clinical practice, and youth development, making this Handbook a vital interdisciplinary resource for parents, teachers, clinical practitioners, social workers, and anyone interested in improving the lives of children.
At this billabong, we discuss what this thing called trauma is and why it is so important to know about when working with First Nations Peoples. It is incredibly liberating to understand how trauma affects the brain and the body and how our responses of befriend, fight, flee and freeze are ways that our bodies keep us safe. The ACE study is explored at this billabong as it has important implications for us as First Nations Peoples as does what we know about how attachment theory is different for us, and how polyvagal theory can tell us more about how we respond to trauma.
At this billabong we set up camp and dig down into more detail about the different types of trauma that affect us as human beings, and how for colonised peoples that trauma can be multi-layered and complex to recognise and heal from. Some of the traumas such as institutional trauma, intergenerational trauma and historical trauma as well as developmental trauma can be triggering to read about if you have a trauma story yourself, so take care when sitting at this billabong.
Animal care in facilities housing nonhuman primates has undergone a transformation in the past two decades, as the scientific community has learned more about the effects of husbandry practices on behavior and physiology of captive nonhuman primates. Today, husbandry consists of more than simply feeding animals and removing waste. Husbandry practices cover all aspects of animal care, from ensuring the animals’ nutritional needs to providing adequate shelter, monitoring the health of the animals, and refining procedures so that they reduce stress and distress. As such, husbandry is integral to providing optimal animal welfare. This chapter will summarize four main areas of husbandry (health monitoring, nutrition, shelter, and humane handling) and discuss how each can influence aspects of the welfare of captive nonhuman primates living in a research environment.
Pigeons emitted almost exclusively short-duration key pecks (shorter than 20 msec) when on negative automaintenance procedures, in which pecks prevented reinforcement. Peck durations under fixed-interval and fixed-ratio reinforcement schedules were generally two to five times longer than pecks under a negative automaintenance schedule. However, initial key pecks were of short duration, independent of procedure. The frequency of short-duration pecks was insensitive to differential reinforcement, while the frequency of long-duration pecks was sensitive to differential reinforcement. It is proposed that short-duration pecks arise from the pigeon's normal feeding pattern and are directly enhanced by food presentation, while long-duration pecks are controlled by the contingent effects of food presentation. The implications of the existence of two classes of pecks for the functional definition of operants and the separation of phylogenetic and ontogenetic sources of control of key pecking are discussed.
Rats were given 0, 8, 50, and 100 fear conditioning trials prior to shuttle-box avoidance learning. The fear conditioning trials resulted in: (a) an increased latency of escape responses during the initial avoidance training, (b) a greater variability of avoidance learning scores, and (c) a slight, but not statistically significant, improvement in avoidance learning. These results are attributed to fear being associated with the buzzer and to the establishing of favorable and incompatible responses to the grid shock.
Aversive events occur frequently in the life histories of all organisms. Long-lasting behavior pecularities, emotional illnesses, and anomalies of perception and thinking are attributed to such events. Apart from genetic or constitutional variables that might lead to individual differences in reactivity to aversive stimuli, there are a host of environmental variables that help to understand such individual differences. Two such environmental variables are the predictability and controllability of aversive events. This chapter reviews some of the behavioral and physiological consequences of aversive events that are either unpredictable, uncontrollable by a subject, or both. Unpredictable painful events turn out to be more distressing than are predictable ones. They generate more ulcers and intensify subjective reports of painfulness and anxiety. Both people and animals choose, if given the choice, predictable painful events over unpredictable ones. Uncontrollable painful events can interfere with an organism's ability later to solve problems to escape or avoid these events. They can lead to a phenomenon labeled “helplessness.” The chapter discusses the current status of research and theory concerning these phenomena. It describes a two-dimensional representation of the operations involved in instrumental training and Pavlovian conditioning. The chapter further reviews a number of theoretical interpretations of the effects of uncontrollable shocks on subsequent escape/avoidance learning and discusses the theoretical interpretations of the effects of unpredictable shocks on behavioral and physiological responses: the preparatory response hypothesis and the safety signal hypotheses.
Four groups of rats were taught a visual simultaneous discrimination with a non-correction procedure. Two of the groups had previously been trained to make the reverse discrimination, the other two had no prior training. Two groups were given a relearning test one day after training, while two others were tested 32 days after training. There was no retention loss unless prior interference had been provided. Thus, proactive interference was demonstrated.
Three groups (N = 9) of male albino mice were given six daily 2-h exposures to escapable, inescapable, orno electric shock. Shock was programmed on a 30-sec-on/30-sec-off alternating schedule. The pole-climbing behavior of an escapable shock S could terminate or prevent shock both for itself and for its yoked inescapable shock pair-member. AUSs then were given, after a 24-h rest, five water-escape trials in which swimming time was measured. The escapable shock S s learned the water-escape task faster than the no shock controlSs. The inescapable shock Ss swam increasingly slower over trials.
The present report deals with the hypothesis that intense and unusual stimulation early in life may produce profound and persisting effects on later behavior. Much of the research in this area has focused on the effects of unusually impoverished or enriched environments where treatment extends over long periods in the life of the organism. Prompted by the positive findings of an earlier study, a connected series of six experiments dealing with the consequences of severe electric shock was undertaken. The aims of this series were: (a) replication of the previously obtained long-term effects of intense stimulation; (b) discovery of the conditions for introducing shock residua into the repertoire of organisms; (c) specification of some of the properties of such shock-induced residua, for example, how long do they last, how may they be altered, are there any critical periods, etc.; (d) description of the relationship of these residua to adult learning and emotional phenomena. In a series of six experiments, albino rats were exposed to a variety of traumatic and non-traumatic experiences to determine some of the parameters which are critical for the relationship between trauma and later behavior. The over-all results provided a convincing demonstration that trauma in the form of intense electric shock does modify future behavior.
This paper explores a heuristic-representativeness-according to which the subjective probability of an event, or a sample, is determined by the degree to which it: (i) is similar in essential characteristics to its parent population; and (ii) reflects the salient features of the process by which it is generated. This heuristic is explicated in a series of empirical examples demonstrating predictable and systematic errors in the evaluation of un- certain events. In particular, since sample size does not represent any property of the population, it is expected to have little or no effect on judgment of likelihood. This prediction is confirmed in studies showing that subjective sampling distributions and posterior probability judgments are determined by the most salient characteristic of the sample (e.g., proportion, mean) without regard to the size of the sample. The present heuristic approach is contrasted with the normative (Bayesian) approach to the analysis of the judgment of uncertainty.
Made 5 experiments employing 20, 30, 30, 20, and 40 homing pigeons, respectively. In Exp. I, Ss trained to discriminate between 2 (successively presented) wavelengths and then given single-stimulus training, with a vertical white line superimposed on the previously reinforced wavelength, yielded sharper angularity (line angle) generalization gradients than did Ss given nondifferential reinforcement with the same 2 wavelengths in the 1st stage of training. Exp. II replicated these results, but with angularity as the training dimension and wavelength as the test dimension. In Exp. III, Ss trained to discriminate between 2 wavelengths, with a vertical white line superimposed on each, subsequently gave sharper angularity gradients than did Ss trained nondifferentially with the same 2 stimuli. Exp. IV replicated this finding, but with angularity as the training dimension and wavelength as the test dimension. In Exp. V, discrimination and nondifferential training were carried out with 2 different floor tilts, with a constant green light on the response key. Discrimination-trained Ss gave sharper wavelength gradients than did nondifferentially trained Ss and a single-stimulus control group exposed to only 1 floor angle; the latter 2 groups did not differ significantly. Discrimination training was shown to sharpen generalization along stimulus dimensions not varied in such training. (53 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Investigated failure to escape, the defining characteristic of learned helplessness, with perceived and instructed locus of control Ss in a learned-helplessness paradigm. 96 undergraduates in 3 groups, equally divided between internals and externals and counterbalanced for sex, received different treatments with an aversive tone prior to the testing for helplessness. Group I could neither escape nor avoid an aversive tone, Group II could escape the tone, and Group III was not exposed to the treatment. 18 escape-avoidance trials followed, using a human analogue to an animal shuttle box in which Ss received an instructional set describing the task as skill or chance determined. In addition to a complete replication of learned helplessness in man, externals were significantly more helpless than internals, and chance-set Ss more helpless than skill-set. Since uncontrollability of noise, externality, and chance instructional set all impaired escape-avoidance in parallel ways, it is speculated that a common state may underlie all 3 dimensions-expectancy that responding and reinforcement are independent. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In a previous study, rats reared in overcrowded environments exhibited characteristics similar to those of the learned helplessness phenomenon described following exposure to inescapable shock. In 2 replications, a total of 112 Long-Evans hooded rats were reared alone or in groups of 4 or 32 for 50 days after weaning. Ss were then tested in a shuttlebox, for which 2 successive crossings were required to avoid or escape shock. 10 Ss from each population group received inescapable shock prior to shuttlebox training, while another 10 were identically handled but not shocked. Ss given inescapable shock failed to perform the shuttlebox task, regardless of the size of the population with which they were reared. Ss not preshocked performed the shuttle task, although those reared in groups of 32 required several trials to reach the level of the smaller groups. Results indicate that impaired learning following overcrowded rearing does not result from helplessness-like behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
18 cage-raised beagle dogs and 15 mongrel dogs of unknown history who received repeated, spaced exposure to inescapable electric shock in a Pavlovian hammock failed to escape shock in a shuttlebox 1 wk. later, while 1 session of inescapable shock produced only transient interference. Beagles were more susceptible to interference produced by inescapable shock than were mongrels. Results are compatible with learned helplessness and contradict the hypothesis that failure to escape shock is produced by transient stress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Identifies basic components of traditional learning theory (e.g., environmentalism, operationism, intervening variables, and searches for general laws of behavior). The major criticisms of these components are reviewed and the implications of present-day learning theory are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Examined previous findings that free, randomly reinforced preexposure of stimuli results in a decrement in subsequent discrimination learning using the preexposed stimuli. 3 experiments were conducted with male sprague-dawley rats (n = 152). Results indicate that (a) nonreinforced preexposure produces a similar decrement in subsequent learning, (b) motivation level during preexposure does not alter the effect, and (c) the amount of preexposure is not particularly important within the range used in the present research. A conditioned excitation-inhibition model did not adequately account for the findings. Further consideration suggested an explanation in terms of attentional mechanisms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
2 experiments demonstrated that the effects of prior exposure to inescapable shock on the subsequent acquisition of an escape response in rats is determined by the nature of the contingency that exists between responding and shock termination during the escape learning task, and not by the amount of effort required to make the response or the amount of shock that the S is forced to receive during each trial. Exp I, using 48 male Simonsen rats, showed that inescapably shocked Ss did not learn to escape shock in a shuttle box if 2 crossings of the shuttle box were required (fixed ratio, FR, -2) to terminate shock, but did learn this FR-2 response if a brief interruption of shock occurs after the 1st crossing of the FR-2. Exp II with 72 Ss showed that inescapably shocked Ss learned a single-crossing escape response as rapidly as did controls, but were severely retarded if a brief delay in shock termination was arranged to follow the response. Results are discussed in terms of the learned helplessness hypothesis, which assumes that prior exposure to inescapable shock results in associative interference. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Suggests that prevailing theories of avoidance learning and procedures used to study it are out of touch with what is known about how animals defend themselves in nature, and proposes an alternate assumption that animals have innate species-specific defense reactions (SSDRs) such as fleeing, freezing, and fighting. If a particular avoidance response is rapidly acquired, then that response must necessarily be an SSDR, hence, the learning mechanism appears to be suppression of nonavoidance behavior by the avoidance contingency. Traditional approaches to avoidance learning appear to be slightly more valid in the case of responses that are slowly acquired, although in this case, too, the SSDR concept is relevant, and reinforcement appears to be based on the production of a safety signal rather than the termination of an aversive CS. (53 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Trained 2 groups of 22 male Sprague-Dawley rats each to bar press for food on a variable interval schedule. During testing, each food reinforcement was paired with electric shock, and the groups were differentiated on the basis of the degree of instrumental control over this aversive stimulus. Significantly fewer Ss which were able to terminate the shock by means of an instrumental escape response developed stomach ulcers than did Ss with unescapable shocks. It is concluded that the degree of instrumental control the organism is able to exert over the aversive stimulus is an important determinant of the psychological severity of a conflict situation, and of ulceration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The effect of prior unsignaled shock (preshock) on subsequent acquisition of an Estes-Skinner conditioned emotional response (CER) was explored in 80 rats. Preshock retarded acquisition of CER, but this was not attributable to habituation to the US; rather, preshock produced a tendency for S to accelerate responding in the presence of the CS. This tendency was related to the intensity of preshock, but varying preshock intensities affected baseline rates of operant behavior. Preshock did not influence CER acquisition when S was allowed to recover to its baseline rate of operant responding prior to CER training. Data were interpreted in terms of Pavlovian disinhibition. There was some evidence for a sensitizing effect of preshock. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Examined whether pretreatment of mongrel dogs with noncontingent shocks is a necessary or merely sufficient condition to obtain interference with the subsequent acquisition of escape-avoidance responding in a shuttle box. 3 Ss pretreated with an immediate-escape procedure in a harness or only adaptation to a harness subsequently acquired escape-avoidance responding in a shuttle box. 3 Ss pretreated with an escape procedure that selectively reinforced long response latencies and interresponse times, on the other hand, failed to acquire escape-avoidance responding. Such interference, sometimes interpreted in terms of learned helplessness when preceded by a history of noncontingent shocks, need not be due to such a history. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Notes that learned helplessness-the interference with instrumental responding following inescapable aversive events-has been found in animals and man. The present study tested for the generality of the debilitation produced by uncontrollable events across tasks and motivational systems. 4 experiments with a total of 96 college students were simultaneously conducted: (a) pretreatment with inescapable, escapable, or control aversive tone followed by shuttlebox escape testing; (b) pretreatment with insoluble, soluble, or control discrimination problems followed by anagram solution testing; (c) pretreatments with inescapable, escapable, or control aversive tone followed by anagram solution testing; and (d) pretreatments with insoluble, soluble, or control discrimination problems followed by shuttlebox escape testing. Learned helplessness was found with all 4 experiments: Both insolubility and inescapability produced failure to escape and failure to solve anagrams. It is suggested that inescapability and insolubility both engendered expectancies that responding is independent of reinforcement. The generality of this process suggests that learned helplessness may be an induced "trait." (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Following the learned helplessness paradigm, the present study with 63 undergraduates assessed the hypothesized existence of a curvilinear relationship between experiences of no control and helpless behavior. Two factors thought to affect the impact of experiences with noncontingent reinforcement were investigated: the amount of helplessness training and the importance attributed to the training task. Helplessness training consisted of varying intensities of experience with noncontingent reinforcement on concept-formation-type problems in situations differing in perceived importance. Results demonstrate both facilitation and helplessness effects, and task importance and amount of training increased the likelihood of helplessness effects. Results are discussed in terms of possible qualifications of the effects of noncontingent reinforcement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Three experiments investigated the effects of restraint and of inescapable fixed duration preshocks on subsequent shuttlebox escape-from-shock learning. Fixed-intensity preshock, random-intensity preshock, and no-preshock conditions were included in each experiment. In Experiment 1, restraining the rat in a harness prior to escape training retarded escape acquisition. There was no effect of preshock. In Experiment 2, both restraint and high fixed-intensity (1.0 mA) preshock retarded escape acquisition, when escape training occurred either immediately or 24 hr after preshock. In Experiment 3, movement was punished by positively correlating preshock intensity with the rat's movement; this treatment retarded escape conditioning. No effects were found for low fixed-intensity or random-intensity preshock nor for a condition in which movement was rewarded during preshock. The retarding effects of restraint and certain types of preshock were explained in terms of interfering instrumental responses.
Rats, like dogs, fail to escape following exposure to inescapable shock. This failure to escape does not dissipate in time; rats fail to escape 5 min, 1 hr., 4 hr., 24 hr., and 1 wk. after receiving inescapable shock. Rats that first learned to jump up to escape were not retarded later at bar pressing to escape following inescapable shock. Failure to escape can be broken up by forcibly exposing the rat to an escape contingency. Therefore, the effects of inescapable shock in the rat parallel learned helplessness effects in the dog.
Four experiments attempted to produce behavior in the rat parallel to the behavior characteristic of learned helplessness in the dog. When rats received escapable, inescapable, or no shock and were later tested in jump-up escape, both inescapable and no-shock controls failed to escape. When bar pressing, rather than jumping up, was used as the tested escape response, fixed ratio (FR) 3 was interfered with by inescapable shock, but not lesser ratios. With FR-3, the no-shock control escaped well. Interference with escape was shown to be a function of the inescapability of shock and not shock per se: Rats that were "put through" and learned a prior jump-up escape did not become passive, but their yoked, inescapable partners did. Rats, as well as dogs, fail to escape shock as a function of prior inescapability, exhibiting learned helplessness.
Regional brain levels of tyrosine hydroxylase and tryptophan hydroxylase were determined in rats isolated for intervals of up to 16 days. The activity of midbrain and striatal tyrosine hydroxylase was found to be elevated in the isolated rats when compared to grouped controls. In contrast, septal tryptophan hydroxylase activity was significantly reduced and midbrain tryptophan hydroxylase remained unchanged. Animals isolated for as little as 5 days were found to exhibit an increased level of spontaneous motor activity. In addition, amphetamine-induced behavioral excitation appeared to be additive with that produced by isolation.
Shocks which cannot be controlled by an organism have been shown to interfere with subsequent escape-avoidance training more than do equivalent shocks which can be controlled. 2 experiments extended the generality of this phenomenon by examining the effects of the escapability of shock on subsequent shock-elicited aggression. Exp. I (with 48 male Sprague-Dawley rats) found that prior exposure to inescapable shock reduced the frequency of shock-induced fighting, while escapable shock did not produce such a reduction. The theory that yoked-control procedures can capitalize on individual differences and produce a systematic difference between groups was ruled out as an explanation of the data of Exp. I by the results of Exp. II, conducted with 22 similar Ss. (19 ref.)
The contingency between conditional and unconditional stimuli in classical conditioning paradigms, and between responses and consequences in instrumental conditioning paradigms, is analyzed. The results are represented in two- and three-dimensional spaces in which points correspond to procedures, or procedures and outcomes. Traditional statistical and psychological measures of association are applied to data in classical conditioning. Root mean square contingency, Ø, is proposed as a measure of contingency characterizing classical conditioning effects at asymptote. In instrumental training procedures, traditional measures of association are inappropriate, since one degree of freedom-response probability-is yielded to the subject. Further analysis of instrumental contingencies yields a surprising result. The well established "Matching Law" in free-operant concurrent schedules subsumes the "Probability Matching" finding of mathematical learning theory, and both are equivalent to zero contingency between responses and consequences.
Conducted 2 experiments with 24 and 30 male undergraduates to evaluate the arousal-reducing function of several cognitive factors in stressful situations. In Exp. I, Ss underwent an aversive 1/2-hr shock-avoidance procedure, in which the experimental Ss had optional control over rest periods, and a group of yoked controls had comparable rest periods imposed on them. The experimental group manifested substantially reduced systolic blood pressure levels relative to their yoked counterparts. Results suggest that the availability of an avoidance response had an arousal-reducing effect. In Exp. II, the rest periods were preceded by a reliable signal. Results indicate that anticipatory systolic reductions occurred in conjunction with the prerest signal and that these reductions varied as a function of the length of the subsequent rest period. (21 ref.)
The effects of reward or reinforcement on preceding behavior depend in part on whether the person perceives the reward as contingent on his own behavior or independent of it. Acquisition and performance differ in situations perceived as determined by skill versus chance. Persons may also differ in generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. This report summarizes several experiments which define group differences in behavior when Ss perceive reinforcement as contingent on their behavior versus chance or experimenter control. The report also describes the development of tests of individual differences in a generalized belief in internal-external control and provides reliability, discriminant validity and normative data for 1 test, along with a description of the results of several studies of construct validity.
Trained 2 groups of 13 naive mongrel dogs each to change the electrical activity of their dorsal hippocampus to avoid shock under flaxedil paralysis. 1 group was operantly reinforced for making hippocampal theta waves, and the other group for refraining from making them. Presentation of the discriminative stimulus following recovery from paralysis produced more theta responses and more skeletal activity in the 1st group than in the 2nd. (22 ref.)
The behavioural effects of NA injected without narcosis into the lateral brain ventricle of the rats were studied with two different techniques. Rats were classified according their normal level of exploratory activity into three groups: high, medium and low. It was shown that NA in a dose of 10 g increased locomotor activity only in animals of low activity; a dose of 50 g increased locomotor activity in all the animals; and a dose of 200 g induced a complete abolition of locomotor activity and a stuporose syndrome lasting 2 hours. The evidence that NA in some experimental conditions increases locomotor activity of rats supports the hypothesis that NA regulates processes in the central nervous system which stimulate behaviour.
Assessed the effects of shock intensity on avoidance conditioning in goldfish. In Exp. I with 120 Ss, independent groups received 1 of 5 shock intensities as the UCS. In Exp. II with 36 Ss, different CSs cued different shock intensities within Ss. Avoidance performance was an inverted U-shaped function of shock intensity in Exp. I and a direct function of shock intensity in Exp. II. Shock intensity was interpreted to have a facilitory effect on conditioning fear and a suppressive effect on subsequent responses. In the between-Ss procedure, the suppressive effect overrides the facilitative effect at higher intensities resulting in poorer performance. Within Ss, the suppressive effect is equated across conditions and the facilitory effect is seen at higher shock intensities.
DOGS GIVEN INESCAPABLE SHOCK IN A PAVLOVIAN HARNESS LATER GIVE UP AND PASSIVELY ACCEPT TRAUMATIC SHOCK IN SHUTTLEBOX ESCAPE/AVOIDANCE TRAINING. A THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF THIS PHENOMENON WAS PRESENTED. AS PREDICTED, THE FAILURE TO ESCAPE WAS ALLEVIATED BY REPEATEDLY COMPELLING THE DOG TO MAKE THE RESPONSE WHICH TERMINATED SHOCK. MALADAPTIVE PASSIVE BEHAVIOR IN THE FACE OF TRAUMA MAY BE RELATED TO MALADAPTIVE PASSIVE BEHAVIOR IN HUMANS. THE IMPORTANCE OF INSTRUMENTAL CONTROL OVER AVERSIVE EVENTS IN THE CAUSE, PREVENTION, AND TREATMENT OF SUCH BEHAVIORS WAS DISCUSSED. (18 REF.)
In 6 curarized dogs, the magnitudes of both the cardiac acceleration during shock stimulation and deceleration after stimulation were found to be monotonic increasing functions of intensity (2, 4, 6, and 8 ma.), and inverted U shaped functions of duration (.1, .5, 2.5, 5, and 10 sec.) of electric shock. Utilizing 32 curarized dogs with a discriminative classical conditioning procedure, it was found that: (1) the presence of a warning signal did not affect the magnitude of the unconditioned cardiac response, and (2) previous experience with shocks of lower intensity did reduce the magnitude of the unconditioned cardiac response to subsequent high-intensity shock.
DOGS WHICH HAD 1ST LEARNED TO PANEL PRESS IN A HARNESS IN ORDER TO ESCAPE SHOCK SUBSEQUENTLY SHOWED NORMAL ACQUISITION OF ESCAPE/AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOR IN A SHUTTLE BOX. IN CONTRAST, YOKED, INESCAPABLE SHOCK IN THE HARNESS PRODUCED PROFOUND INTERFERENCE WITH SUBSEQUENT ESCAPE RESPONDING IN THE SHUTTLE BOX. INITIAL EXPERIENCE WITH ESCAPE IN THE SHUTTLE BOX LED TO ENHANCED PANEL PRESSING DURING INESCAPABLE SHOCK IN THE HARNESS AND PREVENTED INTERFERENCE WITH LATER RESPONDING IN THE SHUTTLE BOX. INESCAPABLE SHOCK IN THE HARNESS AND FAILURE TO ESCAPE IN THE SHUTTLE BOX PRODUCED INTERFERENCE WITH ESCAPE RESPONDING AFTER A 7-DAY REST. THESE RESULTS ARE INTERPRETED AS SUPPORTING A LEARNED "HELPLESSNESS" EXPLANATION OF INTERFERENCE WITH ESCAPE RESPONDING: SS FAILED TO ESCAPE SHOCK IN THE SHUTTLE BOX FOLLOWING INESCAPABLE SHOCK IN THE HARNESS BECAUSE THEY HAD LEARNED THAT SHOCK TERMINATION WAS INDEPENDENT OF RESPONDING.
43 CATS LEARNED TO AVOID SHOCK AT A BUZZER BY PAWING A WHEEL (R++) AFTER DIVERSE PRETRAINING: GROUP C RECEIVED INESCAPABLE 1-SEC SHOCKS; GROUP R LEARNED TO ESCAPE UNSIGNALED SHOCKS BY PAWING THE WHEEL; GROUP S RECEIVED 6-SEC BUZZES PAIRED WITH INESCAPABLE 1-SEC SHOCKS; GROUP RS RECEIVED ESCAPE TRAINING AND BUZZ-SHOCK CONDITIONING ON ALTERNATE DAYS. CONTRARY TO PREVIOUS FINDINGS, GROUP R SURPASSED GROUPS S AND RS IN R++ (P = .01 AND .05, RESPECTIVELY) AND IN RATE OF INCREASE (P = .005 AND .001). RESULTS ARE ATTRIBUTED TO (1) INCREASED AVAILABILITY OF R++ IN GROUP R, AND (2) INTERFERENCE WITH R++ IN GROUPS S AND RS BY A POSTURAL COMPONENT OF CONDITIONED EMOTIONAL RESPONSE.
40 S's divided into 4 groups were required to predict on each of 240 trials which of 2 possible symbols, H or V, would appear on that trial. The groups differed in the proportion of trials on which a particular symbol appeared and in the degree of sequential dependency between successive symbols. Analysis by method derived from communication theory revealed that S's adjusted their predictions to conform to actual probability of occurrence of the symbols in the symbol series. They responded to the sequences of events, their previous predictions, and their correctness on the previous two trials.
Rats trained to discriminate between S(D) and S(Delta) for food reinforcement showed marked impairments in this discrimination when strong, unavoidable shocks occurred at the termination of a third stimulus. The predominant feature of this impairment was a supernormal rate of unreinforced (S(Delta)) behavior. Shocks delivered without exteroceptive warning also led to a discriminative breakdown. The effect was a direct function of shock intensity. When behavior was strongly suppressed in the third stimulus by response-correlated shock ("punishment"), instead of unavoidable shock, breakdowns were only temporary; as soon as responding recovered from its overall suppression, discriminative performance returned to normal. The discriminative deterioration may be interpreted as an emotional by-product of frequent aversive stimulation, but accidental contingencies could also have played a role.
Response suppression
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Retention and immunization of learned helplessness from weaning to adulthood. Devel-opmental Psychology
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Operant conditioning: Re-search and application
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Intentional behavior and motiva-tion: A cognitive theory
- F W Irwin
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Pavlovian fear conditioning and learned helplessness
- S F Maier
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The principle of uncertainty in Neurotegenesis Experimental psychopathology The effects of electric shock upon subsequent learning in the rat
- J H Masserman
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