Using multiple risk factors to assess the behavioral, cognitive, and affective effects of learned helplessness

Rather than examining the effect of the pessimistic explanatory style on an outcome variable reflecting a single domain, I studied the effects of multiple learned-helplessness risk factors on behavioral, cognitive, and affective variables. Undergraduate students completed the Learned Helplessness Scale (Quinless & McDermott-Nelson, 1988) as a measure of their expectation of uncontrollability and the Explanatory Style Questionnaire (Peterson et al., 1982) to determine their explanations for both positive and negative events. Results revealed a significant effect for risk level, with students at greater risk of helplessness reporting significantly more procrastination, lower grade point averages, and more dysphoria. These results support the use of multiple risk factors representing all learned-helplessness precursors and the assessment of learned-helplessness deficits drawn simultaneously from behavioral, cognitive, and affective domains.