Hiroto And Seligman's Theory Of Learned Helplessness

The development of learned helplessness phenomenon begin with an accidental finding in Richard Solomon’s (1918-1995) laboratory experiments conducted on dogs, where a series of studies on negative reinforcement was in progress. In Solomon’s experiment, the dogs were placed in an enclosed box divided in half by a chest-barrier. The shock would come on and the dog’s assignment was to jump over the barrier and end the shock. After a brief pause, the shock would come on once more and the dog had to jump over the barrier back to the original side. Thus, over a series of learning trials the dog moves back and forward between the two sides of the box. In addition, the experimenters included a group of dogs that had first been exposed to a brief shocks …show more content…
Thus, Seligman and his colleagues concluded that it is the uncontrollability of the aversive situation that triggers the animal's failure to escape, not the shock per se. Subsequently, Seligman and his colleagues conducted a variety of experiments on animals and then humans to examine the uncontrollability effect on helplessness. For instance, Hiroto and Seligman’s (1975) illustrated the concept of learned helplessness in humans in which they gave three groups of college students four sets of solvable, unsolvable, or no discrimination problems. Then all groups were subsequently tested on a handle of shuttle box task in which noise termination was controllable. The individuals who had no prior problems exposure escaped noise immediately. The unsolvable group failed to escape the noise. Thus, perhaps the response to controllable aversive events may be impaired by experience with uncontrollable events (Maier & Seligman, 1976). In addition, Hiroto & Seligman (1975) examined learned helplessness in humans performing on two tasks: instrumental and cognitive tasks. In the study, three groups of students received escapable, inescapable shock, or no loud