Michael Armstrong

4/23/15
Psychology 211
40 Studies Writing Assignment #4
Reading 31: Learning to Be Depressed
Researchers Seligman, M. E. P., & Maier, S. F. at the University of Pennsylvania believed
that our conceptions of control and power come from previous experiences. Leading the
research, Seligman was a popular behavioral psychologist that hypothesized if a person
frequently failed to manage particular situations in their life, that person might cease their
attempts to manage situations entirely. If these defeats occur too frequently, the individual might
generalize the conception of helplessness to all circumstances; this assumption that everything is
going to follow a pattern of negativity is called overgeneralization according to Ciccarelli and
White (2014, p. 545).
To test this hypothesis, Seligman and Maier created an experiment on dogs based on his
previous experiments. In Seligmans previous experiment, the dogs were given painful electric
shocks that they could not control then put into a shuttle box that was partitioned in two halves.
An electrical shock would be administered to either half of the shuttle box. To avoid this shock,
the dog just had to leap to the other half. Though the dogs were able to easily escape, the ones
that were administered shocks prior to the shuttle box did not try to escape. In their new
experiment, Seligman and Maier used a pool of 24 dogs. The dogs were split up into 3 groups of
8; group one was the escape group, group two was the no-escape group, and the last group was
the no-harness group (Hock, 2013, p. 242). While the escape group and the no-escape group

were the experimental groups, the no-harness group was the control group. The dogs in the
experimental groups were placed in restraints that only allowed movement of the head while still
facing ahead. Push panels were put on each side of the dogs heads and were triggered when the
dog would move its head to either side. The dogs in the experimental groups were all
administered electrical shocks in pairs of one escape dog with one no-escape dog. The no-escape
dogs were not able to stop the shocks, but the escape group dogs were able to push the panels on
the sides of its head to stop the shock which would stop the shock for its paired no-escape dog.
Both groups were given 64 shocks at approximately 90-second intervals (Hock, 2013, p. 243).
After a full day, the dogs from all three groups were individually placed into a shuttle box much
like the box from Seligmans previous experiment and tested. A light was placed on each end of
the box. When the light turned off on one half, the dog had 10 seconds to get to the other side in
order to avoid the electric shock administered through the floor. Every dog was tested 10 times in
the box. The independent variable is the ability to escape while in the first stage. The dependent
variable is the dogs performance in the shuttle box.
From this experiment, the researchers found that the dogs in the escape group learned to
push the panels faster over the 64 shocks while the dogs in the no-escape group stopped entirely
after 30 shocks. The shuttle box results show that the escape group had 0% of dogs fail to learn
to jump over the partition and avoid shock while the no-escape group had over 70% of dogs that
failed to learn to avoid the shock. Seligman and Maier (1967), summarize the findings as dogs
which had 1st learned to panel press in a harness in order to escape shock subsequently showed
normal acquisition of escape/avoidance behavior in a shuttle box (p. 1).
These findings can help psychologists and psychiatrists understand why their patients
may think so helplessly or hopelessly. This can also help us as humans become more conscious

of our own behavior. Since we now know that multiple uncontrollable failures can lead to the
feeling of helplessness, we can actively make an effort to reassure ourselves that we can still
overcome things. We have to not let ourselves fall under the assumption that we cant help
ourselves because of something that happened in the past.

Reference List
Ciccarelli, S. K., White, J. N. (2014) Psychology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education
Inc.
Hock, R. R. (2013) Forty Studies That Changed Psychology: Explorations into the history of
psychological research (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.
Seligman, M. E., Maier, S. F. (1967) Failure to Escape Traumatic Shock. Journal of
Experimental Psychology. (Vol. 74(1), pp. 1-9).