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Martin Seligman's Theory Of Learned Helplessness

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Recommended: Which phrase is consistent with Seligman's theory of learned helplessness

The topic that I have chosen for this assignment is Martin Seligman’s theory of learned helplessness. This theory is probably talking about when a living beings are forced to bear detestable stimuli, and unable to avoid the following stimuli, even they get the chance to escape, they will not try to escape. It is because they have learned to have no chance to change the situation (Cherry, K, n.d). This theory can use on animals and human behaviour. For humans, if they feel that they cannot control over a situation, they may begin to feel helplessness.
Learned helplessness has four stages in its development. The first stage is people put efforts to react in an uncontrollable situation and face to the failures. Secondly, people will realize that …show more content…

The attributions that cause learned helplessness are internal, stable, and global (Weiner, B, 1986).An internal attribution means the cause of an event as something to do with the person, but not to the outside world. For instance, if you think that you failed the test because you are stupid, then that is an internal attribution. On the other hand, if you are blaming the test was hard, which is out of your control to make you failed, then that is an external attribution. Another attribution is stable attribution. It is talking about one cannot change over time or across situations. For an example, you failed the test because you think that you are stupid and the fact that you are stupid would not change the situation. On the contrary, if you think that you failed the test because you did not study enough; therefore, this is not a stable attribution because you can study more for the following test to change the situation. Finally, global attribution is the belief for the factors that will affect the outcome to apply to a large number of situations and not just one of them. For example, you failed the test because you are stupid is a global attribution because it is a truth. Nevertheless, if you are not good enough in Mathematics and failed it, it is specific. It does not mean that you also will fail in other subjects. As has been noted, the belief that you will fail your test because you are stupid was contributed by attribution to learned helplessness. (Education Portal,

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