Abstract
What happens when an organism is exposed to uncontrollable outcomes? Will it persevere in trying to control the outcome, or will it give up? Will this experience have an impact on the organism’s functioning in subsequent tasks and situations? Dealing with these questions, Overmaier and Seligman (1967) and Seligman and Maier (1967) exposed dogs to inescapable shocks and found that the animals apparently gave up trying and passively succumbed to the shock. These behaviors, which reflect the interference produced by uncontrollable outcomes on adaptive responses, have been labeled learned helplessness (LH).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mikulincer, M. (1994). The Empirical and Theoretical Basis of Human Learned Helplessness. In: Human Learned Helplessness. The Springer Series in Social/Clinical Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0936-7_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0936-7_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-0938-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-0936-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive