Topic 3 subtopic 2 Learned Helplessness experiments with humans 2 per page notes.pdf

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