Martin Seligman (1942-) was not the first scientist to formulate experimental procedures that positioned individuals in vulnerable conditions that frustrate their attempt to solve problems when faced with uncontrollability. According to Wortman and Brehm (1975), psychological reactance is a more reasonable explanation for a person’s frustration response in uncontrollable situations. The motivational reactance theory suggests that when people are placed in situations that threaten their autonomy and personal control then they are more likely to respond to the loss of those constructs by increasing their motivation to regain autonomy and sense of personal control. Thus, uncontrollable events should lead to increased motivation to solve the problem
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For instance, Glass & Singer (1972) designed a study to test the effects of stress, adaptation to stress, and adverse aftereffects of stress. The findings demonstrated that unpredictable stressors produce more destructive and damaging aftereffects in performance than predictable ones. In addition, studies showed that participants who had access to an escape button and perceived themselves as in control over frustrating occurrences demonstrated fewer post stress performance than did participants without a button to push. Those participants rated themselves as less helpless, incompetent, and weak than the participants in the condition group without perceived …show more content…
In contrast, the present approach attributes helplessness to difficulties encountered at an early stage of action development, when an organism attempts to derive an anticipatory action program for the successful guidance of future activity. According to the current theory, the essential feature of helplessness training is repeatedly experiencing the inability to derive such a program by means of hypothesis-testing activity. The researchers conducted a study to test the proposal that helplessness symptoms stem from the prolonged cognitive activity without uncertainty reduction. To that, the researcher examined one reason (inconsistency of task information) in a new procedure referred to as informational helplessness training (IHT). In line with predictions, IHT produced behavioral worsening on the more complex (avoidance learning) but not on the simple (escape learning) task, suggesting that the helplessness deficit has an essentially cognitive nature and not a motivational nature. If the helplessness deficit were primarily motivational, it would manifest in response retardation or slowdown in the simple task of escape learning, which was not the case. In addition, the researcher conducted a study to check helplessness in clinical disorders and
For instance, Glass & Singer (1972) designed a study to test the effects of stress, adaptation to stress, and adverse aftereffects of stress. The findings demonstrated that unpredictable stressors produce more destructive and damaging aftereffects in performance than predictable ones. In addition, studies showed that participants who had access to an escape button and perceived themselves as in control over frustrating occurrences demonstrated fewer post stress performance than did participants without a button to push. Those participants rated themselves as less helpless, incompetent, and weak than the participants in the condition group without perceived …show more content…
In contrast, the present approach attributes helplessness to difficulties encountered at an early stage of action development, when an organism attempts to derive an anticipatory action program for the successful guidance of future activity. According to the current theory, the essential feature of helplessness training is repeatedly experiencing the inability to derive such a program by means of hypothesis-testing activity. The researchers conducted a study to test the proposal that helplessness symptoms stem from the prolonged cognitive activity without uncertainty reduction. To that, the researcher examined one reason (inconsistency of task information) in a new procedure referred to as informational helplessness training (IHT). In line with predictions, IHT produced behavioral worsening on the more complex (avoidance learning) but not on the simple (escape learning) task, suggesting that the helplessness deficit has an essentially cognitive nature and not a motivational nature. If the helplessness deficit were primarily motivational, it would manifest in response retardation or slowdown in the simple task of escape learning, which was not the case. In addition, the researcher conducted a study to check helplessness in clinical disorders and