AP PSYCHOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Learned helplessness occurs when people or animals feel helpless to avoid negative situations. Martin Seligman first observed learned helplessness when he was doing experiments on dogs. He noticed that the dogs didn’t try to escape the shocks if they had been conditioned to believe that they couldn’t escape.

Detailed explanation-2: -He is a leading authority in the fields of Positive Psychology, resilience, learned helplessness, depression, optimism and pessimism. He is also a recognized authority on interventions that prevent depression, and build strengths and well-being. He has written more than 350 scholarly publications and 30 books.

Detailed explanation-3: -The theory of learned helplessness was conceptualized and developed by American psychologist Martin E.P. Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1960s and ‘70s.

Detailed explanation-4: -Learned helplessness, the failure to escape shock induced by uncontrollable aversive events, was discovered half a century ago. Seligman and Maier (1967) theorized that animals learned that outcomes were independent of their responses-that nothing they did mattered – and that this learning undermined trying to escape.