CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 2,494Memory and Neural MechanismsAnxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive ProcessesStress Responses and Cortisol

Learned helplessness: Theory and evidence

Maier, Steven F., Seligman, Martin E.·1976·Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
DOI 10.1037/0096-3445.105.1.3
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

\, SUMMARY In 1967, Overmier and Seligman found that dogs exposed to inescapable and unavoidable electric shocks in one situation later failed to learn to escape shock in a different situation where escape was possible. Shortly thereafter Seligman and Maier (1967) demonstrated that this effect was caused by the uncontrollability of the original shocks. In this article we review the effects of exposing organisms to aversive events which they cannot control, and we review the explanations which have been offered. There seem to be motivational, cognitive, and emotional effects of uncontrollability. (a) Motivation. Dogs that have been exposed to inescapable shocks do not subsequently initiate escape response in the presence of shock. We review parallel phenomena in cats, fish, rats, and man. Of particular interest is the discussion of learned helplessness in rats and man. Rats are of interest because learned helplessness has been difficult to demonstrate in rats. However, we show that inescapably shocked rats do fail to learn to escape if the escape task is reasonably difficult. With regard to man, we review a variety of studies using inescapable noise and unsolvable problems as agents which produce learned helplessness effects on both instrumental and cognitive tasks, (b) Cognition. We argue that exposure to uncontrollabl e events interferes with the organism's tendency to perceive contingent relationships between its behavior and outcomes. Here we review a variety of studies showing such a cognitive set. (c) Emotion. We review a variety of experiments which show that uncontrollable aversive events produce greater emotional disruption than do controllable aversive events. We have proposed an explanation for these effects, which we call the learned helplessness hypothesis. It argues that when events are uncontrollable the organism learns that its behavior and outcomes are independent, and that this learning produces the motivational, cognitive, and emotional effects of uncontrollabi lity. We describe the learned helplessness hypothesis and research which supports it. Finally, we describe and discuss in detail alternative hypotheses which have been offered as accounts of the learned helplessness effect. One set of hypotheses argues that organisms learn motor responses during exposure to uncontrollabl e shock that compete with the response required in the test task. Another explanation holds that uncontrollable shock is a severe stressor and depletes a neurochemical necessary for the mediation of movement. We examine the logical structure of these explanations and present a variety of evidence which bears on them directly.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1037/0096-3445.105.1.3

Cites

131 of 131 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Maier and Seligman's definition of control is identical to the instrumental contingency definition.

    “Interestingly, this definition of instrumental contingency is identical to the definition of control that Maier and Seligman (1976) provided, although Maier and Seligman were referring to shock rather than food.”

    From Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience. (2016) · cites this paper as Maier and Seligman (1976)

  • Learned controllability was introduced more recently to describe a condition in which individuals learn to recognize-or believe-they have the ability to respond effectively to environmental stressors, thereby counteracting the deleterious effects of learned helplessness.

    “In contrast, the concept of “learned controllability” was introduced more recently to describe a condition in which individuals learn to recognize—or believe—they have the ability to respond effectively to environmental stressors, thereby counteracting the deleterious effects of learned helplessness (3, 4).”

    From Editorial: From learned helplessness to learned controllability: cognitive and neurobiological aspects involved in the development of trauma or resilience (2025) · cites this paper as [3]

  • Helplessness, also unrelated to anger, has been linked to resignation and depression.

    “Helplessness, also unrelated to anger, has been linked to resignation and depression.”

    From Management of emotional distress following a myocardial infarction: a qualitative content analysis (2023) · cites this paper as Maier & Seligman, 1976

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E.
Affiliations
University of Colorado Boulder (US)
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Publisher
American Psychological Association (APA)
Published
1976-03
Volume
105
Issue
1
Pages
3-46
ISSN
  • 0096-3445 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-2222
DOI
10.1037/0096-3445.105.1.3
OpenAlex
W2022987442
Semantic Scholar
bd0b38c23bb66a0762b0023b0306c86411f47edc
Cited by
2,494
References
131
Citations by year
2026: 105 · 2025: 85 · 2024: 92 · 2023: 75 · 2022: 105 · 2021: 90 · 2020: 78 · 2019: 81 · 2018: 64 · 2017: 68 · 2016: 56 · 2015: 69 · 2014: 63 · 2013: 66 · 2012: 69
FWCI
35.90
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Journal of Experimental Psychology General (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Behavioral Neuroscience › Stress Responses and Cortisol
Keywords
learned helplessness, uncontrollability, inescapable shock, escape learning, motivation, cognitive set, stress, rats, human, unsolvable problems, noise aversion

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review