Many subsequent experiments also proved that this kind of learned helplessness can also happen to people. 1, definition: learned helplessness refers to a special negative psychological state of an organism in emotion, cognition and behavior after certain learning.
2. Performance: learned helplessness students formed a self-incompetence strategy, which eventually led them to try to avoid failure. They struggle for unattainable goals, they delay their homework, or they just complete effortless tasks. They are depressed and show it in the form of anger. The report of the National Reading Committee described such students as "lazy, lazy and sometimes even destructive". They didn't finish their homework. Faced with difficulties, they soon gave up their homework. They become anxious when they ask to read aloud and take exams. "1953, Solomon, Cumming and Wayne of Harvard University put 40 dogs in something called a shuttle box; The partition divides the box into two parts. At first, the partition was only the height of the dog's back. Thousands of electric shocks were applied to the dog's feet from the bottom of the grille box. If dogs learn to jump over obstacles to the other side, they can escape electric shock. Then, the jumping experiment of frustrated dogs was carried out. When the dog jumps to the other side, the experimenter also energizes the grille, and the dog has to jump 100 times to stop the electric shock. They said: "When the dog jumped from one side to the other, it made a release sound that was expected to avoid electric shock, but when it reached the grille on the other side and was shocked again, it screamed. "Next, use transparent plastic glass to block between the two sides. The dog jumped to the other side after being electrocuted and hit the glass with its head. Dogs began to "shit, pee, scream, tremble, cringe, bite equipment" and so on; But after 18 days to 12 days, these dogs could not escape the electric shock and stopped resisting. The experimenters said they were "moved" by this. The conclusion is that putting transparent glass between the two sides, electric shock "very effectively" eliminates the dog's jumping intention.
This study shows that repeated strong electric shocks to animals will cause helplessness and despair.
In 1960s, the research on this kind of "learned helplessness" was strengthened. Martin Seliman of the University of Pennsylvania electrified the caged dog with a powerful and lasting current from the floor of steel grating, so that the dog stopped trying to escape and "learned" to be helpless. Seliman, Steven Meyer and James Gill wrote in a paper: "When a normal, untrained dog is trained to escape in a box, the following behaviors are normal: during the first electric shock, the dog runs wildly, poops and screams in horror until it quickly climbs over an obstacle, and so on, until the electric shock can be effectively avoided. Furthermore, Seliman tied up the dogs so that they could not escape when they were electrocuted. When the dogs were put back into the shuttle box where they could escape the electric shock, Seliman found that when the shuttle box was first shocked, the dogs reacted like untrained dogs. But it soon stopped running and waited silently until the electric shock was over, and the dog did not cross the obstacle to avoid the electric shock.
In the 1980s, psychologists continued to do this "learned helplessness" experiment. Philip Percy of Temple University in Philadelphia and three other experimenters trained mice to recognize warning lights and let them know that there would be an electric shock in five seconds. Once the mouse understands the meaning of warning light, it can walk into a safe area to avoid electric shock. After the mouse learned this step, the experimenter blocked the safe area again, making the mouse suffer from electric shock for a longer time than before and unable to escape. It is conceivable that even if the mouse can escape later, it is impossible for the mouse to learn to escape again soon.
Percy also subjected 372 mice to unbearable lightning strikes to test the relationship between Pavlo's restrictions and learned helplessness. They report that "the experimental results are not very certain about the helplessness of acquisition" and "some basic problems still exist."
Brown, Smith and Peters of the University of Tennessee spent a lot of time making a special shuttle box for goldfish, perhaps to see the applicability of Seliman's theory in water. The experimenter conducted 65 electric shock tests on 45 fish. The conclusion is that "the data obtained can't support Seliman's learned helplessness sense theory."
These experimenters made many animals suffer intense pain, first to prove a theory, then to refute it, and finally to support the revised theory. Steven Maier, Seliman and Jill wrote a report on dogs' learned helplessness. He once gained fame and fortune by making the learned helplessness model popular for a long time, but later he said the following about the effectiveness of this type of animal depression model:
About depression, its characteristics, its neurobiology, its occurrence, its prevention and treatment are not the same, so it can't make it more meaningful ... so it can't be said that learned helplessness's feeling is a general model of depression.
This conclusion is inevitably disappointing; Maier tried to save it, and said that although learned helplessness's sense is not enough to be a depression model, it can be a "pressure and competition" model; Nevertheless, he has effectively admitted that animal experiments in the past 30 years are a waste of time and taxpayers' money, not to mention the severe pain caused to animals. 1, fully understand the composition of learned helplessness.
2. Help students discover the basic beliefs and distorted cognition that lead to their self-frustration.
3. Teach students how to change and refute distorted beliefs and reduce deficits in cognition, emotion and motivation.
In a word, learned helplessness's important corrective strategies are metacognition, problem solving, demonstration, self-dialogue, self-control and self-evaluation.
Positive psychology is a new psychology, which was founded on 1998 by Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, to study how to live a happy, successful and meaningful life. Therefore, positive psychology may be simply called "the science of happiness".
The first question to be answered by positive psychology is: What makes us happiest? The results of the study may be surprising: wealth, education and youth have limited help to happiness; The influence of marriage is mixed; What can make us happier is religious belief and family friendship.
Edward Diener, a professor of psychology at Illinois State University, found that extra income can't bring much happiness as long as the basic life is guaranteed. Good education and high IQ are not helpful to the improvement of happiness. Youth does not guarantee happiness. According to a survey by the Centers for Disease Control in the United States, young people aged 20 to 24 are depressed for longer than elderly people aged 65 to 74.
On the other hand, religious belief can really stimulate people's emotions, but it is difficult to judge whether it is the role of a god or a religious group. Affection and friendship can also bring happiness; A study by Dina and seligman shows that among the college students who participated in the study, 65,438+00% of the students who are the happiest and least depressed have obvious * * * characteristics, that is, they all have close friends and family and spend time with them. Dina concluded: "If you want to pursue happiness, you should cultivate social skills and establish close interpersonal relationships and social support."
Seligman pointed out in his book AuthenticHappiness that happiness consists of three elements: enjoyment (cheerful smiling face), participation (devotion to family, work, love and hobbies) and meaning (giving full play to one's strengths to achieve greater goals than one's own). Of the three elements, pleasure is the shortest. Seligman said: "This deserves everyone's attention, because too many people pursue happiness as their purpose in life, but participation and significance are far more important than happiness."
Positive psychology also believes that the basic point of human happiness can be adjusted: people can change the happiness level of innate personality traits through acquired efforts. So how can we be happier?