Learned Helplessness Is A Mental Disorder

Classical Conditioning. Due to Pavlov’s success, Watson was inclined to do his own experimentation. His most famous, yet controversial, being on “Little Albert.” “Albert” was a child conditioned by Watson to be afraid of rats. Essentially, Watson would create a loud, banging noise. This would eventually lead to the fear of not just rats, but all fuzzy animals (John Watson - Little Albert, 2008).

Pavlov’s discovery of classical conditioning was a complete accident (Hock, 2009, p. 66). Pavlov was doing physiology research with salvation’s role with digestion when he discovered classical conditioning. In his research, he had dogs with their salvation glands redirected to their cheek in order to test the amount of saliva produced when presented with different foods. Pavlov then noticed that the dogs would salivate before they even got the food. He then discovered that the dogs had associated the worker’s footsteps with the food. So, when the dogs hear the footsteps they know that food is on the way so they begin to salivate.

Learned helplessness is something that a lot of people go through without knowing all of the factors that may trigger it. Learned helplessness is when someone suffers from powerlessness about repeated failing attempts to succeed. This paper will focus on some of things that are related to learned helplessness and a way to help reduce it, such as mental disorders, health problems, gender, job status, and race. One way to reduce it among women is counseling with another female. Learned helplessness can cause and/or is related to mental disorders such as depression and PTSD, health problems such as asthma & weight and it is also related to job status. There are studies that show that women can reduce learned helplessness if they are counseled by another female rather than a male.

In the video titled Learned helplessness (PsychYogi, 2014), Martin Seligman conducted a study in which he took three groups of dogs and put them in harnesses. He gave each group a lever that would either stop a charge that electrocuted the dogs, or do nothing. Group one was the control group and did not get electrocuted. The dogs in groups two and three were the experimental groups. Group two had control over the electric shocks and could stop them with the lever. Group three also received the shocks every time group two did, except group three had no control over their own lever. Every time group two pushed their lever to stop the shocks, group three’s shocks also stopped. Group three never knew when their shocks would stop. The dogs in group two learned that the lever would stop the shocks, so the more times they were shocked, the less time it took them to push the lever. Group three was the only group to have symptoms of depression due to learned helplessness (Psychyogi, 2014).

Classical conditioning is a type of associative learning which occurs when two stimuli are paired together repetitively and therefore become associated with each other eventually producing the same response. Classical conditioning was developed from the findings of Ivan Pavlov to account for associations between neutral stimuli and reflexive behavior such as salivation. Pavlov (1927) accidently discovered that dogs began to salivate before they had tasted their food. To support his theory, he carried out experiments using dogs which involved measuring the amount of saliva they produced. In his experiments, food started off as an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) which produced salivation, an unconditioned response (UCR). They are both unconditioned as they occur naturally without being learned. The dogs were presented with a bell (NS), this provided no salivation. The bell and food were presented together and after many trails an

8. Pavlov found that if he allowed his animals to rest for several hours following the extinction of a behavior, the conditioned response would spontaneously appear again upon re-presentation of the conditioned stimulus – although in a somewhat weaker form. This is called:

Classical conditioning was a theory developed by a Russian psychologist called Ivan Pavlov. He was working with dogs to investigate their

Another behavioural psychologist, Watson (1915) was influenced by Pavlov’s dogs’ (1902). Watson suggested that if reflexes can be conditioned in dogs, then they can be conditioned in human behaviour too (Gross 2010). Watson used Pavlov’s idea of classical conditioning to influence his experiment with Little Albert, where Watson successfully conditioned fear into an 8-month-old boy using a range of different stimuli.

Classical conditioning was discovered by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov 1902. Classical conditioning suggests that all behaviour is learnt through association. Pavlov discovered this through his works with dogs. It was also believed that classical conditioning can lead to the development of phobias. This was demonstrated by Watson and Rayner 1920 with the case of little Albert (gross p162).

In 1903 a Russian physiologist by the name of Ivan Pavlov first developed an experiential model of learning called Classical Conditioning (Lautenheiser 1999). An example if Classical Conditioning would be ringing a bell when it is time for your pet to eat. The pet hears the bell and over time is conditioned that when the bell rings its dinner time thus begins to salivate, and eventually learns to be conditioned to responding to the bell in a specific manner. The bases was that neutral stimulus would be put together with an excitatory one and over time the neutral stimulus would, at some point down the line elicit the response that was associated with the original unlearned response. Pavlov later added an element known as the nonexcitatory, conditioned stimulus which is but together with an unconditioned stimulus (Lautenheiser 1999).

* Ivan Pavlov (behaviorist) – Started the idea of conditioning, where an inherited reflex comes to be triggered by a stimulus that has nothing to do with that reflex. He showed that even inherited reflexes could be influenced dramatically by learning experiences.

Here we discuss research of Indian writers SURAJ MAL, UDAY JAIN and K. S. YADAV, which is called “Effects of Prolonged Deprivation on Learned Helplessness”. This study article consists of 8 pages.

Pavlov’s theory is to show that there are some things that a dog does not need to learn. When food is shown to the dog, the dog starts to salivate which shows we have got a response, this is an unconditioned response because when he salivates he cannot control it. He then set up an experiment to find out if the dog could be trained to salivate at other stimuli such as ringing a bell when it is time for the dog to eat. When ringing the bell there was no conditioned response from the dog which then led him to ring the bell with the food to see if the dog would still salivate. When ringing the bell with the food the dog then had an unconditioned response and started salivating again. The fourth time he rang the bell and took the food away, which

Learned helplessness occurs when a person is repeatedly exposed to an aversive stimuli and feels that no matter how much they try to escape; they are not successful. Therefore, they tend to cave in since a sense of being helpless has been developed to escape the situation. Early studies on the idea of learned helplessness occurred accidently since psychologists were initially studying avoidance learning in dogs. These dogs were subject to a few foot shocks and at first would attempt to escape the shock however, these dogs later on stop attempting to escape and would submissively accept the foot shocks. Then these psychologists tried numerous situations to examine this sensation by placing the dogs in different cages where it would be easier

The founder and main contributor in the development of classical conditioning is Russian psychologists Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov, is an acclaimed man of science, who is prominently known for his investigations and experimental findings known as Pavlov’s dogs. While further exploring the canine digestive system, he