Talk:Learned helplessness

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the sentence: "An example involves concentration camp prisoners during the Holocaust, when some prisoners, called Mussulmen, refused to care or fend for themselves." sounds unbased to me (the mussulmen were people who starved to near-death.) i'm not changing it, but i think it's wrong. --84.109.54.117 21:03, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Martin Seligman 2 Acting on the suggestions above 3 Animal cruelty 4 Button not connected 5 Helplessness in People and their Health & Social Problem and Immunization

[edit] Martin Seligman

This article should really mention Martin Seligman rather than Anthony Robbins when possible, since Seligman had a key role in the research developing the concept and Robbins did not. (I know, I know, the helping hand is at the end of my arm, but I'm mentioning this here because my new job is taking up most of my time and I may not get to it as soon as I'd like.) -- Antaeus Feldspar 00:34, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The article mentions that questioning the "3 p's" can be beneficial, but does not expand on that line of thought at all. As such that sentence seems to stand on its own without really accomplishing anything. Does anyone have any information to add to that portion of the article? -- Kris wood 13:11, 28 Jun 2005 (PST)

The whole first section really needs to go. The first two paragraphs aren't horrible, but need revision and should mention Seligman as early as possible. The whole Learned Helplessness theory stems from Martin Seligman, and references should be to his work (books, etc.), and not Anthony Robbins. Calling Martin Seligman's study "Early work" is an insult to the guy who developed the theory and did the work. It's like saying Einsten did the "Early work" in Relativity.

MarkTAW 03:31, 25 Sept, 2005 (EST)

[edit] Acting on the suggestions above

1. Those above are right; Martin Seligman needs to be credited prominently with a theory he created and researched. Some early Wikipedia editor's familiarity with what Tony Robbins had to say about it does not mean that references to Tony Robbins belong in this article.

2. The idea of total institutions is controversial, and by no means are the institutions mentioned on that page extremely predictable, and even if they were, this is not a prerequisite for Learned Helplessness (this may be another example of Tony Robbins' armchair philosophizing about Learned Helplessness without his being sufficiently familiar with the research); I tried to save this paragraph as best I could.

3. "Personal, pervasive, or permanent" is the description Martin Seligman uses (for those of you who thought this was Tony Robbins).

4. There was a second edition of Learned Optimism in 1998, but Seligman lists the 1990 book in his Curriculum Vitae.

-DoctorW 23:15, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Animal cruelty

I have reinserted the statement that the experiments were animal cruelty over Doc's objection. It seems fairly obvious to me that the infliction of pain that will in no way benefit the animal itself is clearly cruel (if it was done to a human it would clearly be considered cruel, so doing it to an animal is obviously "animal" cruelty.) I realize not all accept that inflicting pain on animals during testing is animal cruelty, but many do and we can have that criticism of the experiment included in the article. If you seek citation, for starters here is a NYT editorial arguing to that effect. Roy Brumback 23:14, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm deleting the references to animal cruelty; they constitute a value judgment that is not germane to the article and manifestly violate WP:NPOV. If you'd like to discuss the cruelty aspect of the experiments, start a new subsection called "allegations of animal cruelty" and specify what published source (i.e. not yourself, WP:NOR) makes those arguments. The most we could say about the experiments while still being npov is the factual description, viz, that the experiments intentionally caused pain to animals, not for their own benefit, but for purposes of research which has produced results recognized as scientifically useful.JSoules (talk) 22:53, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

We can certainly say that various people have criticized these experiments as animal cruelty. Roy Brumback (talk) 10:53, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

As a compromise, I'm leaving the first reference to "animal cruelty" although I disagree with it. However, the line in the next paragraph, "In part two of the Seligman and Maier cruelty experiment..." is too much. If you referred to 'the cruel Seligman and Maier experiment', that would be grammatically correct, but it was not an experiment in cruelty. They were not inflicting pain on these dogs for giggles and grins. We innoculate human babies and I had my dog spayed. The infants and puppies didn't ask for the pain, nor do they understand why it was inflicted upon them, but that does not make it cruel. It is done for a purpose. Seligman's dogs did not benefit, but it was done for a purpose. In 1967 nobody knew what the psychological outcome would be. The editorial you reference (which is mainly concerned with food animals) says at one point "'Learned helplessness' is the psychological term,". THIS is the experiment where that term comes from! KeithJonsn (talk) 03:39, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

It was clearly an experiment to see what happened when you did cruel things to these dogs to see how they reacted based on what they believed they could do about stopping the pain that was being inflicted on them. How can you say that inflicting pain on something just to see what happens is not cruel? Because it had a purpose? Nazi experiments had a purpose and gained scientific knowledge, but they were still cruel. And just because you are not inflicting the pain for amusement does not mean its not cruel. And the author of the editorial clearly lists these specific experiments as cruel, as do several other sources, which I can cite if you wish. Roy Brumback (talk) 04:36, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Button not connected

"...even though he rarely bothered to turn off the noise..."

It is my understanding that the button was not connected to the noise. It is quite important for it means that the improved performance stemmed solely from the BELIEF that the subject was able to turn it off. That is, a delusion may help one to cope.

-Pepper 150.203.224.165 (talk) 13:10, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Helplessness in People and their Health & Social Problem and Immunization

These sections are poorly written and even seem to draw the wrong conclusions from the research that they cite.