In this video I discuss appraisal, perceived control, and learned helplessness. While primary appraisal refers to identifying whether something represents a threat, secondary appraisal refers to determining if one can manage or control a stressor. Stressors that can’t be managed (or are perceived to be uncontrollable) can create greater stress responses. Learned helplessness represents an extreme example of lack of control, demonstrated by Seligman and Maier’s study in which dogs failed to escape electric shocks after being taught that prior shocks were unavoidable. Rats taught to be helpless show similar symptoms to depression and also have higher levels of glucocorticoids, indicating their chronic stress. Lastly, control is some areas may influence perceived control and resilience in others, a topic which will be explored in future videos.
Seligman and Maier (1967) Failure to Escape Traumatic Shock: https://sci-hub.st/http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0024514
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Video Transcript
Hi, I’m Michael Corayer and this is Psych Exam Review. In this video we’re going to look at perceived control and learned helplessness. So when we’re confronted by a potential stressor we go through a process of appraisal. This has two main steps; primary appraisal and secondary appraisal. So in primary appraisal we’re just determining; is this a threat or not? If it’s not a threat then we don’t have to worry about having a stress response. But if it is a threat then we move to the secondary appraisal. And this is where we’re basically asking ourselves; can I do anything about it? What can be done to manage or control this stressor? And if it’s a stressor that we have no ability to manage or control then it’s likely to create a greater stress response.
Here we can see that the same stressor might result in different responses from different people and this is because it’s about the perception of control. This is why we refer to perceived control; it’s not actual objective control over the situation. It’s how much we think we have control. And so we could imagine two students exposed to the same stressor with different responses. So let’s say there’s two students and they both have an exam next week. They’re in the same class, they have the same exam. Now both of them have gone through this primary appraisal and decided that this is a threat: I’m going to be judged in this situation and so yes this is a potential stressor. But when it comes to the second question, the secondary appraisal, one student might feel that there is something that can be done and say “I can study more. I can exert control over this stressor. I can prepare for the types of questions that will be on the exam. I can do practice questions and therefore I can exert control over this situation.” The other student, however, might feel powerless. So perhaps because of inefficient or ineffective study techniques in the past, this student feels it doesn’t matter how much he studies, you know, “it doesn’t matter how much I study, I always get a low score. So there’s nothing I can do about it. The exam’s coming and I’m going to get a low score on it, no matter what. I have no control. I’m powerless.” And as a result, this student is likely to feel this stressor of the impending exam as being more stressful.
Now we can also see this in a study by David Glass and Jerome Singer where participants were exposed to predictable or unpredictable noises. Now in the case of predictable noises, you have a sense of control. You know when the noise is coming. You can’t do anything about it, but you can prepare yourself. You can’t stop the noise but you can say “ok, I know it’s coming on, I’m ready for it. I won’t be, you know, shocked by it and I have some sense of control over my response.” But in the unpredictable noises, you can’t do that. You have no idea when the noise is going to happen and so you have no control over the situation. And then these participants were engaged in tasks requiring concentration. So they did things like proofreading or solving puzzles. And then some of the participants with the unpredictable noises were given a switch and told that this would control the noise. If this unpredictable noise occurs, you can press this switch here to stop it.
And what Glass and Singer found was that these participants showed better performance, even if they never used the switch. And this is compared to participants who had unpredictable noises but they had no switch to control. And the idea of them never using it is there were no more unpredictable noises after they were given the switch. But they were better able to concentrate and this is because they felt they were prepared for the potential stressor. There was a way to manage it or control it. So they didn’t know when the noise was going to disrupt their work but they felt if it did “I know what to do. Press this switch here and I get back to work”. Whereas the participants who had no such switch and these unpredictable noises felt they were powerless. If a noise disrupts their work, it’s just too bad. There’s nothing they can do about it.
Now we can see an extreme example of lacking control in what’s called learned helplessness. This comes from a classic study by Martin Seligman and Steven Maier where they gave electric shocks to dogs and some of the dogs had the ability to turn the shocks off, other dogs had no control. They were exposed to these electric shocks and there was nothing they could do about it, they had no way of turning them off. And then all of these dogs were put in a new situation where they were exposed to electric shocks but they could escape from the shocks by jumping over a barrier. And what Seligman and Maier found was that the dogs who had previously been able to turn the shocks off learned to escape very quickly. They learned to jump over the barrier and get away from these new shocks. But the dogs who have previously been unable to turn off the shocks didn’t learn to escape. They remained passive and they just accepted these new shocks. Some of them actually had to be pushed over the barrier to try to teach them that they could escape from these shocks. And they had to be pushed over, in one case, over 200 times in order to learn that these shocks were in fact avoidable. And so this idea of remaining passive and accepting these shocks is known as learned helplessness.
This has been demonstrated in other animals; in rats, fish, even insects, in primates and in humans. One human study done by Donald Hiroto and Martin Seligman exposed humans to an inescapable noise and then after this inescapable noise they showed slower learning for a task where they could turn the noise off in the future. And rats that have been trained to be helpless show symptoms very similar to depression; they reduce their grooming behavior, they show disturbed sleeping patterns, they have less interest in food or sex, they even engage in self-mutilation by biting themselves. And to bring this back to the stress response, they have elevated levels of glucocorticoids in their bloodstreams. So what this shows is that even though they’re passive on the outside, inside these rats are continuously mounting a stress response and they’re raising the levels of glucocorticoids in their bloodstream. And as we’ve already seen in previous videos, this can cause damage to their health.
Now an interesting thing that Seligman and Maier found was that dogs that were raised in a lab, in a laboratory, were more susceptible to learned helplessness than dogs that had been captured by the pound and then participated in this experiment. What this suggested is that dogs that have been raised in a lab had very little control over their lives before this. Almost all aspects of their lives were controlled and yet dogs who have been captured by the pound had greater control in other areas. They had been roaming free and this greater control in other areas, even though they no longer had control in this learned helplessness task, it might be the case that these other dogs felt they still had some control over their lives. Yes, these shocks are bad and painful and, you know, it sucks that they can’t avoid them; they still felt maybe a greater sense of control in other areas.
And this brings us to the idea that control varies across situations and control in one area might actually help our resilience or ability to avoid learned helplessness in other areas. That’s something we’ll explore in future videos, starting with the next video where we look at stress and the social hierarchy. I hope you found this helpful, if so, please like the video and subscribe to the channel for more. Thanks for watching!
