Helplessness and hospitalization: more remarks

Our recent research (Raps, Peterson, Jonas, & Seligman, 1982), in which we concluded that hospitalization may cause learned helplessness among patients, was criticized because (a) perceived control was not directly assessed and (b) factors other than helplessness might explain the observed data. On a general level, we agree with these criticisms because our investigation was not fine grained. However, we suggest that field research in the helplessness tradition should be evaluated in part on the basis of convergence between field and laboratory findings and that the criticisms of our study ignore this convergence.