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Related Experiment Videos

Learned helplessness: performance as a function of task significance.

N F Skinner

    The Journal of Psychology
    |May 1, 1979
    PubMed
    Summary
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    Learned helplessness effects on performance depend on awareness of uncontrollable factors. When high school students perceived low task significance, their performance and confidence decreased, supporting this hypothesis.

    Area of Science:

    • Psychology
    • Cognitive Psychology
    • Social Psychology

    Background:

    • Learned helplessness is a psychological state where individuals feel powerless to avoid negative outcomes.
    • Previous studies often attributed performance deficits to learned helplessness without fully considering participant awareness.

    Purpose of the Study:

    • To investigate whether awareness of uncontrollable factors is crucial for learned helplessness.
    • To examine the role of "task significance" in manipulating this awareness within the learned helplessness paradigm.

    Main Methods:

    • Sixty high school students participated in a learned helplessness experiment.
    • Task significance was manipulated to influence participants' awareness of control over performance.
    • Performance on anagram tasks and self-reported confidence and anxiety were measured.

    Related Experiment Videos

    Main Results:

    • Test Task performance varied inversely with task significance, with lower significance leading to poorer performance.
    • Participants in the experimental condition solved fewer anagrams and reported decreased confidence and increased anxiety.
    • Attributions for poor performance were linked to uncontrollable personal characteristics when task significance was low.

    Conclusions:

    • Learned helplessness requires awareness that poor performance stems from uncontrollable external factors.
    • The findings challenge the oversimplified application of learned helplessness in prior research.
    • Task significance is a key variable in understanding the conditions under which learned helplessness develops.