Learning to Be Depressed
Learning to be Depressed
Sarah Robertson
General Psychology
Dr. Melissa Gebbia
12/10/10
Throughout life we all have different experiences whether they be positive or negative. Our hope is that if an experience is negatively affecting us we ourselves have an ability to change it. Generally, most people expect that the outcome of an event is dependent on their actions and that if they behave a certain way, a certain desirable outcome will be produced. This leads us to believe that we have control over what happens to us. This idea is all based on our beliefs of control and power in previous experiences and using them in our everyday life. If we lack personal power or experienced a lack of control in the past, we are then more likely to feel helplessness when approaching new experiences. Martin Seligman, a behavioral psychologist, theorized that our perceptions of power and control are learned from experience (Seligman, 1975). Seligman believed that if someone continually tries to exert force on a situation and fails repeatedly, the individual will stop attempting to exert control all together and may generalize the perception of lack of control to all future situations. He studied this behavioral pattern with dogs as subjects at the University of Pennsylvania (Seligman, 1975). While conducting an experiment on learning, Seligman noticed a surprising conclusion with his dogs. In his original experiment, he exposed the dogs to electrical shocks that they could not control nor escape from. It was demonstrated later on that when there is an escape easily accessed they still failed to escape the shock. This test consisted of a shuttle box which was split in half by a divider. The electricity was only run through one side of the box forcing the dog to escape the shock by jumping over the divider. This behavior is normally learned quickly because it would help
Sarah Robertson
General Psychology
Dr. Melissa Gebbia
12/10/10
Throughout life we all have different experiences whether they be positive or negative. Our hope is that if an experience is negatively affecting us we ourselves have an ability to change it. Generally, most people expect that the outcome of an event is dependent on their actions and that if they behave a certain way, a certain desirable outcome will be produced. This leads us to believe that we have control over what happens to us. This idea is all based on our beliefs of control and power in previous experiences and using them in our everyday life. If we lack personal power or experienced a lack of control in the past, we are then more likely to feel helplessness when approaching new experiences. Martin Seligman, a behavioral psychologist, theorized that our perceptions of power and control are learned from experience (Seligman, 1975). Seligman believed that if someone continually tries to exert force on a situation and fails repeatedly, the individual will stop attempting to exert control all together and may generalize the perception of lack of control to all future situations. He studied this behavioral pattern with dogs as subjects at the University of Pennsylvania (Seligman, 1975). While conducting an experiment on learning, Seligman noticed a surprising conclusion with his dogs. In his original experiment, he exposed the dogs to electrical shocks that they could not control nor escape from. It was demonstrated later on that when there is an escape easily accessed they still failed to escape the shock. This test consisted of a shuttle box which was split in half by a divider. The electricity was only run through one side of the box forcing the dog to escape the shock by jumping over the divider. This behavior is normally learned quickly because it would help
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