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Martin Seligman

Submitted to: Ms Rabia Javed Group MembersAmna RassulBilal MughalSyed Sajjad Shah

Table of Contents

About Martin Seligman........................................................................................................2Learned Helplessness...........................................................................................................3The Acquisition of Learned Helplessness............................................................................4Learned Helplessness in Human Beings..............................................................................5Learned Helplessness and Stress ........................................................................................6Learned Helplessness and Depression.................................................................................8Explanatory Style.................................................................................................................9Positive Psychology .........................................................................................................12Positive Therapy................................................................................................................13The ABCDE Method of Learned Optimism......................................................................17Adversity........................................................................................................................17Belief..............................................................................................................................18Consequences ................................................................................................................18Disputation.....................................................................................................................18Energization...................................................................................................................19Criticism.............................................................................................................................19References..........................................................................................................................21

About Martin Seligman

He was born on August 12,1942, inAlbany, New York . He is an American psychologist andwriter of self-help books. He is well known for his work on the idea of "learned helplessness", and more recently, for his contributions to leadership in the field of positive psychology.Martin Seligman obtained his B.A at Princeton University in 1964 and did his graduatework in experimental psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving hisdoctorate in 1967. he began his academic career that year as an assistant professor atCornell University of Pennsylvania, where he is now professor of Psychology.Seligman has been awarded several visiting fellow at Maudsley Hospital University of London. In 1978 -79 he was in residence at the Center for Advanced Study in theBehavioral Science, and later he accepted a fellowship at the Max-Planck Institute inBerlin. Like many of the other personality theorists discussed din this book, Seligman is2

engaged in the practice of clinical psychology where he can apply the principles of histheory in helping people with real-life problems. Drawing on his clinical work and histeaching experience, Seligman has recently collaborated on a textbook in abnormal psychology, (Rosenhan and Seligman. 1984).In 1976, in recognition of his research and writing, the American PsychologicalAssociation presented Seligman with its Early Career Award.

Learned Helplessness

In the natural world, Seligman observes, traumatic events that pa person or an animal cando little or nothing to control may occur, when the organism discovers that it can donothing to escape or ward off ward such an event when it learns that reinforcement and behavior are not contingent on each other it may acquire a reaction that Seligman calls

learned helplessness

Learned helplessness has three components: emotional,motivational, and cognitive. First, Seligman says, the organism experiences

emotionaldisruption

, and intense experience peculiar to the situation of having no control over unpleasant events. Second, the organism experiences

reduced motivation

; it be have passively and appears to “give up” making little effort to escape a noxious stimulus.Third, and most serious of all, is

cognitive deficit

that interferes with the organism’scapacity to perceive the relation between response and reinforcement in other, similar situations in which control is possible.In the original formulation of his theory, Seligman proposed that learned helplessness andthe psychotherapy phenomenon of depression have similar origins. The behaviors of thedepressed person strikingly resembled behaviors associated with learned helplessness.More important, methods that reduced experimentally induced learned helplessness wereshown to be effective also in treating depressive reactions. As we will see, this proposal if Seligman’s was rather widely criticized, and he has since revised his conception of therelations between learned helplessness and depression. To understand his currentformulation, let us first look at his model of how learned helplessness is acquired.3