LEARNED HELPLESSNESS AND CONTROL

1
LEARNED HELPLESSNESS AND CONTROL

• Damon Burton
• University of Idaho

2

• What is learned helplessness?

3
LEARNED HELPLESSNESS DEFINED

• Learned helplessness is the belief that we
  cant change the course of negative eventsthat
  failure is inevitable and insurmountable.
• Learned helplessness is about responses to
  failure NOT success
• Learned helplessness is a control NOT a
  competence problem.

4
ORIGINS OF HELPLESSNESS

5
ACADEMIC LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

• Many accomplished students shied away from
  challenge and fell apart in the face of setbacks.
• Many less skilled students seized challenges with
  relish and were energized by setbacks.
• Many skills students questioned or condemned
  their intelligence when they failed.
• Many less skilled students never questioned their
  ability or even felt they failed.

6
HELPLESS VERSUS MASTERY PATTERNS

• Learned helplessness (LH) patterns initially
  the belief that failure was beyond their control
  and nothing could be done.
• Updated to include denigration of intelligence,
  plunging expectations, negative emotions, low
  persistence and deteriorating performance.
• Mastery-oriented (MO) patterns was the hardy
  belief that success are replicable and mistakes
  rectifiable. To them, failure is surmountable so
  they remained focused on mastery in spite of
  their present difficulties.

7
DIENER DWECK RESEARCH

• 5th 6th graders were identified as mastery or
  helpless and then solved a series of math
  problems
• First 8 problems could be solved, but the next 4
  problems were beyond their skills
• Researchers assessed problem-solving strategies
  used and thoughts and feelings expressed while
  the kids worked on the problems with a talk
  aloud strategy.

8
FREQUENCY OF HELPLESS BEHAVIOR

• Results across many studies show that
• mastery patterns -- 40
• helpless patterns -- 40
• neutral patterns -- 10-15

9
HELPLESS RESULTS

• Both groups were equally successful and positive
  on the success problems.
• Over one-third of helpless students denigrated
  their abilities and blamed their intelligence for
  their failure.
• LH students believed they had more failure than
  success.
• Two-thirds expressed negative affect during
  failure from boredom to anxiety.

10
HELPLESS RESULTS

• Their focus went to saving face rather than
  solving the problem.
• off-task thoughts (e.g., role in play)
• changed rules feel successful
• Performance plummeted because of use of poor
  problem-solving strategies
• Other research that allowed students to go back
  to success problems found serious deterioration
  in performance following failure.

11
MASTERY RESULTS

• Mastery students didnt focus on the reasons for
  failure.
• They didnt seem to believe they were failing.
• MO students gave themselves cognitive and
  motivational instructions on how to improve their
  performance.
• All used self-monitoring and self-instruction.

12
MASTERY RESULTS

• They remained confident and optimistic.
• They relished the challenge of overcoming
  failure.
• 80 maintained or improved the quality of their
  problem-solving strategies.
• 25 improved and taught themselves new strategies
• Failure was not a personal indictment but a
  challenge.

13
CLASSROOM CONFIRMATION STUDY

• Licht Dweck (1984) asked students to read a
  booklet and take a mastery test.
• Form A had a confusing passage promoting failure
  and Form B didnt.
• Both mastery and helpless students performed well
  on the success booklet.
• 72 of helpless and 68 of mastery students got
  all 7 questions correct.
• 72 of mastery but only 35 of helpless were able
  to master the failure booklet.

14
HELPLESSNESS IMPLICATIONS

• Eventually we all must confront failure
  situations.
• Do students choose to accept difficult challenges
  or avoid them by selecting easy tasks that
  guarantee success?
• Challenge seekers will normally be highly
  successful in anything the do, whereas challenge
  avoiders will often not perform well when
  confronting failure and adversity.

15
ROLE OF GOALS IN HELPLESSNESS

• Elliott Dweck (1988) found that helpless and
  mastery students have different goals.
• Performance goals are about winning positive
  judgments about your competence and avoiding
  negative ones.
• Performance goal setters want to look smart and
  avoid looking dumb.

16
ROLE OF GOALS IN HELPLESSNESS

• Learning goals are focused on increasing
  competence. They promote learning new skills,
  mastering new tasks and understanding new
  material.
• Learning goal setters want to get smarter.
• The focus is on process rather than
  productlearning rather than achieving.

17
WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT?

• In the real world, learning and performance goals
  are often in conflict.
• Do they choose tasks that make them look smart or
  ones that help them learn as much as possible?
• Overemphasis on performance goals can hurt
  learning in the quest to look smart or talented.

18
GOALS CREATE MOTIVATION PATTERNS

• Elliott Dweck (1988) gave 5th graders either a
  performance or a learning goal.
• Both groups got a series of successes on the same
  task followed by several difficult problems.
• Many students in the performance goal task showed
  the helpless pattern.

19
IMPACT OF ABILITY

• Most students in the learning goal condition
  demonstrated mastery patterns.
• Students with performance goals who were
  convinced they had high ability were more likely
  to demonstrate mastery patterns.
• Ability made no difference for students with
  learning goals.

20
IMPACT OF REAL WORLD GOALS

• Farrell Dweck (1985) gave junior high students
  new science material.
• After a week of learning, students were tested on
  new kinds of problems.
• On the novel problems, learning goal students
• scored significantly higher.
• produced 50 more work
• tried to apply principles to solve the problems

21

• How do we help students or athletes who are
  learned helpless to overcome this problem?

22
ATTRIBUTION RETRAINING

• Group 1 received only successes
• Group 2 received mostly successes, but they were
  taught to attribute failure to low effort or
  other internal-stable-controllable factors.
• Results showed no improvement for Group 1
• Group 2 showed no impairment following failure
  and most actually improved.

23

• What are the limitations of attribution
  retraining in sport?

24
ORIGINS VERSUS PAWNS

• Origins a person who feels that he is in
  control of his fate. He feels that the cause for
  his behavior is within himself.
• Pawns persons who feel pushed around. They are
  the puppet and someone else is pulling the
  strings. They have an external locus of control.

25
ORIGIN AND PAWN COMPARISON

• Origins

• Pawns

• positively motivated
• optimistic
• confident
• accepts challenges
• feels potent
• competent committed

• negatively motivated
• defensive
• irresolute
• avoids challenges
• powerless
• aimless

26
De CHARMS ST LOUIS SCHOOL STUDY

• 3 year study in 4th through 6th grades of East St
  Louis elementary schools
• Week-long workshop to train teachers and have
  them design activities to teach principles to
  their kids
• Teachers implemented one activity per week
  throughout the school year
• Kids were pre and post tested each year.

27
De CHARMS RESULTS

• Kids academic progress was closer to their
  suburban peers each year of the study.
• Absenteeism and discipline referrals declined
  steadily
• Enjoyment of school and attitude of kids and
  their parents rose steadily

28
SELIGMANS EXPLANATORY STYLE

• Permanence Helpless people believe the causes
  of bad events that happen to them are permanent.
  They believe bad events will persist and will
  always affect their lives.
• People who resist helplessness believe the
  causes of bad events are temporary. People who
  believe good events have permanent causes are
  more optimistic than people who believe they have
  temporary causes.

29
SELIGMANS EXPLANATORY STYLE

• Pervasiveness Helpless people who make
  universal explanations for their failures give up
  on everything when failure strikes in one area.
  People who make specific explanations may become
  helpless in one part of the life but march
  stalwartly on in the others.
• Optimists believe that bad events have specific
  causes while good events will enhance everything
  they do. The pessimist believes that bad events
  have universal causes and that good events are
  caused by specific factors.

30
SELIGMANS EXPLANATORY STYLE

• Hope Hope is the art of finding temporary and
  specific causes for misfortune. Temporary causes
  limit helplessness in time, and specific causes
  limit helplessness to the original situation.
• Permanent causes produce helplessness far into
  the future, and universal causes spread
  helplessness thru all of our lives and activities

31
SELIGMANS EXPLANATORY STYLE

• Personalization People who blame themselves
  when they fail have low self-esteem as a
  consequence. They think they are worthless,
  talentless and unlovable.
• People who blame external events when they fail
  believe do not lose self-esteem when bad events
  strike. On the whole, they like themselves
  better than people who blame themselves do.

32
WEST POINT STUDY

• 1200 plebes are admitted each year for Beast
  Barracks in July
• 6 quit the first day and by the first day of
  classes 100 of our best students have quit.
• Pessimists are much more like to quit than
  optimists and their grades are worse than their
  ACT scores predict.
• Optimists often overachieve compared to their ACT
  scores.

33
DEPRESSION STUDY

• In September students are tested for Explanatory
  Style and depression
• Following the midterm exam, they were tested for
  depression again.
• Results confirmed . . .
• 30 who experienced personal failure were
  depressed
• 30 of the pessimists were depressed
• 70 of pessimists who experienced personal
  failure were depressed

34
METROPOLITAN LIFE STUDY THE PROBLEM

• Selling insurance requires dealing with frequent
  rejection and failure.
• Thus, many agents quit each year dramatically
  increasing training costs while reducing
  productivity.
• The insurance industry wants to select agents who
  are more resilient and handle failure
  constructively.

35
METROPOLITAN LIFE STUDY THE PROBLEM

• Every year 60,000 candidates apply for jobs as
  new insurance agents and only 5,000 are hired.
• Even with extensive training, half quit the first
  year.
• By the end of Year 4, 80 have quit.
• Because it costs 30,000 to hire and train one
  agent, high turnover rates are costing companies
  75 million a year.

36
METROPOLITAN LIFE STUDY THE PROBLEM

• Agents find it difficult to experience the
  rejection of hearing people tell them no
  repeatedly.
• Its easy to get discouraged as the nos mount,
  prompting them to get more frustrated and
  pessimistic.

37
METROPOLITAN LIFE ADVANTAGE OPTIMISTS

• 200 agents took the Explanatory Styles Inventory
  and sales results compared for both groups.
• Optimists sold 37 more insurance than
  pessimists.
• For a sample of 104 new agents, pessimists were
  twice as likely to quit as optimists. In fact,
  59 of 104 quit.

38
METROPOLITAN LIFE ADVANTAGE OPTIMISTS

• The Agent Selection Questionnaire (ASQ) is the
  industry standard for selecting insurance agents.
• Agents with scores in the top half of the ASQ
  sold 20 more insurance than those in the bottom
  half.
• Agents in the top quarter sold 50 more insurance
  than those from the bottom quarter.

39
METROPOLITAN LIFE ADVANTAGE OPTIMISTS

• In an interesting study testing of the power of
  optimism, 100 agents were hired who were
  optimists but failed the Insurance Industrys
  exam the Career Profile.
• This group of special agents outsold pessimists
  who passed the CP by 21 the first year and 57
  the second year.
• They also sold as much as optimists who passed
  the CP and had similar work histories.

40

• The End