Learned Helplessness Experiment

Study Conducted in 1967 at the University of Pennsylvania

Experiment Details: In 1965, Martin Seligman was researching on classical conditioning, the process of how we associate one thing with another. This specific experiment involved ringing of a bell and then the giving a light shock to a dog. After a number of times of this being repeated, the dog started. reacting to the shock even before it happened. During the course of this study something unexpected happened when the dogs were split into two regions by a fence. The floor on one side of the fence was electrified, but not on the other side of the fence. Seligman placed each dog on the electrified side and administered a light shock. He expected the dog to jump to the non-shocking side of the fence but the dogs simply laid down. The hypothesis was that as the dogs learned from the first part of the experiment that there was nothing they could do to avoid the shocks, they gave up in the second part of the experiment. To prove this hypothesis the experimenters brought in a new set of animals and found that dogs with no history in the experiment would jump over the fence. This condition was described as learned helplessness, where a human or animal does not attempt to get out of a negative situation because the past has taught them that they are helpless.