Name: Arnaz Pradhan

Course: Psychology 102

Student Id: 230156742
Topic: Your text provides several possible explanations (Loss of reinforcement, learned
helplessness) for the cause of depression. Select one of the explanations and propose a study that
would help to evaluate this explaination.
Your text provides several possible explanations (Loss of reinforcement, learned
helplessness) for the cause of depression. Select one of the explanations and propose a study
that would help to evaluate this explaination.

Bruce Overmier and Seligman (1967) described learned helplessness as the tendency to feel

helpless in the face of events we can’t control and argued that it offers an animal model of

depression. Seligman noted striking parallels between the effects of learned helplessness and

depressive symptoms: passivity, appetite and weight loss, and difficulty learning that one can

change circumstances for the better. But we must be cautious in drawing conclusions from animal

studies because many psychological conditions, including depression, may differ in animals and

humans.

Let’s reconsider the depressed client we imagined interviewing at the beginning of this section.

From their severely depressed father and perpetually anxious mother, this person may have

inherited a tendency to respond to stressful situations with negative emotions (neuroticism). They

felt that a competitive colleague tried continually to undermine their authority as a television

producer. In response, they felt insecure and began to second-guess every decision. Each day they

wasted hours ruminating about losing their job. The quality of their work nose-dived. They

withdrew socially and began to refuse invitations to go out with friends. Their friends tried to cheer

them up, but the black cloud that hung over their head wouldn’t budge. Feeling rebuffed, their

friends stopped inviting them to do anything. Their once-bright social world became a black void,

and they moped around doing virtually nothing. They felt helpless. Eventually, their dark thoughts

turned to suicide.

Other study done was: Martin Seligman (1975) accidentally stumbled across an unusual finding

related to depression in his work with dogs. He was testing dogs in a shuttle box, one side of the
box was electrified and the other side, separated by a barrier, wasn’t. Ordinarily, dogs avoid painful

shocks by jumping over the barrier to the nonelectrified side of the box. Yet Seligman found

something surprising: Dogs first restrained in a hammock and exposed to shocks they couldn’t

escape later would often make no attempt to escape shocks in the shuttle box, even when they

could easily get away from them. Some of the dogs just sat there, whimpering and crying, passively

accepting the shocks as though they were inescapable. They’d learned to become helpless.