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Helpless behavior

C Peterson1

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109-1346.

Behaviour Research and Therapy
|March 1, 1993
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

This study explored helpless behavior and social reactions. Researchers found that while initial responses are often helpful, increased helplessness leads to anger and avoidance, cautioning against equating all passivity with learned helplessness.

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Area of Science:

  • Psychology
  • Social Psychology
  • Behavioral Science

Background:

  • Helpless behavior is a complex phenomenon with interpersonal implications.
  • Understanding social responses to helplessness is crucial for psychological research.
  • The learned helplessness model requires careful application to observed passivity.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To develop and validate a measure of prototypically helpless behaviors.
  • To investigate how individuals respond to varying levels of helplessness in others.
  • To examine the interpersonal nature of helpless behaviors.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized the act-frequency approach to create a self-report measure for helpless behaviors.
  • Validated the self-report measure against external ratings in a college student sample (n=75).

Related Experiment Videos

  • Surveyed young adults (n=249) on their responses to individuals exhibiting different degrees of helplessness.

    • Main Results:

    • Identified many prototypically helpless behaviors as interpersonal, suggesting dependency and potential manipulativeness.
    • The most common initial response to helplessness was offering comfort.
    • Increasing helplessness led to decreased helpfulness and compliance, and increased anger, ignoring, or avoidance.

    Conclusions:

    • Helpless behaviors are often interpersonal and can elicit negative social reactions.
    • Social responses to helplessness are contingent on its frequency and intensity.
    • Caution is advised when interpreting observed passivity as learned helplessness.