Learned Optimism

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LEARNED OPTIMISM Did you know: • The way we think, especially about health, changes our health? • Optimists have better health habits than pessimists do? • Optimists tend to do better at school, at work, and on the playing field? • Optimism is a learned skill, one that can be permanently acquired? Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn’t matter. Explanatory style is the manner in which you habitually explain to yourself why events happen. Learned optimism is the power of “non-negative thinking,” using the skills of changing the destructive things you say to yourself when you experience the losses and setbacks of life. Using learned optimism you can change your explanatory style to resist helplessness by: • understanding that the causes of bad events may be temporary; • realizing that your problems in one area aren’t universal; • affirming that bad events aren’t totally your fault. Practicing the thinking skills of learned optimism can give you the energy to keep on succeeding at life goals. You can strengthen your self-esteem because you know you can solve temporary problems in creative ways. You can learn to be more productive and less depressed, more hopeful and less discouraged, to achieve more successes than failures. Learned optimism allows you to change your self-talk and beliefs so you can face adversity in responsible and realistic ways. Your explanatory style is not fixed and unchangeable. You can gain a set of skills which free you from habitual pessimism and allows you to use optimism when you choose. Resource: Seligman, M. Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Traumatic Stress 03 .

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Learned Helplessness: Theory and Evidence
\, Journal ol Experimental Psychology: General 1976, Vol. 105, No. 1, 3-46 Learned Helplessness: Theory and Evidence Steven F. Maier Martin E. P. Seligman University of Colorado University of Pennsylvania SUMMARY In 1967, Overmier and Seligman found that dogs exposed to inescapable and unavoidable electric shocks in one situation later failed to learn to escape shock in a different situation where escape was possible. Shortly thereafter Seligman and Maier (1967) demonstrated that this effect was caused by the uncontrollability of the original shocks. In this article we review the effects of exposing organisms to aversive events which they cannot control, and we review the explanations which have been offered. There seem to be motivational, cognitive, and emotional effects of uncontrol- lability. (a) Motivation. Dogs that have been exposed to inescapable shocks do not subsequently initiate escape response in the presence of shock. We review parallel phenomena in cats, fish, rats, and man. Of particular interest is the discussion of learned helplessness in rats and man. Rats are of interest because learned helplessness has been difficult to demonstrate in rats. However, we show that inescapably shocked rats do fail to learn to escape if the escape task is rea- sonably difficult. With regard to man, we review a variety of studies using in- escapable noise and unsolvable problems as agents which produce learned helpless- ness effects on both instrumental and cognitive tasks, (b) Cognition. We argue that exposure to uncontrollable events interferes with the organism's tendency to perceive contingent relationships between its behavior and outcomes. Here we review a variety of studies showing such a cognitive set.
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Journal of Experimental Psychology Copyright © 1974 by the American Psychological Association, Inc
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