Cognitive influences on the development of learned helplessness.
College students (N = 120) participated in experiment concerning the influence of self-statements following failure on subsequent symptoms of learned helplessness. One third of the students were given solvable concept-formation problems (nonhelpless condition) and two thirds were given unsolvable concept-formation problems (helpless condition). A multivariate analysis of variance revealed a significant difference between helpless and nonhelpless students on cognitive/motivational and affective measures of learned helplessness and on self-statements regarding performance. However, when multiple regression and correlational analyses were performed within the group of students who failed the concept-formation problems, no stable relationship was found between self-statements (cognitions) about concept-formation performance and the measures of learned helplessness. The implications of these results for Beck's (1967) cognitive model of depression and the reformulated learned helplessness model of depression (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) are discussed.
D003071:Cognition; D003210:Concept Formation; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006380:Helplessness, Learned / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D012649:Self Concept