Methodological difficulties in demonstrating learned helplessness in humans.

Abstract

This paper outlines methodological difficulties in experimentally demonstrating the learned helplessness effect in humans. It is argued that most of the reported attempts to do so have failed to overcome these difficulties although a new experimental paradigm is described which appears to avoid most of them. It is concluded that the effect is a genuine one, although dependent on a variety of situational and individual difference variables which need to be systematically explored before a satisfactory theory can be developed.