Learned Helplessness Experiments With Humans PDF
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Uploaded by BrainySakura
University of South Australia
2020
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Summary
These notes cover learned helplessness experiments with human participants. The document includes research questions related to learned helplessness. It also critiques experiments using human participants in this context. The source appears to be lecture notes for an undergraduate psychology course.
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25/08/2020 Topic 3: Subtopic 2 Learned Helplessness experiments with human participants BIOLOGICAL AND LEARNING PSYCHOLOGY Course coordinator: Associate Professor Carla Litchfi...
25/08/2020 Topic 3: Subtopic 2 Learned Helplessness experiments with human participants BIOLOGICAL AND LEARNING PSYCHOLOGY Course coordinator: Associate Professor Carla Litchfield 1 SUBSEQUENT RESEARCH QUESTIONS Can learned helplessness be shown in humans? Can learned helplessness be shown with non- aversive outcomes (in humans or other animals)? 2 1 25/08/2020 HIROTO & SELIGMAN’S 1975 EXPERIMENTS Used human participants, with a loud irritating noise (instead of shock) as the uncontrollable stimulus. All participants were told noise would stop if they solved a puzzle correctly: GROUP 1- could press a series of buttons to turn off noise (could stop noise & control environment) GROUP 2- given puzzles that could not be solved (could not stop noise & could not control environment) 3 CRITICISMS OF HIROTO & SELIGMAN’S 1975 EXPERIMENTS Described 4 experiments using: 2 induction procedures (instrumental & cognitive) 2 test tasks (instrumental & cognitive) Problems: induction procedures confounded various extraneous variables with uncontrollability; this means validity of the results is open to question as various alternative explanations may account for the experimental findings; many later experiments on human helplessness used similar procedures (see Winefield, 1982). 4 2 25/08/2020 PROBLEMS WITH EXPERIMENTS USING HUMAN PARTICIPANTS 1. Amount & pattern of reinforcement (don’t all use yoking) 2. Yoking may produce ‘illusion of control’ 3. Some experiments used different instructions 4. Perceived success/failure: most experiments confound uncontrollability & failure 5. Predictability/unpredictability: difficult to separate experimentally 6. People don’t just give up altogether (like most dogs did) 5 OTHER ACCOUNTS OF HUMAN HELPLESSNESS Reactance (Brehm, 1966) Hypothesis testing (Levine et al., 1978) Egotism (Frankel & Snyder, 1978) State vs Action Orientation (Kuhl, 1981) Cognitive exhaustion (Sedek & Kofta, 1990) Secondary control (Rothbaum et al., 1982) Conditioned inattention (Lubow et al., 1981) 6 3 25/08/2020 REFERENCES You don’t need to find these but they are given here to acknowledge sources Hiroto, D. S., & Seligman, M. E. (1975). Generality of learned helplessness in man. Journal of personality and social psychology, 31, 311-327. Peterson, C., Maier, S.F. & Seligman, M.E.P. (1993). Learned Helplessness. New York: Oxford University Press. Seligman, M.E.P. (1975). Helplessness. San Francisco: Freeman. Winefield, A.H. (1982). Methodological difficulties in demonstrating learned helplessness in humans. Journal of General Psychology, 107, 255-266. Sources for images are provided with the images or have been sourced as freely available for reuse (e.g. Pixabay) 7 4
