Seligman's Theory Of Learned Helplessness?

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).

In Learning to Be Depressed, Martin Seligman and Steve Maier explored learned helplessness. If a persons' efforts at controlling their life events failed repeatedly, would they stop trying to exert control altogether? This was the point of focus for their experiment. Seligman and Maier conducted their experiment on dogs, where they could study the causes and effects of learned helplessness. There were 3 groups of dogs: the escape group, the np-escape group, and the no-harness control group.

In Milgram’s article, he observed a variety of subjects. One of the subjects fully took on his role of administering shocks to the learner (Milgram 84). The subject even stated in his feedback that the “EXTREMELY PAINFUL” was not enough of a shock for the learner (Milgram 84).

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

Stanley Milgram’s (1963) study of behavioral obedience sought to understand the nature that drives humans to submit to destructive obedience. In his study, Milgram deceived his subject volunteers into believing that the experiment they were submitting themselves to involved learning about the effects of punishment on learning. Under this pretext, a subject “teacher” was to administer electric shocks to a confederate “learner” for every wrong answer in a word-pairing exercise. The subject was to administer shocks in increments, even when the learner protested. The experimenter’s role was to pressure the subjects to continue when they wanted to stop (Milgram, 1963). In doing so, Milgram sought to gauge what it is that influences his subjects

A classic experiment on the natural obedience of individuals was designed and tested by a Yale psychologist, Stanley Milgram. The test forced participants to either go against their morals or violate authority. For the experiment, two people would come into the lab after being told they were testing memory loss, though only one of them was actually being tested. The unaware individual, called the “teacher” would sit in a separate room, administering memory related questions. If the individual in the other room, the “learner,” gave a wrong answer, the teacher would administer a shock in a series of increasingly painful shocks correlating with the more answers given incorrectly. Milgram set up a recorder

The Milgram Obedience Study was an experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1963 to observe how far people would obey instructions that resulted in harming another individual. The experiment consisted of a “learner” engaging in a memory task and a “teacher” testing the “learner” on the task, administering electrical shocks to the “learner” each time an incorrect answer was given; the electric shocks started out small from 15 volts, labeled as “SLIGHT SHOCK”, all the way to 450 volts, labeled as “X X X”—of course, that was what the participant was told. The true purpose of the experiment was not disclosed until after the experiment and the “random selection” of who would be the “teacher” or “learner” was rigged so that the participant was always the “teacher” and the “learner” was always an actor. The shocks, naturally, were never given to the “learner”, and the “learner” gave responses that were scripted, both in answers to the questions and in responses to the shocks.

The study was set up as a "blind experiment" to capture if and when a person will stop inflicting pain on another as they are explicitly commanded to continue. The participants of this experiment included two willing individuals: a teacher and a learner. The teacher being the real subject and the learner is merely an actor. Both were told that they would be involved in a study that tests the effects of punishment on

On arriving for the experiment they were told that they would play he role of the teacher. They were to read a series of words pairs to an individual on the opposite side of a partition. They were to test the individuals' memory by giving him a word and asking him to select the correct matching word from four alternatives. Each time the learner made an error, they were to give him/her an electric shock at the touch of a lever. The individual was strapped into an electric chair while they watched. The teachers had levers in front of them labelled from 15 to 450 volts and switches labelled from slight shock to danger: severe shock to the final ‘XXX'. They were instructed to move one lever higher on the shock generator each time the learner made an error. There were not of course any shocks.

The subjects were informed that the punishment would not cause permanent tissue damage, however, could be extremely painful. The subjects observed the learner/accomplice being prepared with electrodes strapped in a chair. The teacher/subjects read a series of word-pairs to the learner then read the first word of the pair along with four terms. The learner’s role was to pair the first word with the correct term (Milgram, 1963). The learner would then press one of four switches attached to an electrical shock generator indicating his response. Unknown to the teacher, “in all conditions the learner gives a predetermined set of responses to the word pair test, based on the schedule of approximately three wrong answers to one correct answer” (Milgram, 1963).

Vygotsky proposed that children’s development is affected by their culture and social interaction. He also suggested that children are not born with knowledge but they gain it through their social interactions with peers and adults; he does not rule out the importance of biological processes but proposes an interdependent relationship between biological development alongside social activity and cultural interaction.

The main ethical issue with this experiment was the use of deception as the participants did not know the truth behind this study. Participants believe that they were shocking the learners and they were under severe stress due to this is possible that they had suffered psychological injuries. The participants have the right to withdraw from the study if they wanted; however, this was not made clear to them. Also, participants did not receive enough information about the study.

In the video, a professor passes out pieces of paper with anagrams on them to her students. She tells her students to rearrange the anagrams to form a new word. After the students complete each anagram, they are asked to raise their hands. Some students could not complete these tasks. The professor then reveals that each side of the room had a different list of anagrams for the first and second word, but the third word was the same. The students probably assumed that everyone in the class had the same list of anagrams. One side of the room was given anagrams that were not possible to solve, while the other side was given anagrams that were very easy to solve. This situation induced what the professor describes as “learned helplessness” on some of her students. This occurred within about 5 minutes. The students that

The Milgram Experiment has acquired wide popularity and spread among scientists and psychologist who have expressed their doubts concerning its results. The main essence of the experience consisted in checking the way the participant obeyed to authority although they have to do harm to other participants. Hence, the person who controlled the experiment told the subject of the experiment to check memory of another volunteer on the way he/she can remember the pair of words. In case of failure of memorizing all pairs, the volunteers have to administer the electronic short to the learners, starting from 15-volt power and increasing the power as the number of wrong answer increases up to 450-volt power. The experiment was met with rigid criticism due to a number of inconsistencies and inadequacies from scientific and psychological points of view.

Behavioral Learning Theories Most theorists agree that learning occurs when experience causes a change in a person's knowledge or behavior . Behaviorists emphasize the role of environmental stimuli in learning and focus on the behavior, i.e., an observable response. Behavioral theories are based on contiguity, classical and operant conditioning, applied behavior analysis, social learning theory and self-regulation/cognitive behavior modification. Early views of learning were contiguity and classical conditioning.