Basic Research and its (Mis)Use

Chris Garling
Haverford College

Introduction
There has been controversy surrounding the violent interrogation methods of the
CIA, FBI, and other American intelligence agencies for years ever since the terrorist events
of 9/11. However, it has been rare for tortuous interrogation techniques to be linked to
academiabut that is what McCoy (2014) has done. He has reported that the CIA used
techniques derived from Seligman & Maier (1967), a paper originally intended to study and
document learned helplessness, to coax information regarding terrorist activities from
captives. With this in mind, what I present is an overview of the scientific merits of the
original paper, as well as a comparison of how the results were used clinically and how they
were used by the CIA, with commentary on what we can learn from this abuse of theory.

Seligman & Maier (1967) Summary

The original paper by Seligman & Maier (1967) studied whether dogs would act to
escape shocks or not, with a dependence on the type of training they received. One group
of dogs was trained that the shocks were escapablethey were placed in a harness, where
if they pushed a panel with their heads, the shock would stop. Another group of dogs was
trained that the shock was inescapablethe shocks occurred whether they hit the panel or
notthe dogs were helpless (Seligman & Maier, 1967). There was a third normal group
that received no training.

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Twenty-four hours after training, the dogs in both groups were given an escape test.
Individually, the dogs were placed into one of two boxes separated by a wall they could
maneuver over. The dogs were placed into the first of the two boxes and a shock was
applied through the floor. At this point, they could go over the wall into the second box to
escape the shock, but if they stayed in the first box, the shock would continue.
Overmier & Seligman (1967) had previously shown that prior exposure of dogs to
inescapable shock in a Pavlovian harness reliably results in interference with subsequent
escape/avoidance learning in a shuttle box, (Seligman & Maier, 1967, pg. 1) so Seligman
& Maier hypothesized that dogs trained with escapable shocks would escape from the test
box at higher rates than dogs trained with inescapable shocks. These are exactly the results
they founddogs trained with inescapable shocks failed the escape test at a much higher
rate than dogs trained with escapable shocks. Seligman & Maier thus showed evidence for
learned helplessness, the idea that individuals exposed to harmful stimuli become less
willing to avoid these stimuli over time.

Seligman & Maier (1967) Evaluation

This paper is considered to be the classic exhibition of learned helplessness, and has
only been accepted as such because of the quality of the research and results found. However,
by looking at this publication critically and citing both its strengths and weaknesses, we
can investigate the methods and results and decide for ourselves whether or not they are
robust.
There were actually two experiments conducted in the paper, but we are primarily
concerned with experiment 1, as this is the experiment that the news article by McCoy
discusses. As such, I will not comment on experiment 2.
We will begin with an analysis of the subject selection process. Seligman & Maier
(1967) began with 30 experimentally-naive, mongrel dogs, and eliminated six from the
total to end up with 24 dogs, eight in each of three groups: the yoked group, which
were subjected to unescapable shocks in the harness, the escape group, which were able

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to terminate shocks in the harness by pressing a panel with their heads, and the normal
group, which received no harness training and were only tested in the shuttle box apparatus.
Two dogs were discarded because they were too short to be properly held in the harness,
one dog died during testing, one dog was eliminated due to procedural error, and two
dogs were discarded because they failed to learn to escape shock in the harness (Seligman
& Maier, 1967).
I found this explanation lacking, and Seligman & Maier explained their reasoning in
a footnote: It might be argued that eliminating these two dogs would bias the data. Thus
naive dogs which failed to learn the panel-press escape response in the harness might also
be expected to be unable to learn shuttle box escape/avoidance. One of these dogs was
run 48 hr. later in the shuttle box. It escaped and avoided normally. The other dog was
too ill to be run in the shuttle box 48 hr. after it received shock in the harness Seligman
& Maier (1967). In other words, what happened was that these two dogs never learned
that pressing the panel when they were being shocked in the harness would stop the shock.
Thus, they would perceive the shocks as inescapable because they never learned how to
escape them. Seligman & Maier were concerned that this misconception by the dogs would
influence their findings, because the shocks were supposed to be escapabletherefore, they
eliminated them from the testing pool. To me, this seems a reasonable conclusion and I
dont think it would influence the results. In fact, in order for the results to be valid, all the
dogs in the escape group would need to learn that the shock was escapablethat was the
whole point of their group, and if the researchers included dogs that didnt learn that, then
I believe their results may have been skewed. Seligman & Maier also reported that one of
the dogs, despite not learning the escape procedure in the harness correctly, did actually
escape normally in the shock box testing apparatus. Thus, it is possible including these
dogs may not have influenced results, but I think it was best to remove them.
Moving on to experimental methods, I think using the harness with a panel-press
for shock termination was a very reasonable way to train the dogs. Also, the dogs in the
yoked group were only subjected to shocks of the average length of those experienced by

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the escape group, so each group received the same amount of shock on average, and this
also seems like the correct way to handle shock durations. As such, I think a strength of
this experiment was the uniformity with which the yoked and escape groups were treated.
The only variable that was different between the groups was whether or not they were able
to terminate the shocks on their own. I think this was well-controlled. The use of the
normal group was also well-implemented. That being said, I thought a major difficulty in
understanding this paper, at least for the psychology novice, was that the reasoning behind
their methods was not well-explainedthat is, they told us what they did, but not why they
did it. For me this became a specific issue in the transition between the training harness
and the testing shuttle box.
I understand that the type of harmful stimuli in each situation was the samein both
cases, shocks were administered, but the two environments were very different. In the
harness, the dogs could not move except to hit the panel with their heads. In the shuttle
box, the dogs had room to move around, and to escape the shock, they had to climb over
a wall. What I didnt understand was why the shuttle box was chosen to be the testing
apparatus. It is different in nature from the training harness. Was this intentional? Did they
want to study how individuals who experience negative stimuli in one area then translate
that experience beyond their immediate surroundings? To me it seems the obvious test is
to put the yoked dogs back in the harness, but to this time enable the escape mechanism
of the panel. Then they would be in the exact same situation, but with the opportunity to
escape. Is this not what they wanted to study? Because this experimental procedure would
certainly study a different phenomenon than what Seligman & Maier did.
By moving the dogs into another environment for the testing, I think they really
studied how pervasive this phenomenon of learned helplessness is. What they found is
that when dogs are trained that a negative stimuli is inescapable in one situation, the dogs
then have a mitigated escape response to this same negative stimuli even in a different
environment. To me, this seems much more telling than if they had simply put the yoked
dogs back in the harness but enabled the escape panel. What they showed is that learned

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helplessness is a phenomenon that transcends situation and can cause a decreased escape
response in other areas of ones life, and this is much more revealing than simply showing
that learned helplessness decreases an individuals tendency to try to escape the same
situation.
Thus, I believe this part of the experiment to be both a strength and a weakness. It
is a strength because this change from the training to the testing environment shows that
learned helplessness transcends physical situation, but it is a weakness because they do not
explain their reasoning. They simply say here is what we did and here are the results
with what I felt was inadequate explanation and discussion. I think the paper could have
been much stronger if they explained the implications of the work more fully, especially as
pertains to suggestions for future research, as they offer very few.

Ethical Questions
While Seligman & Maier offer next to no ideas for future research in their paper, the
way they documented the phenomenon of learned helplessness has provided a basis for much
future work. Scientists have applied the learned helplessness model to other phenomena
within psychology quite robustlyespecially as pertains to depression. Peterson & Seligman
(1984) studied learned helplessness in the context of depression and concluded,The crosssectional studies showed that a characteristic way of explaining bad events with internal,
stable, and global causes co-occurs with depressive symptoms. In particular, when organisms were faced with hardships that they could do nothing to mitigate (external causes),
Seligman & Maier (1967) showed that this correlates with a lessened response against the
hardship, and Peterson & Seligman (1984) showed this correlates with depression in humans. An important clinical conclusion from Peterson & Seligman (1984) was that the
manner in which an individual explains a bad event has a large impact on whether they
experience subsequent depression or not. Depending on whether the individual blames herself or an external source for bad events has a great effect on the extent of depression she
may experience, and this has become an important theory in the treatment of depression.

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Thus we see the theory of learned helplessness has had a great impact on the world
of psychology and has helped clinicians treat patients with depression. However, this same
research has been repurposed for the intention of inducing learned helpless in the CIAs
captives, and Seligman himself responded to the use of his research with disappointment:
I am grieved and horrified that good science, which has helped so many people overcome
depression, may have been used for such bad purposes McCoy (2014). This brings up
questions of ethics both on the end of basic research and of application, amounting to asking
where the responsibility lies to mitigate the abuse of psychological theory as documented
by McCoywhether it be in the researcher who discovers the theory or in the practitioner
who uses it.
It seems to me that to answer this question of ethics we have to consider the good
and the bad effects of the theoretical groundwork on which these applications were based.
As I have pointed out, the theory of learned helplessness has assisted many psychologists
in helping patients with depression lessen their symptomsit has proven an important facet
of the field that helps explain why people in bad situations dont leave them, and also
has implications for helping people out of abusive relationships. However, by documenting
learned helplessness, Seligman & Maier have opened the door for people to use the research
in ways it was not intended: by creating states of learned helplessness as an interrogation
tactic. Thus we see that basic research, which does nothing but attempt to document
phenomena, results in both positive and negative outcomes. We must decide if the good
outweighs the bad, and I believe that is the case.
The article offers no solid opinion either way or the other, but ends with a snarky
comment poking at Jim Mitchell, one of the psychologists suspected of working with the
CIA on this learned helplessness interrogation project. The articles tone leads me to think
McCoy believes the interrogation tactics were cruel, and blames the CIA psychologists for
the overstepby including Seligmans quote about how grieved and horrified he was at
this misuse of research, I believe McCoy does not blame Seligman for the interrogation
tactics (2014). I take the same side. We cannot cease research for fear of misuse, as we

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have generally observed that the positive outcomes of basic research outweigh the negative.

Conclusion
As a species, we thrive on advancement, and we cannot forgo that in fear of what
we may discover. At least, that is what my time in science, limited as it may be, has
taught me. When I look at the way Seligman & Maier (1967) was written, it is clear to me
that they had no intention of applying their findings for ill purposesthey merely wished to
research a phenomenon and attempt to document it. They were interested in the science,
in discoverytheir intentions seem to have been pure, and their research has been used to
help many people. It is with the CIA psychologists our blame must lie, and it is in the
application of theory that we must rest the responsibility of ethical use. It is impossible for
basic researchers to police the use of their work, and it is unadvisable for our future to cease
basic research. Therefore, all we can do is to be mindful of stories like this when applying
theory onward.

References
McCoy, T.

(2014, December).

Learned helplessness:

cept behind the CIAs interrogation methods.

The chilling psychological con-

Washington Post.

Retrieved from

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/12/11/the-chilling
-psychological-principle-behind-the-cias-interrogation-methods/
Overmier, B., & Seligman, M. (1967, February). Effects of inescapable shock upon subsequent
escape and avoidance responding. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 63 (1),
28-33.
Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. (1984, November). Causal explanations as a risk factor for depression:
Theory and evidence. Psychological Review , 91 (3), 347-374.
Seligman, M., & Maier, S. (1967, May). Failure to escape traumatic shock. Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 74 (1).