PSY402

Theories of Learning

Chapter 11 – Cognitive Control of

Behavior (Cont.)

Learned Helplessness

Learned Helplessness Theory

Seligman – depression is learned.

Depression occurs when people believe:

Failures are due to uncontrollable events.

Failure will continue as long as events are beyond their control.

Depression arises from helplessness.

Animal Research

Step 1 -- three groups of dogs:

Inescapable shock – no control.

Escapable shock -- terminated if the dog pressed a panel.

No shock

Step 2 – 10 trials of signaled avoidance training in shuttle box.

2/3 of inescapable shock dogs did not learn to jump during step 2.

Step 1

Step 2

Dogs Fail to Escape

Helplessness in Humans

Hiroto – three groups of college students:

Uncontrollable group – wrongly told that pushing button would end noise.

Escapable group – pushing button ended noise.

Control – no noise.

Tested using finger shuttle box.

Uncontrollable group did not escape

Human Results Mimic Depression

Depressed (no noise)

and Inescapable

Noise conditions

Non-Depressed

Escapable Noise and

no noise conditions

Characteristics of Helplessness

Motivational impairment – unable to initiate voluntary behavior.

Mice in water maze.

Nonspecific – carries over to a variety tasks and test situations.

Intellectual impairment – incapable of benefiting from future experience – even if they jump, don’t learn.

Emotional trauma – negative affect.

Studies of Depressives

Show similar results to learned helplessness studies.

Depressed individuals do not escape noise, responding like inescapable non-depressed individuals.

Depressed individuals do not adjust likelihood of succeeding upward when they experience success.

They credit chance not skill.

Criticisms of Seligman’s Theory

There is more to depression than learned helplessness.

Helplessness subjects described the task as a skill task, even though acting as if it were a chance task.

Failure to replicate performance deficits in humans – facilitation of performance instead.

Results may be due to personal attributions.

Attribution Theory

Attribution = the perceived cause of an event.

Causal attributions of failure have three dimensions:

Internal-external – internal traits or characteristics vs environmental forces

Stable-unstable – past causes will persist vs new forces will determine future outcomes

Global-specific – outcome relates only to one task vs outcome effects everything.

Attributional Model of Depression Internal External

Dimension Stable Unstable Stable Unstable

Global I’m unattractive

to men

My conversation

some-times bores

men

Men are overly

competitive

with intelligent

women

Men get into

rejecting moods

Specific I’m unattractive

to him

My conversation

bores him

He’s overly

competitive

with women

He was in a

rejecting mood

Two Kinds of Helplessness

Personal helplessness – an individual’s inability causes failure.

Universal helplessness – the environment is structured so that no one can control future events.

Abramson -- both kinds lead to depression.

Vary on external-internal dimension.

Low self-esteem only with personal.

Severity of Depression

Depression can be transient if attributed to global but changing conditions.

Severe depression occurs when attributions are:

Internal

Global

Stable

Better if external, specific, unstable.

Hopelessness Depression

Hopelessness – the expectation that desired

outcomes will not occur.

Learned helplessness -- no control over undesired

outcomes.

Accounts for anxiety without depression.

Anxiety – possibility that a person may have no

control over negative events.

Depression occurs when certain.

Pessimism and Optimism

Langer suggests perceived control is basic to

human functioning – mastery, competence.

Negative explanatory style – hopeless style

predicts susceptibility to depression.

Positive explanatory style – optimists are

hopeful, feel they can control events, tend to

be more successful, more healthy.

They are not depressed when life goes wrong.

Learned Hopefulness

Seligman believes a more positive

attributional style can be taught.

Enhancing positive attributional style in

depressed patients decreased their symptoms.

Changing the attributional style of college

students via a workshop & ongoing coaching

prevented development of depression.

Biological Changes

Weiss has suggested that repeated exposure to

uncontrollable stress causes biochemical

changes in people and animals.

Rats showed decreased feeding & sex drive, less

grooming, lack of voluntary response, early

morning wakefulness – signs of depression.

Related to increased activity in locus coeruleus

and increased glutamate – similar to depressed

individuals.

Cognitive View of Phobia

Bandura – two kinds of expectancy maintain a phobia:

Stimulus-outcome expectancy – about the nature of the stimulus. A statistics class will be aversive.

Response-outcome expectancy – about the likely result of behavior. I cannot pass the statistics class.

Why does phobia lead to avoidance behavior with negative outcomes?

Self-efficacy expectancy – belief that one can or (with phobia) cannot execute a particular action.

Self-Efficacy Expectations

Types of information used to establish self-efficacy

expectations:

Personal accomplishments, success.

Task difficulty, amount of effort.

Observations of success/failure of others – vicarious

modeling.

Emotional arousal – we feel less able to cope when

agitated or tense.

High self-efficacy predicts approach behavior.

Criticisms of Efficacy View

Efficacy expectations may be epiphenomenal (not causal) – they may arise with anxiety but have no effect on responding.

Three types of anxiety:

Cognitive – affects self-efficacy

Physiological – affects physiology

Behavioral – directly influences responding.

Lang – contribution of each depends on prior experience and the situation.

Remainder of Chapter

Concepts and comparison of human and

animal learning are part of PSY 334.

This material will not be on the final exam.