Maier and Watkins have been leaders in this field, and their orientation has been toward linking changes in brain physiology to changes in behavior (see Maier and Watkins 2005). Others have looked deeper into the organism to the changes in the brain that mediate the manifest learned helplessness. 1993 and Mikulincer 1994 discuss why the early theoretical efforts needed expansion to include additional cognitive states accessible in humans, such as attributions, and to give an accounting of these developments and their application. Overmier and LoLordo 1998 reviews the early work and the many extensions of that research with animal models and offers criticisms of efforts to reformulate the theory of learned helplessness by including attributions. Much research with animals and humans has followed. Research and theory about experienced traumas that have certain characteristics of uncontrollability and unpredictability have been carefully and deeply explored because the persisting effects of these characteristics are especially dramatic and have been given the name “learned helplessness” by Overmier and Seligman 1967, Seligman 1975 was the first to explicate and popularize the broad implications of the early animal experiments and relate them to human challenges. We all experience adverse events, and some of these can be traumatic and affect our later lives. The demonstrations that experiencing uncontrollable, unpredictable traumatic events leads to future failures to cope with environmental challenges are of considerable importance empirically and theoretically, and they inform both psychological treatment of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and psychological science more broadly. “Learned helplessness” has been used as a label for both empirical phenomena and for a learned cognitive construct that theoretically accounts for the coping failures. This speaks to the popularity of the phenomenon since Seligman and Overmier coined the term in 1967. Science Direct finds the phrase “learned helplessness” used more than 14,000 times in articles with a minimum of 200 instances every year applied in a wide variety of contexts from animal laboratory to mental health clinics, classrooms, management offices, unemployment, and even voting habits in different countries. Learned helplessness arises from experiencing uncontrollable and unpredictable events-usually traumatic ones-and is reflected in a reduced ability to cope with future life challenges these challenges could be behavioral, psychological/cognitive, or health.
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