Human learned helplessness as a function of sex and degree of control over aversive events

Abstract

The effect of partial control over aversive auditory stimuli was examined in a learned helplessness paradigm. During a pretreatment phase, three groups of female and three groups of male subjects were allowed control over the termination of an aversive tone on 0%, 50%, or 100% of the trials. In a second phase, they performed an escape-avoidance task using an apparatus different from that used in pretreatment. During this phase, the subject was allowed complete control over the termination or prevention of the tone on each trial. Partial control over aversive stimuli during pretreatment produced responding levels on the escape-avoidance task that were intermediate to those of subjects who had complete control or complete lack of control, but only for female subjects. These findings were taken as evidence that different degrees of learned helplessness may be produced by varying the degree of prior control and also that males and females differ in their susceptibility to learned helplessness treatments, a fact that may be related to differences in perceived lack of control. © 1980, The Psychonomic Soceity, Inc.. All rights reserved.