Learned Helplessness of Humans

Journal of Abnormal Psychology1978, Vol. 87, No. 1, 49-74

Learned Helplessness in Humans: Critique and Reformulation

Lyn Y. Abramson and Martin E. P. SeligmanUniversity of Pennsylvania

John D. TeasdaleOxford University, England

The learned helplessness hypothesis is criticized and reformulated. The oldhypothesis, when applied to learned helplessness in humans, has two majorproblems: (a) It does not distinguish between cases in which outcomes areuncontrollable for all people and cases in which they are uncontrollable only -for some people (univervsal vs. personal helplessness), and (b) it does notexplain when helplessness is general and when specific, or when chronic andwhen acute. A reformulation based on a revision of attribution theory is pro-posed to resolve these inadequacies. According to the reformulation, oncepeople perceive noncontingency, they attribute their helplessness to a cause.This cause can be stable or unstable, global or specific, and internal or external.The attribution chosen influences whether expectation of future helplessnesswill be chronic or acute, broad or narrow, and whether helplessness will lowerself-esteem or not. The implications of this reformulation of human helplessnessfor the learned helplessness model of depression are outlined.

Over the past 10 years a large number ofexperiments have shown that a variety of orga-nisms exposed to uncontrollable events oftenexhibit subsequent disruption of behavior (seeMaier & Seligman, 1976, for a review of theinfrahuman literature). For example, whereasnaive dogs efficiently learn to escape shock byjumping over a barrier in a shuttle box, dogsthat first received shocks they could neitheravoid nor escape show marked deficits in ac-quisition of a shuttle escape response (Over-mier & Seligman, 1967; Seligman & Maier,

This work was supported by U.S. Public HealthService Grant MH-19604, National Science Founda-tion Grant SOC-74 12063, and a Guggenheim fel-lowship to Martin Seligman. We thank Lauren Al-loy, Judy Garber, Suzanne Miller, Frank Irwin, S. J.Rachman, and Paul Eelen for their critical com-ments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Ivan Miller (Note 1) has proposed an almostidentical reformulation. We believe this work tohave been done independently of ours, and it shouldbe so treated.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Martin E.P. Seligman, Department of Psychology, Universityof Pennsylvania, 3815 Walnut Street, Philadelphia,Pennsylvania 19174.

1967). Paralleling the experimental findingswith dogs, the debilitating consequences ofuncontrollable events have been demonstratedin cats (Masserman, 1971; Seward & Hum-phrey, 1967; Thomas & Dewald, 1977), infish (Frumkin & Brookshire, 1969; Padilla,1973; Padilla, Padilla, Ketterer, & Giacolone,1970), and in rats (Maier, Albin, & Testa,1973; Maier & Testa, 197S; Seligman &Beagley, 1975; Seligman, Rosellini, & Kozak,197S). Finally, the effects of uncontrollableevents have been examined in humans (Fosco& Geer, 1971; Gatchel & Proctor, 1976; Glass& Singer, 1972; Hiroto, 1974; Hiroto & Selig-man, 1975; Klein, Fencil-Morse, & Seligman,1976; Klein & Seligman, 1976; Krantz, Glass,& Snyder, 1974; Miller & Seligman, 1975;Racinskas, 1971; Rodin, 1976; Roth, 1973;Roth & Bootzin, 1974; Roth & Kubal, 1975;Thornton & Jacobs, 1971; among others).Hiroto's experiment (1974) is representativeand provides a human analogue to the animalstudies. College student volunteers were as-signed to one of three groups. In the con-trollable noise group, subjects received loudnoise that they could terminate by pushing

Copyright 1978 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

49

50 L. ABRAMSON, M. SELIGMAN, AND J. TEASDALE

a button four times. Subjects assigned to theuncontrollable noise group received noise thatterminated independently of subjects' respond-ing. Finally, a third group received no noise.In the second phase of the experiment allgroups were tested on a hand shuttle box. Inthe shuttle box, noise termination was con-trollable for all subjects; to turn off the noise,subjects merely had to move a lever from oneside of the box to the other. The results of thetest phase were strikingly similar to those ob-tained with animals. The group receiving priorcontrollable noise as well as the group receiv-ing no noise readily learned to shuttle, but thetypical subject in the group receiving prioruncontrollable noise failed to escape andlistened passively to the noise.

Although a number of alternative hypothe-ses (see Maier & Seligman, 1976, for a re-view) have been proposed to account for thedebilitating effects of experience with uncon-trollability, only the learned helplessness hy-pothesis (Maier & Seligman, 1976; Maier,Seligman, & Solomon, 1969; Seligman, 1975;Seligman et al., 1971) provides a unified the-oretical framework integrating the animal andhuman data. The cornerstone of the hypothe-sis is that learning that outcomes are uncon-trollable results in three deficits: motivational,cognitive and emotional. The hypothesis is"cognitive" in that it postulates that mere ex-posure to uncontrollability is not sufficient torender an organism helpless; rather, the orga-nism must come to expect that outcomes areuncontrollable in order to exhibit helplessness.In brief, the motivational deficit consists ofretarded initiation of voluntary responses andis seen as a consequence of the expectationthat outcomes are uncontrollable. If the orga-nism expects that its responses will not affectsome outcome, then the likelihood of emittingsuch responses decreases. Second, the learnedhelplessness hypothesis argues that learningthat an outcome is uncontrollable results in acognitive deficit since such learning makes itdifficult to later learn that responses producethat outcome. Finally, the learned helpless-ness hypothesis claims that depressed affect isa consequence of learning that outcomes areuncontrollable.

Historically, the learned helplessness hy-pothesis was formulated before helplessnessexperiments were performed with human sub-jects. In the main, early studies of humanhelplessness attempted to reproduce the ani-mal findings in humans and were rather lessconcerned with theory building. Recently,however, investigators of human helplessness(e.g., Blaney, 1977; Golin & Terrell, 1977;Wortman & Brehm, 1975; Roth & Kilpatrick-Tabak, Note 2) have become increasingly dis-enchanted with the adequacy of theoreticalconstructs originating in animal helplessnessfor understanding helplessness in humans.And so have we. We now present an attribu-tional framework that resolves several the-oretical controversies about the effects of un-controllability in humans. We do not knowwhether these considerations apply to infra-humans. In brief, we argue that when a per-son finds that he is helpless, he asks why he ishelpless. The causal attribution he makes thendetermines the generality and chronicity ofhis helplessness deficits as well as his laterself-esteem. In developing the attributionalframework, we find it necessary to refine at-tribution theory (cf. Heider, 1958; Weiner,1972, 1974). Finally, we discuss the implica-tions of the reformulation for the helplessnessmodel of depression (Seligman, 1972, 1975;Seligman, Klein, & Miller, 1976).

Personal Helplessness Versus UniversalHelplessness

Inadequacy 1 of the Old Theory

Several examples highlight a conceptualproblem encountered by the existing learnedhelplessness hypothesis when applied to hu-man helplessness. Consider a subject in Hi-roto's experiment (1974) who is assigned tothe group that received uncontrollable noise.The experimenter tells the subject there issomething he can do to turn off the noise.Since the noise is actually uncontrollable, thesubject is unable to find a way to turn off thenoise. After repeated unsuccessful attempts,the subject may come to believe the problemis unsolvable; that is, neither he nor any othersubject can control noise termination. Alterna-tively, the subject may believe that the prob-

CRITIQUE AND REFORMULATION 51

lem is solvable but that he lacks the abilityto solve it; that is, although he can't controlnoise termination, other subjects could suc-cessfully control the noise. The old helpless-ness hypothesis does not distinguish these twostates, either of which could be engendered bythe procedure of presenting uncontrollableoutcomes.

In a recent publication, Bandura (1977)discussed a similar distinction:

Theorizing and experimentation on learned helpless-ness might well consider the conceptual distinctionbetween efficacy and outcome expectations. Peoplecan give up trying because they lack a sense of ef-ficacy in achieving the required behavior, or theymay be assured of their capabilities but give up try-ing because they expect their behavior to have noeffect on an unresponsive environment or to be con-sistently punished. These two separable expectancysources of futility have quite different antecedentsand remedial implications. To alter efficacy-basedfutility requires development of competencies andexpectations of personal effectiveness. By contrast, tochange outcome-based futility necessitates changes inprevailing environmental contingencies that restorethe instrumental value of the competencies that peo-ple already possess, (pp. 204-205)

A final way of illustrating this inadequacyconcerns the relation between helplessness andexternal locus of control. Early perspectives oflearned helplessness (Hiroto, 1974; Miller &Seligman, 1973; Seligman, Maier, & Geer,1968) emphasized an apparent similarity be-tween the helplessness concept of learningthat outcomes are uncontrollable and Rotter's(1966) concept of external control. Rotter ar-gued that people's beliefs about causality canbe arrayed along the dimension of locus ofcontrol, with "internals" tending to believeoutcomes are caused by their own respondingand "externals" tending to believe outcomesare not caused by their own responding butby luck, chance, or fate. Support for this pro-posed conceptual similarity of externals andhelpless individuals was provided by studiesof verbalized expectancies for success in tasksof skill (Klein & Seligman, 1976; Miller &Seligman, 1975). Helpless subjects gave smalljexpectancy changes, which suggests a belief1

in external control, whereas subjects notmade helpless gave large expectancy changes,which suggests a belief in internal control.These findings indicated that helpless sub-

jects perceived tasks of skill as if they were rtasks of chance. A puzzling finding, however,was consistently obtained in these studies. Onpostexperimental questionnaires, helpless andnonhelpless subjects rated skill as playing thesame large role in a person's performance onthe skill task. Both helpless and nonhelplesssubjects said they viewed the skill task as askill task. Thus, the relation between the con-cepts of external control and uncontrollabilitymay be more complex than implied by the oldhypothesis.

Taken together, these examples point toone conceptual problem concerning the no-tions of uncontrollability and helplessness. Re-call the distinction made by the old helpless-ness hypothesis between controllable anduncontrollable outcomes. An outcome is saidto be uncontrollable for an individual whenthe occurrence of the outcome is not relatedto his responding. That is, if the probabilityof an outcome is the same whether or not agiven response occurs, then the outcome is in-dependent of that response. When this istrue of all voluntary responses, the outcome issaid to be uncontrollable for the individual(Seligman, 1975; Seligman, Maier, & Solo-mon, 1971). Conversely, if the probability ofthe outcome when some response is made isdifferent from the probability of the outcomewhen the response is not made, then the out-come is dependent on that response: The out-come is controllable. The early definition,then, makes no distinction between cases inwhich an individual lacks requisite controllingresponses that are available to other peopleand cases in which the individual as well asall other individuals do not possess controllingresponses. These three examples all illustratethe same inadequacy. In the next section weoutline a framework that resolves this inade-quacy, and we discuss the implications of thisframework.

Resolution of Inadequacy 1

Suppose a child contracts leukemia and thefather bends all his resources to save thechild's life. Nothing he does, however, im-proves the child's health. Eventually he comesto believe there is nothing he can do. Nor isthere anything anyone else can do since leu-


Objective noncontingency —» Perception ofpresent and past noncontingency —> Attribu-tion for present or past noncontingency ~*Expectation of future noncontingency —>Symptoms of helplessness.

Figure 1. Flow of events leading to symptoms ofhelplessness.

kemia is incurable. He subsequently gives uptrying to save the child's life and exhibitssigns of behavioral helplessness as well as de-pressed affect. This example fits the specifica-tions of the old learned helplessness hypothe-sis. The parent believed the course of thechild's disease was independent of all of hisresponses as well as the responses of otherpeople. We term this situation universal help-lessness.

Suppose a person tries very hard in school.He studies endlessly, takes remedial courses,hires tutors. But he fails anyway. The personcomes to believe he is stupid and gives uptrying to pass. This is not a clear case of un-controllability according to the old model,since the person believed there existed re-sponses that would contingently produce pass-ing grades although he did not possess them.Regardless of any voluntary response the per-son made, however, the probability of his ob-taining good grades was not altered. We termthis situation personal helplessness.

Before discussing the distinction betweenuniversal and personal helplessness, it is use-ful to spell out the flow of events leading tosymptoms of helplessness in both examples.First, the person perceived that all of his actswere noncontingently related to the desiredoutcome; regardless of what the father did,the child's illness did not improve, and thestudent continued to do poorly no matter howhard he tried. The person then made an at-tribution for the perceived noncontingencybetween his acts and the outcome; the fathercame to believe leukemia was incurable andthe student came to believe he was stupid. Ineach case, the attribution led to an expec-tancy of noncontingency between future actsof the individual and the outcome. Finally,the symptoms of helplessness were a conse-quence of the person's expectancy that his

future responses would be futile in obtainingthe outcome. The usual sequence of eventsleading from objective noncontingency to thehelplessness is diagrammed in Figure 1.

Both the old and reformulated hypotheseshold the expectation of noncontingency to bethe crucial determinant of the symptoms oflearned helplessness. Objective noncontingencyis predicted to lead to symptoms of helpless-ness only if the expectation of noncontingencyis present (Seligman, 1975, pp. 47-48). Theold model, however, was vague in specifyingthe conditions under which a perception thatevents are noncontingent (past or present ori-ented) was transformed into an expectationthat events will be noncontingent (futureoriented). Our reformulation regards the at-tribution the individual makes for noncontin-gency between his acts and outcomes in thehere and now as a determinant of his subse-quent expectations for future noncontingency.These expectations, in turn, determine thegenerality, chronicity, and type of his help-lessness symptoms. In the context of this gen-eral account of the role of attribution in theproduction of symptoms, the distinction be-tween universal and personal helplessness cannow be clarified.

Table 1 explicates the distinction betweenuniversal helplessness and personal helpless-ness and ultimately serves to define our usageof the attributional dimension of internality.We take the self-other dichotomy as the cri-terion of internality. When people believethat outcomes are more likely or less likelyto happen to themselves than to relevantothers, they attribute these outcomes to in-ternal factors. Alternatively, persons make ex-ternal attribution for outcomes that they be-lieve are as likely to happen to themselves asto relevant others.

In the table, the x-axis represents the per-son's expectations about the relation betweenthe desired outcome and the responses in hisrepertoire.1 The person expects the outcome

1 For the purpose of exposition, dichotomiesrather than continua are used. The person expectsthat the controlling response is or is not available tohim and that the controlling response is or is notavailable to others. These two dichotomies allow forfour possible belief states. Strictly speaking, how-

CRITIQUE AND REFORMULATION S3

Table 1Personal Helplessness and Universal Helplessness

Other

Self

The person expects theoutcome is contingenton a response in hisrepertoire.

The person expects theoutcome is not contingenton any response in hisrepertoire.

The person expects theoutcome is contingenton a response in therepertoire of a relevantother.

The person expects theoutcome is not contingenton a response in therepertoire of any relevantother.

personal helplessness3

(internal attribution)

universal helplessness4

(external attribution)

either to be contingent on some response inhis repertoire or not to be contingent on anyresponse in his repertoire. The y-axis repre-sents his expectations about the relation be-tween the desired outcome and the responsesin the repertoires of relevant others. The per-son expects the outcome to be either con-tingent on at least one response in at least onerelevant other's repertoire or not contingent onany response in any relevant other's reper-toire. Cell 4 represents the universal helpless-ness case and includes the leukemia example,and Cell 3 represents the personal helplessnesscase and includes the school failure example.Because the person does not believe he ishelpless in Cells 1 and 2, these cells are notrelevant here and are not discussed. It shouldbe pointed out, however, that a person in Cell2 would be more likely to make an internalattribution for his perceived control thanwould a person in Cell 1.

In Table 1, the y-axis represents the per-son's expectations about whether someoneelse, a relevant other, had the controlling re-sponse in his repertoire. The following ex-

ever, the x-axis is a continuum. At the far right, theperson expects there is a zero probability that thedesired outcome is contingent on any response inhis repertoire. Conversely, on the far left he expectsthere is a probability of one that the desired out-come is contingent on a response in his repertoire.Similar considerations apply to the y-axis as a con-tinuum.

ample makes it clear why we use a "relevantother" rather than a "random other" or "anyother": It is of no solace to a flounderinggraduate student in mathematics that "ran-dom others" are unable to do topologicaltransformations. Crucial to the student's self-evaluation is his belief that his peers, "rele-vant others," have a high probability ofbeing able to do topological transformations.Nor is it self-esteem damaging for a gradeschool student to fail to solve mathematicalproblems that only professional mathemati-cians can solve, although he may have lowself-esteem if his peers can solve them. There-fore, the y-axis is best viewed as representingthe person's expectations about the relationbetween the desired outcome and the re-sponses in the repertoires of relevant others.2

2 Our formulation of "internal" and "external"attributions resembles other attributional frame-works. Heider (19S8), who is generally consideredthe founder of attribution theory, made a basic dis-tinction between "factors within the person" and"factors within the environment" as perceived de-terminants of outcomes. Similarly, in the locus ofcontrol literature, Rotter (1966) distinguished be-tween outcomes that subjects perceive as causallyrelated to their own responses and personal char-acteristics and outcomes that subjects perceive ascaused by external forces such as fate. Unlike theseprevious formulations that ask whether a factorresides "within the skin" or "outside the skin" todetermine whether it is internal or external, we de-fine the self-other dichotomy as the criterion of


Implications

The distinction between universal and per-sonal helplessness resolves the set of inade-quacies with which we began the article, Sit-uations in which subjects believe they cannotsolve solvable problems are instances of per-sonal helplessness according to the reformu-lated hypothesis. Alternatively, situations inwhich subjects believe that neither they norrelevant others can solve the problem are in-stances of universal helplessness. Similarly,Bandura's (1977) conceptual distinction be-tween efficacy and outcome expectancies re-lates to the reformulation in the followingway: Personal helplessness entails a low ef-ficacy expectation coupled with a high out-come expectation (the response producing theoutcome is unavailable to the person), whereasuniversal helplessness entails a low outcomeexpectation (no response produces the out-come). Finally, the reformulation regards "ex-ternal locus of control" and "helplessness" asorthogonal. One can be either internally orexternally helpless. Universally helpless in-dividuals make external attributions for fail-ures, whereas personally helpless individualsmake internal attributions. The experimentalfinding that helpless individuals view skill

internality. Although these two formulations mayappear to be at odds, analysis reveals strong simi-larities. For example, Heider (1958) argued that inmaking a causal attribution, individuals hold a con-dition responsible for an outcome if that condition ispresent when the outcome is present and absent whenthe outcome is absent. Likewise, Kelley (1967) sug-gested that the procedure individuals use in deter-mining the cause of events is similar to an analysisof variance procedure employed by scientists. Thefactor that consistently covaries with an outcome isconsidered to be its cause.

Let us examine the leukemic child and the schoolfailure examples from the perspective of Kelley andHeider. The responses of no person are consistentlyassociated with improvement of the leukemic child'sdisease. If the father performed Kelley or Heider'scausal analysis, he would conclude that his failurewas due to some external factor (e.g., leukemia isincurable). Alternatively, in the school example,failing is consistently associated with the studentand not associated with his peers. Here, the studentwould conclude that some internal factor (e.g., stu-pidity) was the cause of his failure. Thus, Heider andKelley also rely on social comparison as a majordeterminant of internality.

tasks as skill tasks, not as chance, is no longerpuzzling. The task is one of skill (relevantothers can solve it), but they do not have therelevant skill. These subjects view them-selves as personally rather than universallyhelpless.

The distinction between universal helpless-ness and personal helplessness also clarifiesthe relation of uncontrollability to failure. Inthe literature these two terms have often beenused synonymously. Tennen (Note 3), argu-ing from an attributional stance, suggestedthat the terms are redundant and that weabandon the concept of uncontrollability forthe simpler concept of failure. We believethis suggestion is misguided both from thepoint of view of attribution theory and fromcommon usage of the term failure.

In current attribution theories (e.g., Weiner,1972) success and failure refer to outcomes.Success refers to obtaining a desired outcomeand failure to not obtaining a desired outcome.According to this framework, then, the termfailure does not embrace all cases of uncon-trollability. Thus, from a strict attributionalpoint of view, failure and uncontrollabilityare not synonymous: Failure is a subsetof uncontrollability involving bad outcomes.Early theoretical accounts of helplessness sug-gested that good things received independentlyof responding should lead to helplessness defi-cits. Recent evidence bears this out: Uncon-trollable positive events produce the motiva-tional and cognitive deficits in animals (Good-kin, 1976; Welker, 1976) and in humans(Griffiths, 1977; Eisenberger, Mauriello, Carl-son, Frank, & Park, Note 4; Hirsch, Note 5;Nugent, Note 6; but see Benson & Kennelly,1976, for contrary evidence) but probably donot produce sad affect. Similarly Cohen, Roth-bart, and Phillips (1976) produced helpless-ness effects in the absence of perceived failure.In the future, such studies should measureperception of noncontingency as well as per-formance, since Alloy and Abramson (Note7) found that noncontingency is more dif-ficult to perceive when one is winning thanwhen one is losing. So the notion of uncon-trollability means more than just failure, andit makes predictions concerning both failureand noncontingent success.


In ordinary language, failure means morethan merely the occurrence of a bad outcome.People say they have failed when they havetried unsuccessfully to reach a goal and at-tribute this to some internal factor. Obtainingpoor grades in school is considered failure,but being caught in a flash flood is generallyconsidered misfortune. The concepts of tryingand personal helplessness are both necessaryto analyze failure in the ordinary languagesense. According to the reformulated model,then, failure, seen from the individual's pointof view, means the subset of personal help-lessness involving unsuccessful trying.

The final ramification of the distinction be-tween universal and personal helplessness isthat it deduces a fourth deficit of human help-lessness—low self-esteem. A major determi-nant of attitudes toward the self is com-parison with others (Clark & Clark, 1939;Festinger, 1954; Morse & Gergen, 1970;Rosenberg, 1965). Our analysis suggests thatindividuals who believe that desired outcomesare not contingent on acts in their repertoiresbut are contingent on acts in the repertoiresof relevant others, will show lower self-esteemthan individuals who believe that desired out-comes are neither contingent on acts in theirrepertoires nor contingent on acts in the rep-ertoires of relevant others. That is, an unin-telligent student who fails an exam his peerspass will have lower self-esteem than a stu-dent who fails an exam that all of his peersfail as well.

The dichotomy between universal and per-sonal helplessness determines cases of help-lessness (and depression, see below) withand without low self-esteem. But it is neutralwith regard to the cognitive and motivationaldeficits in helplessness. It is important to em-phasize that the cognitive and motivationaldeficits occur in both personal and universalhelplessness. Abramson (1977) has demon-strated this empirically while showing thatlowered self-esteem occurs only in personalhelplessness. According to both the old andthe new hypotheses, the expectation that out-comes are noncontingently related to one'sown responses is a sufficient condition formotivational and cognitive deficits.

We now turn to the second set of inade-quacies. The old hypothesis was vague aboutwhen helplessness would be general acrosssituations and when specific, and when itwould be chronic and when acute. We nowformulate this inadequacy and develop anattributional framework that resolves it.

Generality and Chronicity of Helplessness

Inadequacy 2 of the Old Theory

A second set of examples point to the otherinadequacy of the old helplessness hypothesis.Consider debriefing in a typical human help-lessness study: The subject is presented withan unsolvable problem, tested on a secondsolvable task, and finally debriefed. The sub-ject is told that the first problem was ac-tually unsolvable and therefore no one couldhave solved it. Experimenters in human help-lessness studies seem to believe that tellinga subject that no one could solve the problemwill cause helplessness deficits to go away.The prior discussion suggests that convincinga subject that his helplessness is universalrather than personal will remove self-esteemdeficits suffered in the experiment. Neitherthe old nor the new hypothesis, however, pre-dicts that such debriefing will remove thecognitive and motivational deficits. What doesdebriefing undo and why?

A second way of illustrating this inade-quacy is the following: A number of investi-gators (Hanusa & Schulz, 1977; Tennen &Eller, 1977; Wortman & Brehm, 1975) haveemphasized those cases of learned helplessnessin which a person inappropriately generalizesthe expectation of noncontingency to a new,controllable situation. It is important to pointout that the old hypothesis does not requirean inappropriate generalization for helpless-ness. Helplessness exists when a person showsmotivational and cognitive deficits as a con-sequence of an expectation of uncontrollabil-ity. The veridicality of the belief and therange of situations over which it occurs areirrelevant to demonstrating helplessness. Butthe old hypothesis does not specify where andwhen a person who expects outcomes to beuncontrollable will show deficits. In keepingwith the resolution of the first inadequacy, an


attributional framework is now presented toresolve the second inadequacy by explainingthe generality and chronicity of deficits as-sociated with helplessness.

A Resolution: The Attributional Dimensionsof Stability and Generality

Helplessness deficits are sometimes highlygeneral and sometimes quite specific. An ac-countant, fired from his job, may functionpoorly in a broad range of situations: he can-not get started on his income tax, he fails tolook for a new job, he becomes impotent, heneglects his children, and he avoids socialgatherings. In contrast, his helplessness maybe situation specific: He does not do his in-come tax and fails to look for a new job, buthe remains an adequate lover, father, andparty-goer, When helplessness deficits occurin a broad range of situations, we call themglobal; when the deficits occur in a narrowrange of situations, we call them specific.

The time course of helplessness (and de-pression, see below) also varies from individ-ual to individual. Some helplessness deficitsmay last only minutes and others may lastyears. Helplessness is called chronic when it iseither long-lived or recurrent and transientwhen short-lived and nonrecurrent.

The old hypothesis was vague about gen-erality and chronicity. The helpless person hadlearned in a particular situation that certainresponses and outcomes were independent.The deficits resulting could crop up in newsituations if either the responses called for orthe outcomes desired were similar to the re-sponses and outcomes about which originallearning had occurred. Helplessness was globalwhen it depressed responses highly dissimilarto those about which original learning had oc-curred or when it extended to stimuli highlydissimilar to those about which original learn-ing had occurred. No account was given aboutwhy helplessness was sometimes specific andsometimes global.

When helplessness dissipated in time, for-getting produced by interference from prioror later learning was invoked (e.g., Seligman,1975, pp. 67-68). Forgetting of helplessnesscould be caused either by earlier masterylearning or by subsequent mastery learning.

Again, the explanation was largely post hoc.Helplessness that dissipated rapidly was as-sumed to have strong proactive or retroactiveinterference; that which persisted was not.

The reformulated hypothesis makes a ma-jor new set of predictions about this topic:The helpless individual first finds out that cer-tain outcomes and responses are independent,then he makes an attribution about the cause.This attribution affects his expectations aboutfuture response-outcome relations and therebydetermines, as we shall see, the chronicity,generality, and to some degree, the intensityof the deficits. Some attributions have global,others only specific, implications. Some at-tributions have chronic, others transient, im-plications. Consider an example: You submita paper to a journal and it is scathingly re-jected by a consulting editor. Consider twopossible attributions you might make: "I amstupid" and "The consulting editor is stupid."The first, "I am stupid," has much more dis-astrous implications for your future paper-submitting than the second. If "I am stupid"is true, future papers are likely to be rejectedas well. If "The editor is stupid" is true, fu-ture papers stand a better chance of beingaccepted as long as you do not happen on thesame consulting editor. Since "I" is somethingI have to carry around with me, attributingthe cause of helplessness internally often butnot always (see below) implies a grimmerfuture than attributing the cause externally,since external circumstances are usually butnot always in greater flux than internal fac-tors.

Recent attribution theorists have refinedthe possible attribution for outcomes by sug-gesting that the dimension "stable-unstable"is orthogonal to "internal-external" (Weiner,1974; Weiner, Frieze Kukla, Reed, Rest, &Rosenbaum, 1971). Stable factors are thoughtof as long-lived or recurrent, whereas un-stable factors are short-lived or intermittent.When a bad outcome occurs, an individualcan attribute it to (a) lack of ability (an in-ternal-stable factor), (b) lack of effort (aninternal-unstable factor), (c) the task's beingtoo difficult (an external-stable factor), or(d) lack of luck (an external-unstable fac-tor).


Table 2Formal Characteristics of Attribution and Some Examples

Internal External

Dimension Stable Unstable Stable Unstable

GlobalFailing student Lack of intelligence Exhaustion ETS gives unfair tests. Today is Friday the 13th.

(Laziness) (Having a cold, whichmakes me stupid)

(People are usuallyunlucky on the ORE.)

Rejected woman I'm unattractive to My conversation some-men, times bores men.

SpecificFailing student Lack of mathematical Fed up with math

ability problems

(Math always bores (Having a cold, whichme.) ruins my arithmetic)

Rejected woman I'm unattractive to My conversation boreshim. him.

Men are overly compet-itive with intelligentwomen.

ETS gives unfair mathtests.

(People are usuallyunlucky on math tests.)

He's overly competi-tive with women.

(ETS gave experimental teststhis time which were toohard for everyone.)

Men get into rejectingmoods.

The math test was fromNo. 13.

(Everyone's copy of themath test was blurred.)

He was in a rejecting mood.

Note. ETS = Educational Testing Service, the maker of graduate record examinations (GRE).

While we applaud this refinement, we be-lieve that further refinement is necessary tospecify the attributions that are made whenan individual finds himself helpless. In par-ticular, we suggest that there is a third di-mension—"global-specific"—orthogonal to in-ternality and stability, that characterizes theattributions of people. Global factors affecta wide variety of outcomes, but specific fac-tors do not.3 A global attribution implies thathelplessness will occur across situations,whereas a specific attribution implies helpless-ness only in the original situation. This di-mension (like those of stability and internal-ity) is a continuum, not a dichotomy; for thesake of simplicity, however, we treat it hereas a dichotomy.

Consider a student taking graduate recordexaminations (GREs) measuring mathemati-cal and verbal skills. He just took the mathtest and believes he did very poorly. Withinthe three dimensions, there are eight kinds ofattribution he can make about the cause ofhis low score (Internal-External X Stable-Un-stable X Global-Specific). These attributionshave strikingly different implications for howhe believes he will perform in the next hour onthe verbal test (generality of the helplessnessdeficit across situations) and for how he be-lieves he will do on future math tests when heretakes the GRE some months hence (chro-nicity of the deficit over time in the same situ-

ation). Table 2 describes the formal character-istics of the attributions and exemplifies them.Table 1 relates to Table 2 in the followingway: Table 2 uses the attributional dimen-sions of stability and generality to furthersubdivide the cases of personal helplessness(Cell 3—internal attribution) and universalhelplessness (Cell 4—external attribution) inTable 1.

According to the reformulated hypothesis,if the individual makes any of the four globalattributions for a low math score, the deficitsobserved will be far-reaching: Global attribu-tions imply to the individual that when heconfronts new situations the outcome willagain be independent of his responses. So, ifhe decides that his poor score was caused byhis lack of intelligence (internal, stable,global) or his exhausted condition (internal,

3 In principle, there are a large number of di-mensions on which attributions can be specified.Weiner (Note 8) suggested that the criterion for adimension, as opposed to a mere property, of attri-bution be that we can sensibly ask, Does it apply toall the causes that we assign to behavior? So stable-unstable is a dimension because we can sensibly ask,Is ability a factor that persists stably over time? Ispatience a factor that persists stably?, and so on.Similarly, global-specific qualifies as a dimensionsince we can ask sensibly, Is ability a factor thataffects many situations or only few? Is patience afactor that affects many situations?, and so on.


unstable, global) or that the EducationalTesting Service (ETS; the creator of GREs)gives unfair tests (external, stable, global) orthat it is an unlucky day (external, unstable,global), when he confronts the verbal test ina few minutes, he will expect that here, aswell, outcomes will be independent of his re-sponse, and the helplessness deficits will ensue.If the individual makes any of the four spe-cific attributions for a low math score, help-lessness deficits will not necessarily appearduring the verbal test: i.e., lack of mathe-matical ability (internal, stable, specific) orbeing fed up with math problems (internal,unstable, specific) or that ETS asks unfairmath questions (external, stable, specific) orbeing unlucky on that particular math test(external, unstable, specific).

In a parallel manner, chronicity of thedeficits follows from the stability dimension.Chronic deficits (he will be helpless on thenext math GRE when he retakes it at a latertime) will ensue if the attribution is to stablefactors: lack of intelligence, lack of mathe-matical ability, ETS gives unfair tests, ETSgives unfair math tests. Attribution to stablefactors leads to chronic deficits because theyimply to the individual that he will lack thecontrolling response in the future as well asnow. If the attribution is to an unstable factor—exhaustion, fed up with the math problems,unlucky day, or unlucky on the math tests—he will not necessarily be helpless on thenext math GRE. If he makes any of the in-ternal attributions—lack of intelligence, lackof math ability, exhaustion, or fed up withmath problems—the self-esteem deficits willoccur. In contrast, none of the external at-tributions will produce self-esteem deficits.4

Because so much real-life helplessness stemsfrom social inadequacy and rejection, Table2 illustrates a social example. Here a womanis rejected by a man she loves. Her attribu-tion for failure will determine whether sheshows deficits in situations involving mostother men (global) and whether she showsdeficits in the future with this particular manor with other men (chronic). She might se-lect any of four types of global attributions:I'm unattractive to men (internal, stable,global); my conversation sometimes bores

men (internal, unstable, global); men areoverly competitive with intelligent women(external, stable, global); men get into re-jecting moods (external, unstable, global). Allfour of these attributions will produce help-lessness deficits in new situations with mostother men. The four specific attributions willproduce deficits only with this particular man:I'm unattractive to him (internal, stable,specific); my conversation somtimes boreshim (internal, unstable, specific); he is overlycompetitive with intelligent women (external,stable, specific); he was in a rejecting mood(external, unstable, specific). Any of the fourstable attributions will produce chronic defi-cits either with that man (if specific) or withmost men (if global); the four unstable at-tributions will produce transient deficits. Thefour internal attributions will produce self-esteem deficits; the four external attributionswill not.

Having stated what we believe are the de-terminants of the chronicity and generality ofhelplessness deficits, a word about intensity orseverity is in order. Severity is logically inde-

4 A critical remark is in order on the adequacy ofability, effort, task difficulty, and luck as embody-ing, respectively, internal-stable, internal-unstable,external-stable, external-unstable attributions (Wei-ner et al., 1971). While we find the orthogonality ofinternality and stability dimensions useful and im-portant, we do not believe that the ability-effort/task difficulty-luck distinctions map into these di-mensions. Table 2 presents (in parentheses) attri-butions that systematically violate the mapping. Aninternal-stable attribution for helplessness need notbe to lack of ability; it can be to lack of effort:laziness (global), math always bores me (specific).An internal-unstable attribution need not be tolack of effort, it can be to (temporary) inabilities:I have a cold, which makes me stupid (global); Ihave a cold, which ruins my arithmetic ability (spe-cific). An external-stable attribution need not be totask difficulty; it can be to lack of luck: Somepeople are always unlucky on tests (global); peopleare always unlucky on math tests (specific). Anexternal-unstable attribution need not be to badluck; it can be to task difficulty: ETS gave experi-mental tests this time that were difficult for every-one (global); everyone's copy of the math test wasblurred (specific). So, ability and effort are logicallyorthogonal to internal-stable and internal-unstableattributions, and luck and task difficulty are or-thogonal to external-stable and external-unstableattributions.


pendent of chronicity and generality; it re-fers to how strong a given deficit is at anyone time in a particular situation. We believethat the intensity of the motivational andcognitive deficits increases with the strengthor certainty of the expectation of noncontin-gency. We speculate that intensity of self-esteem loss and affective changes (see Im-plications of the Reformulated Model for theHelplessness Model of Depression below) willincrease with both certainty and importanceof the event the person is helpless about. Wealso speculate that if the attribution is globalor stable, the individual will expect to behelpless in the distant future (both acrossareas of his life and across time) as well as inthe immediate future. The future will lookblack. This expectation will increase the in-tensity of the self-esteem and affective defi-cits. If the attribution is internal, this mayalso tend to make these deficits more severe,since internal attributions are often stableand global.

Attribution and Expectancy

In general, the properties of the attributionpredict in what new situations and across whatspan of time the expectation of helplessnesswill be likely to recur. An attribution toglobal factors predicts that the expectationwill recur even when the situation changes,whereas an attribution to specific factorspredicts that the expectation need not re-cur when the situation changes. An attribu-tion to stable factors predicts that the expecta-tion will recur even after a lapse of time,whereas an attribution to unstable factorspredicts that the expectation need not recurafter a lapse of time. Whether or not the ex-pectation recurs across situations and withelapsed time determines whether or not thehelplessness deficits recur in the new situationor with elapsed time. Notice that the attribu-tion merely predicts the recurrence of the ex-pectations but the expectation determines theoccurrence of the helplessness deficits. Newevidence may intervene between the initialselection of an attribution and the new andsubsequent situation and change the expecta-

tion. So the person may find out by interven-ing successes that he was not as stupid as hethought, or he may gather evidence thateveryone obtained low scores on the mathGRE and so now ETS is under new manage-ment. In such cases, the expectation need notbe present across situations and time. Onthe other hand, if the expectation is present,then helplessness deficits must occur (seeWeiner, 1972, for a related discussion ofachievement motivation).

Implications

The attributional account of the chronicity^and generality of the symptoms of helpless-1ness explains why debriefing ensures that defi-lcits are not carried outside the laboratory. *The debriefing presumably changes the at-tribution from a global (and potential^harmful outside the laboratory) and possiblyinternal (e.g., I'm stupid) one to a morespecific and external one (e.g., psychologistsare nasty: They give unsolvable problems toexperimental subjects). Since the attributionfor helplessness is to a specific factor, the ex-pectation of uncontrollability will not recuroutside the laboratory anymore than it wouldhave without the experimental evidence.

These attributional dimensions are also rele-vant to explaining when inappropriate, broadgeneralization of the expectation of noncon-tingency will occur. Broad transfer of help-lessness will be observed when subjects at-tribute their helplessness in the training phaseto very global and stable factors. Alterna-tively, attributing helplessness to very specificand unstable factors predicts very little trans-fer of helplessness.

A final question concerns the determinantsof what particular attribution people makefor their helplessness. Attribution theorists(e.g., Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1967; Weiner,1974) have discussed situational factors thatinfluence the sort of attribution people make.In addition, Heider and Kelley pointed to sys-tematic biases and errors in the formation ofattributions. Later, we discuss an "attribu-tional style" that may characterize depressedpeople.


Validity of the Reformulated Model

The validity of the new hypothesis mustultimately be assessed by its ability to gen-erate novel predictions that survive attemptsat experimental disconfirmation. As it is anew hypothesis, no results from such at-tempts are yet available. However, a mini-mum requirement is that this hypothesisshould be consistent with the available ex-perimental evidence. Although such consist-ency can lend only limited support to thehypothesis (as the available evidence hasbeen one factor shaping the hypothesis), in-consistency might seriously embarrass thehypothesis.

Is the Reformulated Hypothesis Consistentwith the Experimental Evidence on LearnedHelplessness in Humans?

Three basic classes of evidence are covered:(a) deficits produced by learned helplessness,(b) attributional evidence, and (c) skill/chance evidence.

Deficits produced by learned helplessness.Nondepressed students given inescapable noiseor unsolvable discrimination problems fail toescape noise (Glass, Reim, & Singer, 1971;Hiroto & Seligman, 1975; Klein & Seligman,1976; Miller & Seligman, 1976), fail to solveanagrams (Benson & Kennelly, 1976; Gatchel& Proctor, 1976; Hiroto & Seligman, 1975;Klein et al., 1976), and fail to see patternsin anagrams (Hiroto & Seligman, 1975; Kleinet al., 1976). Escapable noise, solvable dis-crimination problems, or no treatment doesnot produce these deficits. Both the old andthe reformulated hypotheses explain thesedeficits by stating that subjects expect thatoutcomes and responses are independent inthe test situation. This expectation producesthe motivational deficit (failure to escapenoise and failure to solve anagrams) and thecognitive deficit (failure to see patterns). Thereformulated hypothesis adds an explanationof why the expectation for the inescapabilityof the noise or the unsolvability of the dis-crimination problems must have been globalenough to transfer across situations (e.g., I'munintelligent; problems in this laboratory are

impossible) and stable enough to survive thebrief time interval between tests. The dataare ambiguous about whether the global,stable attribution is internal (e.g., I'm stupid)or external (e.g., laboratory problems areimpossible); self-esteem changes would havebeen relevant to this determination. Nonde-pressed students who escape noise, solve prob-lems, or receive nothing as pretreatment donot perceive response-outcome independenceand do not, of course, make any attributionabout such independence.

For a control procedure, subjects have beentold to listen to noise (which is inescapable)but not to try to do anything about it(Hiroto & Seligman, 1975); similarly, sub-jects have been given a panic button that"will escape noise if pressed" but have beensuccessfully discouraged from pressing ("I'drather you didn't, but it's up to you"; (Glass& Singer, 1972). These subjects do not be-come helpless. Both the old and reformulatedhypotheses hold that these subjects do notperceive noncontingency (in this latter case,they perceive potential response-outcome con-tingency; in the first case, they have no rele-vant perception) and so do not form therelevant expectations and attributions.

A number of studies on human helplessnesshave obtained findings that are difficult toexplain with the old helplessness hypothesis.Examination of these studies suggests that in-vestigators may have tapped into the at-tributional dimensions of generality and sta-bility. For example, Roth and Kubal (1975)tested helplessness across very different situa-tions: Subjects signed up for two separate ex-periments that happened to be on the sameday in the same building. They failed on thetask in Experiment 1 (pretraining) and thenwandered off to Experiment 2 (the test task).When subjects were told in Experiment 1 thatthey had failed a test that was a "reallygood predictor of grades in college" (impor-tant), they showed deficits on the cognitiveproblem of Experiment 2. When told that Ex-periment 1 was merely "an experiment inlearning" (unimportant), they did better onExperiment 2. In the case of "good predictorof grades," subjects probably made a moreglobal, internal, and possibly more stable at-


tribution (e.g., I'm stupid enough to do badlyon this, therefore on college exams as well).The expectation therefore recurred in the newsituation, producing deficits. In the unimpor-tant condition, subjects probably made a morespecific and less stable attribution, so the ex-pectation of failure was not present in Ex-periment 2. (See Cole and Coyne, 1977, foranother way of inducing a specific, rather thana global, attribution for failure.)

Similarly, Douglas and Anisman (1975)found that failure on simple tasks producedlater cognitive deficits but that failure on com-plex tasks did not. It seems reasonable thatfailure on simple tasks should produce a moreglobal and internal attribution (e.g., I'mstupid) whereas failure on the complex taskscould be attributed to external and morespecific factors (e.g., these problems are toodifficult).

An important advantage of the reformula-tion is that it better explains the effects oftherapy and immunization than does the oldhypothesis. The key here is the attributionaldimension of generality. Helplessness can bereversed and prevented by experience withsuccess. Klein and Seligman (1976) gave non-depressed people inescapable noise and thendid "therapy," using 4 or 12 cognitive prob-lems, which the subjects solved. (Therapywas also performed on depressed people givenno noise.) Therapy worked: The subjects(both depressed and nondepressed) escapednoise and showed normal expectancy changesafter success and failure. Following inescap-able noise the subjects presumably made anattribution to a relatively global factor (e.g.,I'm incompetent, or laboratory tasks are un-solvable), which was revised to a more spe-cific one after success on the next task (e.g.,I'm incompetent in only some laboratory situ-ations, or, only some laboratory tasks are diffi-cult). The new test task, therefore, did notevoke the expectation of uncontrollability.Teasdale (1978) found that real success ex-periences and recalling similar past successeswere equally effective in shifting attributionfor initial failure from internal to externalfactors. Only real success, however, reversedhelplessness performance deficits. This sug-gests success does not have its effect by shift-

ing attribution along the internal-externaldimension. Although the relevant data werenot collected, it is likely that real, but notrecalled, success modifies attribution alongthe global-specific dimension. Immunization(Thornton & Powell, 1974; Dyck & Breen,Note 9) is explained similarly: Initial successexperience should make the attribution forhelplessness less global and therefore lesslikely to recur in the new test situation.

A number of human helplessness studieshave actually shown facilitation in subjectsexposed to uncontrollable events (Hanusa &Schulz, 1977; Roth & Kubal, 1975; Tennen& Eller, 1977; Wortman et al., 1976). Whilesuch facilitation is not well understood (seeWortman & Brehm, 1975; Roth & Kilpatrick-Tabak, Note 2, for hypotheses), it seems rea-sonable that compensatory attempts to reas-sert control might follow helplessness experi-ences, once the person leaves the situations inwhich he believes himself helpless (see Solo-mon & Corbit, 1973, for a relevant reboundtheory). Such compensatory rebound mightbe expected to dissipate in time and be lessstrong in situations very far removed from theoriginal helplessness training. When the "fa-cilitation" effect of helplessness is broughtunder replicable, experimental control, thecompensatory rebound hypothesis can betested. People may also show facilitation ofperformance in uncontrollable situations whenthey cannot find a controlling response buthave not yet concluded that they are helpless.

The reformulated hypothesis accounts forthe basic helplessness results better than doesthe old hypothesis. The explanations given bythe reformulated hypothesis are necessarilypost hoc, however. Relevant measures of thegenerality, stability, and internality of at-tribution were not made. Helplessness studies •can, in principle, test the hypothesis either bymeasuring the attributions and correlatingthem with the deficits that occur or by induc-ing the attributions and predicting deficits.We now turn to the few studies of helplessnessthat have induced or measured attribution.

Attributional evidence. Dweck and her as-sociates (Dweck, 1975; Dweck & Reppucci,1973; Dweck, Davidson, Nelson, & Enna,Note 10; Dweck, Goetz, & Strauss, Note 11)


have demonstrated the differential effects ofattribution for failure to lack of ability versuslack of effort. When fourth-grade girls fail,they attribute their failure to lack of ability(consonant with their teachers' natural class-room criticisms of girls) and perform badlyon a subsequent cognitive test. Lack of abilityis a global attribution (as well as internaland stable) and implies failure expectationfor the new task. Fourth-grade boys, on theother hand, attribute failure to lack of effortor bad conduct (also consonant with theteachers' natural classroom criticisms of boys)and do well on the subsequent test. Lack ofeffort is unstable and probably more specific(but also internal). Boys, having failed andattributed failure to lack of effort, put outmore effort on the test task and do adequately.Similarly, when students are told to attributefailure on math problems to not trying hardenough, they also do better than if they at-tribute it to lack of ability (Dweck, 1975).

Effort is not only "unstable," but it isreadily controllable by the subject himself,unlike being bored, for example, which is alsounstable, specific, and internal, or unlike lackof ability. It should be noted that the dimen-sion of controllability is logically orthogonalto the Internal X Global X Stable dimensions(although it is empirically more frequent inthe internal and unstable attribution), and assuch it is a candidate f o r a 2 X 2 X 2 x 2table of attributions. While we do not detailsuch an analysis here, we note that the phe-nomena of self-blame, self-criticism, and guilt(a subclass of the self-esteem deficits) inhelplessness (and depression) follow from at-tribution of failure to factors that are con-trollable. Lack of effort as the cause of failureprobably produces more self-blame than doesboredom, although both are internal and un-stable attributions. Similarly, a failure causedby not speaking Spanish attributed to lack ofability to speak Spanish, which might havebeen corrected by taking a Berlitz course,probably causes more self-blame than a lesscorrectable lack of ability, such as ineptitudefor foreign languages, even though both areinternal and stable.

According to the reformulation, perform-ance deficits should occur in cases of both

universal and personal helplessness. In bothcases people expect that outcomes are inde-pendent of their responses. In addition, at-tribution of helplessness to specific or un-stable factors should be less likely to lead toperformance deficits than attribution to stableor global factors. To date, four studies havemanipulated attribution for helplessness inadults. In line with the reformulation, Kleinet al. (1976) found that relative to groupsreceiving solvable problems or no problems atall, nondepressed students did poorly on ananagrams task following experience with un-solvable discrimination problems regardless ofwhether they attributed their helplessness tointernal factors (personal helplessness) or ex-ternal factors (universal helplessness).

Tennen and Eller (1977) attempted to ma-nipulate attribution by giving subjects un-solvable discrimination problems that werelabeled either progressively "easier" or pro-gressively "harder." The authors reasonedthat failure on easy problems should produceattribution to lack of ability (internal, stable,and more global) whereas failure on hardproblems should allow attribution to task dif-ficulty (external, unstable, and more specific).Subjects then went to what they believed wasa second, unrelated experiment (see Roth &Kubal, 197S) and tried to solve anagrams. Inline with the reformulation, attribution to in-ability (easy problems) produced deficits. At-tribution to task difficulty (hard problems)resulted in facilitation of anagram solving.The most likely explanation for lack of per-formance deficits in the task-difficulty group isthat their attributions for helplessness weretoo specific to produce an expectation of non-contingency in the test task.

Finally, two studies (Hanusa & Schulz,1977; Wortman et al., 1976) found that rela-tive to a group exposed to contingent events,neither a group instructed to believe theywere personally helpless nor a group in-structed to believe they were universally help-less on a training task showed subsequentperformance deficits on a test task. While theresults appear contrary to the reformulation,they are difficult to interpret. The problem isthat in both studies, the typical helplessnessgroup (a group exposed to noncontingent


events in the training task but given no ex-plicit attribution) did not show performancedeficits on the test task. Thus, the test taskmay not have been sensitive to helplessnessdeficits. (For a discussion of the relative sensi-tivity of tasks to helplessness in animals, seeMaier and Seligman, 1976.) It is interestingthat Wortman et al. (1976) found that per-sonally helpless subjects showed more emo-tional distress than universally helpless sub-jects.

Overall, then, the few helplessness studiesdirectly assessing and manipulating attribu-tion provide some support for the reformula-tion. Because of the methodological problemsin some of these studies, future research thatmanipulates attribution is necessary. Caremust be taken to ensure that one attributionaldimension is not confounded with another.Past studies, for example, have confounded ex-ternality with specificity and internality withgenerality.

Helpless subjects show dampened expec-tancy changes in skill tasks. In skill tasks,expectancy for future success increases lessfollowing success and/or decreases less fol-lowing failure for helpless subjects than forsubjects not made helpless (Klein & Seligman,1976; Miller & Seligman, 1976; Miller, Selig-man, & Kurlander, 1975; see also Miller &Seligman, 1973, and Abramson, Garber, Ed-wards & Seligman, 1978, for parallel evidencein depression). The old hypothesis interpretedthese results as a general tendency of help-less subjects to perceive responding and out-comes on skill tasks as independent, and itwas assumed that this index measured thecentral helplessness deficit directly. In otherwords, it had been suggested that such sub-jects perceive skill tasks as if they werechance tasks. The rationale for this interpreta-tion was derived from the work of Rotter andhis colleagues (James, 1957; James & Rotter,1958; Phares, 1957; Rotter, Liverant, &Crowne, 1961). These investigators arguedthat reinforcements on previous trials have agreater effect on expectancies for future suc-cess when the subject perceives reinforce-ment as skill determined than when he per-ceives it as chance determined. According tothis logic, subjects will show large expectancy

changes when they believe outcomes arechance determined.

Recent developments in attribution theorysuggest that expectancy changes are not a di-rect index of people's expectations about re-sponse-outcome contingencies. Weiner and hiscolleagues (1971) argued that the attribu-tional dimension of stability rather than locusof control is the primary determinant ofexpectancy changes. According to Weiner(Weiner, 1974; Weiner, Heckhausen, Meyer,& Cook, 1972) people give small expectancychanges when they attribute outcomes to un-stable factors and large expectancy changeswhen they attribute outcomes to stable fac-tors. The logic is that past outcomes are goodpredictors of future outcomes only when theyare caused by stable factors.

In the absence of knowledge about individ-ual attributions, the reformulated helplessnesshypothesis cannot make clear-cut predictionsabout expectancy changes and helplessness,since belief in response-outcome dependenceor independence is orthogonal to stable-un-stable. For example, suppose a person makesan internal attribution to lack of ability forhis helplessness, i.e., he believes in response-outcome independence for himself. When con-fronted with the skill task, he may show verylarge expectancy changes after failure sincehe believes he lacks the stable factor of abilityfor the task. Alternatively, when confrontedwith the 50% success rate typically used inhelplessness studies, he may maintain his be-lief that he lacks the stable factor of abilitybut conclude that ability is not necessary forsuccess on the task. After all, he succeededsometimes in spite of his perceived lack ofability. Under such conditions, the personwill believe outcomes are a matter of chance(unstable factor) for himself but not forothers. Accordingly, he will give small expec-tancy changes. Moreover, a nonhelpless per-son (who perceives response-outcome depen-dency) may believe unstable factors, such aseffort, cause his outcomes and show little ex-pectancy change; alternatively, if he believesa stable factor is responsible for response-outcome dependence, he will show large shifts.

Rizley (1978) similarly argued that ex-pectancy changes on chance and skill tasks do


not directly test the learned helplessnessmodel of depression. We agree. As argued inthe previous paragraph, small expectancychanges need not imply belief in independencebetween responses and outcomes, and largeexpectancy changes need not imply belief independence between responses and outcomes.Nor does belief in response-outcome inde-pendence imply small expectancy changes, orbelief in dependence imply large changes. Thefact that depressives often show smaller ex-pectancy changes than nondepressed people(Abramson et al., 1978; Klein & Seligman,1976; Miller & Seligman, 1973, 1976; Milleret al., 1975) is intriguing but provides onlylimited support for the learned helplessnessmodel. In order for expectancy changes to beused as a way of inferring perception of re-sponse-outcome independence, the particularattribution and its stability must also beknown. None of the studies to date that mea-sured expectancy shifts also measured therelevant attributions, so these studies do nottell us unambiguously that helpless (or de-pressed) people perceive response-outcomeindependence. They support the model onlyin as far as these two groups show the samepattern of shifts, but the pattern itself can-not be predicted in the absence of knowledgeabout the accompanying attribution.

To conclude this section, examination ofexpectancy changes on chance and skill tasksis not a direct way of testing helplessness,since such changes are sensitive to the attribu-tional dimension of stability and not to ex-pectations about response-outcome contin-gencies. Recent failures to obtain small ex-pectancy changes in depressed people (Mc-Nitt & Thornton, 1978; Willis & Blaney,1978) are disturbing empirically, but less sotheoretically, since both depressed and help-less subjects show the same pattern, albeit adifferent pattern from the one usually found.

Implications of the Reformulated Model forthe Helplessness Model of Depression

This reformulation of human helplessnesshas direct implications for the helplessnessmodel of depression. The cornerstone of pre-vious statements of the learned helplessness

model of depression is that learning that out-comes are uncontrollable results in the moti-vational, cognitive, and emotional componentsof depression (Seligman, 1975; Seligman etal., 1976). The motivational deficit consistsof retarded initiation of voluntary responses,and it is reflected in passivity, intellectualslowness, and social impairment in naturallyoccurring depression. According to the oldmodel, deficits in voluntary responding fol-low directly from expectations of response-outcome independence. The cognitive deficitconsists of difficulty in learning that responsesproduce outcomes and is also seen as a conse-quence of expecting response-outcome inde-pendence. In the clinic, "negative cognitiveset" is displayed in depressives' beliefs thattheir actions are doomed to failure. Finally,the model asserts that depressed affect is aconsequence of learning that outcomes are un-controllable. It is important to emphasizethat the model regards expectation of re-sponse-outcome independence as a sufficient,not a necessary, condition for depression.Thus, physiological states, postpartum condi-tions, hormonal states, loss of interest in re-inforcers, chemical depletions, and so on mayproduce depression in the absence of the ex-pectation of uncontrollability. According tothe model, then, there exists a subset of de-pression—helplessness depressions—that iscaused by expectation of response-outcomeindependence and displays the symptoms ofpassivity, negative cognitive set, and de-pressed affect.

We believe that the original formulation ofthe learned helplessness model of depressionis inadequate on four different grounds: (a)Expectation of uncontrollability per se is notsufficient for depressed affect since there aremany outcomes in life that are uncontrollablebut do not sadden us. Rather, only those un-controllable outcomes in which the estimatedprobability of the occurrence of a desired out-come is low or the estimated probability ofthe occurrence of an aversive outcome is highare sufficient for depressed affect, (b) Low-ered self-esteem, as a symptom of the syn-drome of depression, is not explained, (c) Thetendency of depressed people to make in-ternal attributions for failure is not explained,(d) Variations in generality, chronicity, and


intensity of depression are not explained. Allbut the first of these shortcomings are di-rectly remedied by the reformulation of hu-man helplessness in an attributional frame-work.

Inadequacy 1: Expectation of Uncontrolla-bility Is Not Sufficient for Depressed Affect

We view depression, as a syndrome, to bemade up of four classes of deficits: (a) moti-vational, (b) cognitive, (c) self-esteem, and(d) affective (but see Blaney, 1977, for areview that contends that only affectivechanges are relevant to depression). Whereasthe first three deficits are the result of un-controllability, we believe the affectivechanges result from the expectation that badoutcomes will occur, not from their expecteduncontrollability.

Everyday observation suggests that an ex-pectation that good events will occur with ahigh frequency but independently of one'sresponses is not a sufficient condition fordepressed affect (see Seligman, 1975 (p. 98),versus Maier & Seligman, 1976 (p. 17), forprevious inconsistent accounts). People donot become sad when they receive $1,000 eachmonth from a trust fund, even though themoney comes regardless of what they do. Inthis case, people may learn they have nocontrol over the money's arrival, become pas-sive with respect to trying to stop the moneyfrom arriving (motivational deficit), havetrouble relearning should the money actuallybecome response contingent (cognitive defi-cit), but they do not show dysphoria. Thus,only those cases in which the expectation ofresponse-outcome independence is about theloss of a highly desired outcome 5 or aboutthe occurrence of a highly aversive outcomeare sufficient for the emotional component ofdepression. It follows, then, that depressedaffect may occur in cases of either universalor personal helplessness, since either can in-volve expectations of uncontrollable, impor-tant outcomes.

At least three factors determine the in-tensity of the emotional component of depres-sion. Intensity of affect (and self-esteem defi-cits) increases with desirability of the unob-tainable outcome or with the aversiveness of

the unavoidable outcome, and with thestrength or certainty of the expectation ofuncontrollability. In addition, intensity ofdepressed affect may depend on whether theperson views his helplessness as universal orpersonal. Weiner (1974) suggested that fail-ure attributed to internal factors, such aslack of abiity, produces greater negative af-fect than failure attributed to external fac-tors, such as task difficulty. The intensity ofcognitive and motivational components ofdepression, however, does not depend onwhether helplessness is universal or personal,or, we speculate, on the importance of theevent.

Perhaps the expectation that one is receiv-ing positive events noncontingently contri-butes indirectly to vulnerability to depressedaffect. Suppose a person has repeatedlylearned that positive events arrive indepen-dently of his actions. If the perception or ex-pectation of response-outcome independencein future situations involving loss is facili-tated by such a set, then heightened vulnera-bility to depression will occur.

Inadequacy 2: Lowered Self-esteem as aSymptom of Depression

A number of theoretical perspectives (Beck,1967, 1976; Bibring, 1953; Freud, 1917/

5 One problem remains. It is a "highly desired"outcome for us that the editor of this journal giveus each one million dollars, and we believe this tohave a very low probability and to be uncontrolla-ble. Yet, we do not have depressed affect upon real-izing this. Some notion, like Klinger's (1Q7S) "cur-rent concerns," is needed to supplement our account.We feel depressed about the nonoccurrence of highlydesired outcomes that we are helpless to obtain onlywhen they are "on our mind," "in the realm ofpossibility," "troubling us now," and so on. Inci-dentally, the motivational and cognitive deficits donot need current concerns, only the affective deficit.We take this inadequacy to be general not only tothe theory stated here but to much of the entirepsychology of motivation, which focuses on behav-ior, and we do not attempt to remedy it here. Wefind Klinger's concept heuristic but in need of some-what better definition. We, therefore, use the notionof "loss of a highly desired outcome" rather than"nonoccurrence." Loss implies that it will probably bea current concern. Since this is only part of a suf-ficiency condition, we do not deny that nonoccur-rence can also produce depressed affect.


1957) regard low self-esteem as a hallmarksymptom of depression. Freud has written,"The melancholic displays something else be-sides which is lacking in mourning—an extra-ordinary diminution in his self-regard, animpoverishment of his ego on a grand scale"(p. 246). A major shortcoming of the oldmodel of depression is that it does not explainthe depressive's low opinion of himself. Ouranalysis of universal and personal helplessnesssuggests that depressed individuals who be-lieve their helplessness is personal show lowerself-esteem than individuals who believe theirhelplessness is universal. Suppose two indi-viduals are depressed because they expect thatregardless of how hard they try they will re-main unemployed. The depression of the per-son who believes that his own incompetenceis causing his failure to find work will feel lowself-regard and worthlessness. The person whobelieves that nationwide economic crisis iscausing his failure to find work will not thinkless of himself. Both depressions, however, willshow passivity, negative cognitive set, andsadness, the other three depressive deficits,since both individuals expect that the prob-ability of the desired outcome is very low andthat it is not contingent on any responses intheir repertoire.

It is interesting that psychoanalytic writershave argued that there are at least two typesof depression, which differ clinically as well astheoretically (Bibring, 1953). Although bothtypes of depression share motivational, cogni-tive, and affective characteristics, only thesecond involves low self-regard. Further paral-leling our account of two types of depressionis recent empirical work (Blatt, D'Afflitti, &Quinlan, 1976) suggesting that depression canbe characterized in terms of two dimensions:dependency and feelings of deprivation, andlow self-esteem and excessively high stan-dards and morality.

Inadequacy 3: Depressives Believe TheyCause Their Own Failures

Recently, Blaney (1977) and Rizley (1978)have construed the finding that depressives at-tribute their failures to internal factors, suchas lack of ability, as disaffirming the learned

helplessness model of depression. Similarly,aware that depressives often blame them-selves for bad outcomes, Abramson andSackeim (1977) asked how individuals canpossibly blame themselves for outcomes aboutwhich they believe they can do nothing. Al-though the reformulation does not articulatethe relation between blame or guilt and help-lessness, it clearly removes any contradictionbetween being a cause and being helpless. De-pressed individuals who believe they are per-sonally helpless make internal attributions forfailure, and depressed individuals who believethey are universally helpless make external at-tributions for failure. A personally helpless in-dividual believes that the cause of the failureis internal (e.g., I'm stupid) but that he ishelpless (No response I could make wouldhelp me pass the exam).

What are the naturally occurring attribu-tions of depressives? Do they tend to at-tribute failure to internal, global, and stablefactors, and success to external, specific, andunstable factors?6

Hammen and Krantz (1976) looked atcognitive distortion in depressed and nonde-pressed women. When responding to a storycontaining "being alone on a Friday night,"depressed women selected more depressed-dis-torted cognitions ("upsets me and makes mestart to imagine endless days and nights bymyself"), and nondepressed women selectedmore nondepressed-nondistorted cognitions("doesn't bother me because one Friday nightalone isn't that important; probably everyonehas spent nights alone"). Depressed peopleseem to make more global and stable attribu-tions for negative events. When depressedwomen were exposed to failure on an inter-personal judgment task, they lowered theirself-rating more than did nondepressed women.

aThe literature on the relation between internallocus of control and depression might be expected toyield direct information about internal attribution indepression. It is, however, too conflicting at thisstage to be very useful. Externality, as measured bythe Rotter scale, correlates weakly (.2S-.30) withdepression (Abramowitz, 1969; Miller & Seligman,1973), but the external items are also rated moredysphoric and the correlation may be an artifact(Lamont, 1972).


This indicates that the depressed women aresystematically generating mpre internal aswell as global and stable attributions forfailure.7

Rizley (1978) caused depressed and nonde-pressed students to either succeed or fail on acognitive task and then asked them to makeattributions about the cause. Depressed stu-dents attributed failures to incompetence (in-ternal, global stable), whereas nondepressedstudents attributed their failures to task dif-ficulty (external, specific, stable). Similarly,depressed students attributed success to theease of the task (external, specific, stable),whereas nondepressed students attributed theirsuccess to ability (internal, global, stable).Although inconsistent with the old model,Rizley's results are highly consistent with thereformulation.

Klein et al. (1976) assessed the attributiondepressed and nondepressed college studentsmade for failure on discrimination problems.Whereas depressed students tended to at-tribute failure to internal factors, nonde-pressed students tended to attribute failureto external factors. These findings parallelthose of Rizley on attribution in achievementsettings.

Garber and Hollon (Note 12) asked de-pressed and nondepressed subjects to makepredictions concerning their own future suc-cess as well as the success of another personin the skill/chance situation. The depressedsubjects showed small expectancy changes inrelation to their own skilled actions; however,when they predicted the results of the skilledactions of others, they showed large expec-tancy changes, like those of nondepressivesrating themselves. These results suggest thatdepressives believe they lack the ability forthe skill task but believe others possess theability, the internal attribution of personalhelplessness.

Taken together, the studies examining de-pressives' attributions for success and failuresuggest that depressives often make internal,global, and stable attributions for failure andmay make external, specific, and perhaps lessstable attributions for their success. Futureresearch that manipulates and measures at-tributions and attributional styles in depres-

sion and helplessness is necessary from thestandpoint of our reformulated hypothesis.

Inadequacy 4: Generality and Chronicity ojDepression

The time course of depression varies greatlyfrom individual to individual. Some depres-sions last for hours and others last for years."Normal" mourning lasts for days or weeks;many severe depressions last for months oryears. Similarly, depressive deficits are some-times highly general across situations andsometimes quite specific. The reformulatedhelplessness hypothesis suggests that the chro-nicity and generality of deficits in helplessnessdepressions follow from the stability andglobality of the attribution a depressed per-son makes for his helplessness. The same logicwe used to explain the chronicity and gen-erality of helplessness deficits above applieshere.

The reformulation also sheds light on thecontinuity of miniature helplessness depres-sions created in the laboratory and of real-lifedepression. The attributions subjects makefor helplessness in the laboratory are pre-sumably less global and less stable than at-tributions made by depressed people for fail-ure outside the laboratory. Thus, the labora-tory-induced depressions are less chronic andless global and are capable of being reversedby debriefing, but, we hypothesize, they arenot different in kind from naturally occurringhelplessness depressions. They differ only

7 Alloy and Abramson (Note 7) also examineddistortion, not in attributions but in perception ofcontingency between depressed and nondepressedstudents. The subjects were exposed to different rela-tions between button pushing and the onset of agreen light and were asked to judge the contingencybetween the outcome and the response. Depressedstudents judged both contingency and noncontin-gency accurately. In contrast, nondepressed studentsdistorted: When the light was noncontingently re-lated to responding but occurred with a high fre-quency, they believed they had control. So therewas a net difference in perception of contingency bydepressed and nondepressed subjects, but the distor-tion occurred in the nondepressed, who picked upnoncontingency less readily (see also Jenkins & Ward,1965).


quantitatively, not qualitatively, that is, theyare mere "analogs" to real helplessness de-pressions.

Do depressive deficits occur in situationsthat have nothing to do with the expectationof noncontingency? After failing a math GRE,the student goes home, burns his dinner, cries,has depressive dreams, and feels suicidal. Ifthis is so, there are two ways our reformula-tion might explain this: (a) He is still in thepresence of the relevant cues and expectations,for even at home the expectation that he willnot get into graduate school is on his mind,and (b) the expectation, present earlier butabsent now, has set off endogenous processes(e.g., loss of interest in the world, catechola-mine changes) that must run their course. Re-member that expectations of helplessness areheld to be sufficient, not necessary, conditionsof depression.

Finally, does the attributional reformula-tion of helplessness make depression look too"rational"? The chronicity, generality, and in-tensity of depression follow inexorably, "ra-tionally" from the attribution made and theimportance of the outcome. But there is roomelsewhere for the irrationality implicit in de-pression as a form of psychopathology. Theparticular attribution that depressed peoplechoose for failure is probably irrationally dis-torted toward global, stable, and internal fac-tors and, for success, possibly toward specific,unstable, and external factors. It is also pos-sible that the distortion resides not in attribu-tional styles but in readiness to perceive help-lessness, as Alloy and Abramson (Note 7)have shown: Depressed people perceive non-contingency more readily than do nonde-pressed people.

In summary, here is an explicit statementof the reformulated model of depression:

1. Depression consists of four classes of defi-cits: motivational, cognitive, self-esteem, andaffective.

2. When highly desired outcomes are be-lieved improbable or highly aversive outcomesare believed probable, and the individual ex-pects that no response in his repertoire willchange their likelihood, (helplessness) depres-sion results.

3. The generality of the depressive deficitswill depend on the globality of the attributionfor helplessness, the chronicity of the depres-sion deficits will depend on the stability of theattribution for helplessness, and whether self-esteem is lowered will depend on the inter-nality of the attribution for helplessness.

4. The intensity of the deficits depends onthe strength, or certainty, of the expectationof uncontrollability and, in the case of the af-fective and self-esteem deficits, on the im-portance of the outcome.

We suggest that the attributional frame-work proposed to resolve the problems ofhuman helplessness experiments also resolvessome salient inadequacies of the helplessnessmodel of depression.

Vulnerability, Therapy, and Prevention

Individual differences probably exist in at-tributional style. Those people who typicallytend to attribute failure to global, stable, andinternal factors should be most prone to gen-eral and chronic helplessness depressions withlow self-esteem. By the reformulated hypoth-esis, such a style predisposes depression. Beck(1967) argued similarly that the premorbiddepressive is an individual who makes logicalerrors in interpreting reality. For example, thedepression-prone individual overgeneralizes; astudent regards his poor performance in asingle class on one particular day as finalproof of his stupidity. We believe that ourframework provides a systematic frameworkfor approaching such overgeneralization: It isan attribution to a global, stable, and internalfactor. Our model predicts that attributionalstyle will produce depression proneness, per-haps the depressive personality. In light ofthe finding that women are from 2 to 10times more likely than men to have depression(Radloff, Note 13), it may be important thatboys and girls have been found to differ in at-tributional styles, with girls attributing help-lessness to lack of ability (global, stable) andboys to lack of effort (specific, unstable;Dweck, 1976).

The therapeutic implications of the refor-mulated hypothesis can now be schematized.Depression is most far-reaching when (a) the


Table 3Treatment, Strategies, and Tactics Implied by the Reformulated Hypothesis

A. Change the estimated probability of the relevant event's occurrence: Reduce estimated likelihood foraversive outcomes and increase estimated likelihood for desired outcomes.

a. Environmental maniuplation by social agencies to remove aversive outcomes or provide desired out-comes, for example, rehousing, job placement, financial assistance, provision of nursery care forchildren.

b. Provision of better medical care to relieve pain, correct handicaps, for example, prescription ofanalgesics, provision of artificial limbs and other prostheses.

B. Make the highly preferred outcomes less preferred.

a. Reduce the aversiveness of highly aversive outcomes.1. Provide more realistic goals and norms, for example, failing to be top of your class is not the end of

the world—you can still be a competent teacher and lead a satisfying life.2. Attentional training and/or reinterpretation to modify the significance of outcomes perceived as

aversive, for example, you are not the most unattractive person in the world. "Consider the counter-evidence" (Beck, 1976; Ellis, 1962).

3. Assist acceptance and resignation.

b. Reduce the desirability of highly desired outcomes.1. Assist the attainment of alternative available desired outcomes, for example, encourage the dis-

appointed lover to find another boy or girl friend.2. Assist reevaluation of unattainable goals.3. Assist renunciation and relinquishment of unattainable goals.

C. Change the expectation from uncontrollability to controllability.

a. When responses are not yet within the person's repertoire but can be, train the necessary skills, forexample, social skills, child management skills, skills of resolving marital differences, problem-solvingskills, and depression-management skills.

b. When responses are within the person's repertoire, modify the distorted expectation that the responseswill fail.1. Prompt performance of relevant, successful responses, for example, graded task assignment

(Burgess, 1968).2. Generalized changes in response-outcome expectation resulting from successful performance of

other responses, for example, prompt general increase in activity; teach more appropriate goal-setting and self-reinforcement; help to find employment.

3. Change attributions for failure from inadequate ability to inadequate effort (Dweck, 1975), causingmore successful responding.

4. Imaginal and miniaturized rehearsal of successful response-outcome sequences: Assertive training,decision-making training, and role playing.

D. Change unrealistic attributions for failure toward external, unstable, specific; change unrealistic at-tributions for success toward internal, stable, global.

a. For failure1. External: for example, "The system minimized the opportunities of women. It is not that you are

incompetent."2. Unstable: for example, "The system is changing. Opportunities that you can snatch are opening

at a great rate."3. Specific: for example, "Marketing jobs are still relatively closed to women, but publishing jobs are

not" (correct overgeneralization).

b. For success1. Internal: for example, "He loves you because you are nurturant not because he is insecure."2. Stable: for example, "Your nurturance is an enduring trait."3. Global: for example, "Your nurturance pervades much of what you do and is appreciated by every-

one around you."


estimated probability of a positive outcome islow or the estimated probability of an aver-sive outcome is high, (b) the outcome is highlypositive or aversive, (c) the outcome is ex-pected to be uncontrollable, (d) the attribu-tion for this uncontrollability is to a global,stable, internal factor. Each of these fouraspects corresponds to four therapeutic strat-egies.

1. Change the estimated probability of theoutcome. Change the environment by reducingthe likelihood of aversive outcomes and in-creasing the likelihood of desired outcomes.

2. Make the highly preferred outcomes lesspreferred by reducing the aversiveness of un-relievable outcomes or the desirability of un-obtainable outcomes.

3. Change the expectation from uncontrol-lability to controllability when the outcomesare attainable. When the responses are notyet in the individual's repertoire but can be,train the appropriate skills. When the re-sponses are already in the individual's reper-toire but cannot be made because of distortedexpectation of response-outcome indepen-dence, modify the distorted expectation. Whenthe outcomes are unattainable, Strategy 3does not apply.

4. Change unrealistic attributions for failuretoward external, unstable, specific factors, andchange unrealistic attributions for success to-ward internal, stable, global factors. Themodel predicts that depression will be mostfar-reaching and produce the most symptomswhen a failure is attributed to stable, global,and internal factors, since the patient nowexpects that many future outcomes will benoncontingently related to his responses. Get-ting the patient to make an external, unstable,and specific attribution for failure should re-duce the depression in cases in which theoriginal attribution is unrealistic. The logic, ofcourse, is that an external attribution forfailure raises self-esteem, an unstable one cutsthe deficits short, and a specific one makes thedeficits less general.

Table 3 schematizes these four treatmentstrategies.

Although not specifically designed to testthe therapeutic implications of the reformu-lated model of depression, two studies have

examined the effectiveness of therapies thatappear to modify the depressive's cognitivestyle. One study found that forcing a depres-sive to modify his cognitive style was moreeffective in alleviating depressive symptomsthan was antidepressant medication (Rush,Beck, Kovacs, & Hollon, 1977). A secondstudy found cognitive modification more ef-fective than behavior therapy, no treatment,or an attention-placebo therapy in reducingdepressive symptomatology (Shaw, 1977). Fu-ture research that directly tests the thera-peutic implications of the reformulation isnecessary.

The reformulation has parallel preventiveimplications. Populations at high risk for de-pression—people who tend to make stable,global, and internal attributions for failure—may be identifiable before onset of depres-sion. Preventive strategies that force the per-son to criticize and perhaps change his at-tributional style might be instituted. Otherfactors that produce vulnerability are situa-tions in which highly aversive outcomes arehighly probable and highly desirable outcomesunlikely; here environmental change to lesspernicious circumstances would probably benecessary for more optimistic expectations. Athird general factor producing vulnerabilityto depression is a tendency to exaggerate theaversiveness or desirability of outcomes. Re-ducing individuals' "catastrophizing" aboutuncontrollable outcomes might reduce the in-tensity of future depressions. Finally, a set toexpect outcomes to be uncontrollable—learnedhelplessness—makes individuals more prone todepression. A life history that biases indi-viduals to expect that they will be able tocontrol the sources of suffering and nurtur-ance in their life should immunize againstdepression.

Reference Notes

1. Miller, I. Learned helplessness in humans: A re-view and attribution theory model. Unpublished•manuscript, Brown University, 1978.

2. Roth, A., & Kilpatrick-Tabak, B. Developmentsin the study of learned helplessness in humans:A critical review. Unpublished manuscript, DukeUniversity, 1977.


3. Tennen, H. A. Learned helplessness and the per-ception of reinforcement in depression: A case ofinvestigator misattribution. Unpublished manu-script, State University of New York at Albany,1977.

4. Eisenberger, R., Mauriello, J., Carlson, J., Frank,M., and Park, D. C. Learned helplessness and in-dustriousness produced by positive reinforcement.Unpublished manuscript, State University of NewYork at Albany, 1976.

5. Hirsch, Kenneth A. An extension of the learnedhelplessness phenomenon to potentially nega-tively punishing and potentially positively rein-forcing stimuli non-contingent upon behavior.Unpublished manuscript, 1976. (Available fromK. A. Hirsch, Galesburg Mental Health Center,Galesburg, Illinois.)

6. Nugent, J. Variations in non-contingent experi-ences and test tasks in the generation of learnedhelplessness. Unpublished manuscript, Universityof Massachusetts.

7. Alloy, L. B., & Abramson, L. Y. Judgment ofcontingency in depressed and nondepressed stu-dents: A nondepressive distortion. Unpublishedmanuscript, University of Pennsylvania, 1977.

8. Weiner, B. Personal communication to M. E. P.Seligman, 1977.

9. Dyck, D. G., & Breen, L. J. Learned helpless-ness, immunization and task importance in hu-mans. Unpublished manuscript, University ofManitoba, 1976.

10. Dweck, C. S., Davidson, W., Nelson, S., &Enna, B. Sex differences in learned helplessness:(II) The contingencies of evaluative feedbackin the classroom and (III) An experimentalanalysis. Unpublished manuscript, University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1976.

11. Dweck, C. S., Goetz, T., & Strauss, N. Sex dif-ferences in learned helplessness: IV. An experi-mental and naturalistic study of failure general-ization and its mediators. Unpublished manu-script, University of Illinois at Urbana-Cham-paign, 1977.

12. Garber, J., & Hollon, S. Depression and the ex-pectancy of success for self and for others. Un-published manuscript, University of Minnesota,1977.

13. Radloff, L. S. Sex differences in helplessness—with implication for depression. Unpublishedmanuscript, Center for Epidemiologic Studies,National Institute of Mental Health, 1976.

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Received August IS, 1977Revision received October 27, 1977 •

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Learned Helplessness of Humans

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