Learned Helplessness Theory Quiz

Revised Theory of Learned Helplessness (1978)

• When organisms experience uncontrollable outcomes, they explain it in terms of three attributional dimensions:
  • Internal-External Dimension: determines personal or universal helplessness (& accordingly self-blame)
  • Stable-Unstable Dimension: determines 'chronicity' (persistence)
  • Global-Specific Dimension: determines generalisability to new situations

Examples of Attributional Dimensions

• Example 1: Failing an exam (negative outcome)
  • Internal, stable, global attribution: "I'm stupid"
  • External, unstable, specific attribution: "The exam was unfair"
• Example 2: Coming top in an exam (positive outcome)
  • Internal, stable, global attribution: "I'm brilliant"
  • External, unstable, specific attribution: "I was lucky"

Depressive Attributional Style

• Depressive individuals tend to:
  • Give internal, stable, global attributions for bad outcomes
  • Give external, unstable, specific attributions for good outcomes

Depressive Realism Hypothesis (Taylor & Brown, 1988)

• Depressed individuals are more accurate (realistic) in making judgments about their performance
• Non-depressed individuals tend to over-rate their performance

Cognitive Theories of Depression

• Assume that depressed patients' cognitions of reality are distorted
• Beck's theory proposes three types of distortion:
  • Negative distortions about the self
  • Negative distortions about the world
  • Negative distortions about others

Beck's Cognitive Theory of Depression

• Depressed individuals have negative schemas about:
  • Self (e.g., "I'm unlikeable")
  • World (e.g., "nothing ever goes right")
  • Others (e.g., "nobody cares whether I live or die")
• Information is distorted to maintain these negative schemas

Hopelessness Theory of Depression (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989)

• Based on learned helplessness theory
• Assumes depressed individuals generalize inappropriately from situations with uncontrollable outcomes to situations with controllable outcomes
• Assumes depressed patients have an unrealistic attributional style

Positive Illusions (Taylor, 1989)

• Cognitive theories of depression incorrectly assume that depressed patients distort reality
• Mentally healthy individuals distort reality (see world through 'rose-tinted glasses')
• Depressed patients are more realistic

Other Applications of Helplessness Theory

• Martin Seligman advocates for attributional retraining to develop a healthy (optimistic) attributional style
• To be successful and happy, develop an optimistic attributional style

Explore the Revised Theory of Learned Helplessness (1978) and its attributional dimensions. Test your knowledge on internal-external, stable-unstable, and global-specific dimensions and their applications.