Explain the concept of learned helplessness. How does it develop? And how do helpless people differ from those who

Explain the concept of learned helplessness. How does it develop? And how do helpless people differ from those who

Essay Question: Explain the concept of learned helplessness. How does it develop? How do people who have learned to be helpless differ from those who haven’t learned this?

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Learned helplessness is a concept whereby an animal or human have feeling that they are helpless to avoid a specific negative situation. It was first discovered by psychologists Seligan and Maier when they were carrying out experiments on dogs in the late 1960’s and 1970’s. In the test, they placed dogs in boxes with two flows which were divided by a barrier that was low and one flow was electrified while the other was not (Abramson et al., 1978).

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