Sex differences in achievement: A test of alternate theories.

200 students in Grades 8–10 were given the following attitudinal measures regarding both math and English: self-concept of ability, subjective task value, perceived task difficulty, and continuing motivation. In a follow-up, Ss" math course enrollment decisions were assessed each year through high school. 142 of the Ss also were exposed to 2 sets of trials: a number sequence set and an anagram set. Outcome was manipulated across trials (success, failure, success). For each series, Ss provided estimates of their ability, their expectations for continued success, and causal attributions. Their response time, persistence, and accuracy were recorded. Finally, teacher estimates of learned helplessness were obtained in Year 1 of the study for all Ss. Subjective task value emerged as the strongest mediator of sex differences in achievement-related behaviors and plans. There was little support for learned-helplessness models of sex differences in achievement. There was some evidence of sex differences in ability attributions, but these differences occurred only among low-expectancy Ss. Verbal and behavioral indexes of achievement beliefs were often inconsistent. Implications for general attribution theory and for sex-difference theory are discussed. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A developmental study of learned helplessness.

Examined susceptibility to learned helplessness among 20 children from each of kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 3, and Grade 5 classes by exposing groups of Ss to either repeated failure or repeated success on hidden figures problems. Helplessness was measured by Ss' persistence in looking for hidden figures and their capacity to find them following repeated success or failure. It was hypothesized that younger Ss would be less susceptible to helplessness than older ones, due to age-related differences in causal attributions for success and failure. Results confirm the hypothesis in that failure, relative to success, had significantly less influence on the level of helplessness in younger Ss' behavior. It is suggested that the development of attributional capabilities during the preschool and early elementary school years has important ramifications for cognitive theories of motivation. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of real and recalled success on learned helplessness and depression.

The effects of recalling past successes on the deficits in learned helplessness and depression were examined and, for learned helplessness, compared with those of real success. Ss were 84 female, English university students who had been rated on the Beck Depression Inventory. Depressed Ss and nondepressed Ss receiving unsolvable problems showed deficits in anagram performance and some evidence of lowered mood compared with nondepressed Ss receiving no unsolvable problems. Experience with solvable letter substitution problems reversed anagram deficits and low mood associated with learned helplessness, replicating previous findings. Recalling successes on letter substitution problems had no effect on the anagram deficits in learned helplessness and depression and had an effect in improving mood only in learned helplessness. Real and recalled success both significantly modified attributions for failure in the learned helplessness condition. Results suggest real success does not have its therapeutic effects by modifying attributions for failure toward external factors. Some evidence of a facilitatory effect of depression on initial anagram performance was obtained. It is concluded that recall of past successes, while easier to arrange than real success experiences, may not be a powerful clinical procedure. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expectancy changes in depression and schizophrenia.

Does the learned helplessness model of depression apply to clinically depressed patients and is it specific to depression? Changes in expectancy following success and failure in skill and chance tasks were assessed for depressed nonschizophrenics (unipolar depressives), depressed schizophrenics, nondepressed schizophrenics, and normal controls (32 Ss, aged 18–50 yrs). Unipolar depressives showed smaller changes in expectancy of future success after failure in the skill task than did the controls and both schizophrenic groups. Depressed schizophrenics did not show smaller expectancy changes than nondepressed schizophrenics. The learned helplessness model has been tested primarily in populations with subclinical depression; the present results provide partial support for learned helplessness as a model of one type of severe clinical depression and suggest that learned helplessness is not a general feature of psychopathology. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of attributions for success on the alleviation of learned helplessness and depression.

Investigated the effects of attributions for success on the alleviation of mood and performance deficits of 104 19–60 yr old clinically depressed inpatients. Ss were assigned to either an acutely depressed group or an improved depressed group that was exposed to a learned helplessness induction procedure. Ss received 80% positive feedback on a task allegedly measuring social intelligence. Concurrently, Ss were exposed to experimental manipulations designed to induce attributions of this experience to 1 of 4 types of causes (internal–general, internal–specific, external–general, external–specific). Following this task, Ss' mood, expectancies, and anagram performance were assessed. Results indicate that helpless and depressed Ss who received the internal attribution manipulations reported less depressed mood than Ss in the external attribution conditions. Similarly, Ss in the general attribution conditions performed better and reported higher expectancies for success on the anagrams than Ss in the specific attribution conditions. Results are supportive of an attribution theory model of learned helplessness and depression. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributional versus preattributional variables in self-esteem and depression: A comparison and test of learned helplessness theory.

Tested, in 2 samples of undergraduates (92 in Exp I and 55 in Exp II), predictions made according to the attributional reformulation of learned helplessness theory concerning the cognitive determinants of low self-esteem and depression. Real and hypothetical life events were used. Ss were administered the Beck Depression Inventory, a checklist of life events, and a self-esteem scale. As predicted, internal attributions for hypothetical success and failure were correlated with self-esteem, but there was an unexpected correlation with global attributions for negative outcomes. Two preattributional variables, consensus and consistency judgments, were also related to self-esteem and depression. In contrast to learned helplessness theory, a path analysis indicated that these variables were not attributionally mediated. Consensus judgment was as strong a predictor of depression as the number of recent distressing life events that Ss had experienced. Other evidence that links depression to perceived low consensus is described, and a possible etiological role for this variable is outlined. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of methylphenidate and expectancy on performance, self-evaluations, persistence, and attributions on a social task in boys with ADHD.

This study examined the effects of 0.3 mg/kg methylphenidate (MPH) and expectancy regarding medication on the performance and persistence of 137 boys with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in a get-acquainted dyadic interaction with a peer, using a balanced-placebo design. Boys in 4 groups—administered placebo or MPH crossed with being told they received placebo or MPH—interacted with child confederates in experimental situations in which social success and failure were manipulated. In contrast with studies of academic persistence, MPH did not affect boys' task persistence or performance. Boys gave more positive self-evaluations and talked more in the success condition as compared with the failure condition. Boys attributed success to effort and ability and failure to task difficulty, and neither MPH nor expectancy affected this pattern. These findings are consistent with other studies in failing to find debilitating effects of MPH or medication expectancies on ADHD boys' attributions or self-evaluations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of competitive reward structure and valence of outcome on children's achievement attributions.

Studied how success and failure outcomes occurring under competitive and noncompetitive reward structures influenced children's attributional and affective responses. 40 5th-grade boys solved sets of achievement-related puzzles, working in pairs in which one succeeded and one failed at the task. Results show that the reward structure of the performance setting was an important determinant of self- and interpersonal evaluations. Competitive conditions caused self-punitive behavior for failure outcomes and some ego-enhancing strategies for success outcomes. Failing Ss expressed strong negative affect and perceived themselves as less capable than their successful partners, while successful Ss perceived themselves as more deserving of reward than their failing partners. No differences in self-other attributions or affect were found in noncompetitive conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Universal versus personal helplessness in depression: Belief in uncontrollability or incompetence?

The learned helplessness model of depression predicts that depressed individuals believe outcomes are more response independent than do nondepressed individuals in a skill situation. The present study assessed whether depressives' cognitive distortions are specific to their belief about their own skilled action or are a result of a general belief in uncontrollability in the world. Changes in expectancies following success and failure in skill and chance tasks were examined in 32 depressed and 32 nondepressed college students who either performed themselves or observed a confederate perform a pair of tasks. In the skill task, depressed Ss showed significantly smaller changes in expectancy than nondepressed Ss when estimating the probability of their own success. In contrast, depressed and nondepressed Ss did not differ when estimating the probability of another person's success on the identical skill task. It is inferred that depressed individuals view themselves as helpless in a skilled situation but do not view the situation itself as uncontrollable. Results are discussed in terms of the reformulated learned helplessness model. (52 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of the "mentally retarded" label on adult judgments about child failure.

Retarded children show marked susceptibility to learned helplessness. Three experiments illustrate how adults may foster this helplessness. In Exp I, 152 college students reported causal attributions for failure and expectancies of future success for either "a 6-yr-old child" or "a 9-yr-old mentally retarded child with a mental age of 6 yrs." In Exp II, 58 Ss reported attributions and expectancies for both children. In both experiments, insufficient ability was rated a more important cause of failure for the retarded than for the unlabeled child, insufficient effort was rated more important for the unlabeled child, and the retarded child was rated less likely to succeed in the future. In Exp III, 54 Ss' responses indicated that either a low expectancy of success, an insufficient-ability attribution, or the retarded label alone would reduce the likelihood of their urging a child to persist after a failure. Results suggest a proposed attributional bias (overextension), a familiar attributional bias in a new context (discounting), and resultant helplessness-condoning behavior by adults. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Performance and motivational deficits of helplessness: The role of motivational orientations.

Examined the hypothesis that the effect of failure feedback in producing learned helplessness would depend on the motivational orientation of a child. 53 4th–6th graders completed a scale of intrinsic vs extrinsic orientation in the classroom and were randomly assigned to success, failure, or control conditions, with the restriction that an approximately equal number of Ss with different motivational orientations were assigned to the different conditions. Extrinsically motivated Ss were predicted to exhibit performance decrement following a failure experience, whereas the opposite was predicted for intrinsically motivated Ss. Success feedback was predicted to enhance subsequent performance only for the intrinsic group. Following success, failure, or no feedback on an activity reflecting spatial skills (an incomplete picture task), Ss' performance on an activity tapping different skills (i.e., anagrams) provided by a 2nd experimenter served as the primary measure of helplessness. Ss' intrinsic motivation in performing the incomplete picture task, a similar task (embedded figures) and a dissimilar task (dots-to-dots) was also examined. Results support the predictions on both performance and intrinsic motivation measures. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learned helplessness, test anxiety, and acknowledgment of contingencies.

72 undergraduates designated as high or low test anxious (Test Anxiety Questionnaire) received either controllable of uncontrollable noise in a typical helplessness induction. Half of them subsequently received an acknowledgment of contingencies in the induction task, and the other half did not. An anagram task was then administered. Test anxiety theory successfully predicted group differences in anagram performance: Only high-test-anxious Ss were debilitated by the helplessness induction. The effects of providing acknowledgment of contingencies proved ambiguous, but this may have been due to the wording of the acknowledgment and the susceptibility of high-test-anxious Ss to social dimensions of the task situation. Because of differences in terminology, learned helplessness theory has failed to take into account a large body of literature that has similarly employed experimenter-induced failure, and there are numerous competing explanations for impairments following a helplessness induction. Test anxiety theory suggests that the deficits underlying impaired performance are likely to be attentional in nature. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The roles of self-esteem and self-consciousness in the Wortman-Brehm model of reactance and learned helplessness.

Studied the conditions under which failure would enhance or inhibit subsequent task performance. Based on the theory of C. B. Wortman and J. W. Brehm (1975), it was expected that small amounts of failure would produce reactance (manifested by improved performance at a subsequent task); large amounts would lead to learned helplessness (i.e., impaired later performance). It was further expected that individual differences in self-esteem and private self-consciousness would serve as moderator variables for the effects. In Exp I, 78 college students were exposed to either a small amount or no failure before working on an anagrams task. As predicted, Ss high in self-consciousness, who showed greater reactance arousal in attitude change studies, performed better on the anagrams task than Ss low in self-consciousness in the small-failure condition, but not in the no-failure condition. In Exp II, 119 Ss were pretreated with either a small amount of failure, an extended amount of failure, or no failure before working on the task. A significant Self-Esteem by Helplessness Training interaction emerged. Low self-esteem Ss (low SEs) performed marginally better than did high SEs in the small-failure condition but significantly worse than high SEs in the extended-failure condition. Questionnaire data from Exp II were consistent with the notion that enhanced performance reflected reactance, whereas impaired performance signified helplessness. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relation between an attributional dimension and learned helplessness.

An experiment using 64 undergraduates assessed the relation between performance deficits induced by uncontrollability and the global–specific attribution dimension proposed in the reformulation of learned helplessness by L. Y. Abramson et al (see record 1979-00305-001). Consistent with the reformulation, it was found that Ss exhibited deficits on subsequent performance after failing on a task described as a powerful predictor of performance on other tasks. Such deficits did not occur when Ss failed on a task described as a poor predictor of performance. Contrary to prediction, it was found that Ss' global–specific attributions did not predict their subsequent performance. These results provide partial support for the predictions of the reformulated model about the occurrence of performance deficits. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in learned helplessness: IV. An experimental and naturalistic study of failure generalization and its mediators.

Tested the hypothesis that attributions for failure can mediate the generalization of failure effects across situations: When perceived causal factors remain present in otherwise novel situations, failure effects should transfer; when perceived causal factors are removed, failure effects should be attenuated. Specifically, it was predicted that sex differences in attributions would result in differential transfer to novel situations, with boys showing greater recovery of success expectancies when the evaluator changes, but girls showing greater recovery of success when the ability areas change. Two studies are reported: one a field study (40 female and 40 male 5th graders) examining changes in expectancy of academic success over the school year, and the other a laboratory analog (171 female and 143 male 4th–6th graders) examining directly the effects of evaluator and task change. Results provide strong support for the hypothesis and suggest an explanation for sex differences in long-term academic achievement. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Causal attributions, expectations, and task performance.

College students' performance on each of 2 chemistry tests (n?=?253 on the 1st test and 233 on the 2nd test) was classified as a success (or failure) if it met (or failed to meet) a minimum criterion of success that each S set prior to taking each test. Using a paired-comparison technique, Ss attributed their performance on each test to ability, effort, luck, and task difficulty. Among Ss who succeeded on the tests, expected and actual future performance were positively related to attributions to high ability and negatively related to attributions to good luck. Among Ss who experienced failure, expected performance was positively related to attributions to low effort and negatively related to attributions to low ability. Results of these analyses are related to D. T. Hall's (1976) model of psychological success. In addition, although expectations were strongly related to subsequent performance, the relationship was substantially weakened when prior performance and ability attributions were held constant. The implications of this finding for understanding expectancy perceptions are discussed. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learned helplessness, depression, and the illusion of control.

Do people previously exposed to uncontrollable aversive events, like naturally depressed people, fail to succumb to an illusion of control in a situation in which events occur noncontingently but are associated with success? 120 depressed and nondepressed undergraduates (as determined by Beck Depression Inventory and Multiple Affect Adjective Check List) were assigned to 1 of 3 groups that make up the typical triad used in studies of learned helplessness: controllable noises, uncontrollable noises, or no noises. Following pretreatment, Ss judged how much control they had in a noncontingency learning problem. For half of the Ss, events were noncontingent and associated with failure; for the remaining Ss, events were noncontingent but associated with success. Contrary to the predictions of learned helplessness theory, nondepressed Ss previously exposed to uncontrollable noises showed a robust illusion of control in the condition in which events were noncontingent but associated with success; nondepressed Ss previously exposed to controllable noises judged control accurately. Depressed Ss also judged control accurately regardless of their previous noise experience. Results are interpreted as consistent with the egotism hypothesis. (56 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affect as a determinant of egotism: Residual excitation and performance attributions.

Investigated the influence of outcome-related affect on subsequent causal attributions. After working on a social skills test, 66 male college students engaged in physical exercise. Ss were given success or failure feedback on the test 1, 5, or 9 min after the exercise. Excitation transfer theory suggests that the residual arousal from the exercise in the 5-min condition would elevate the positive and negative affective states elicited by success–failure feedback. Thus, increased attributional egotism in the 5-min condition was predicted. Findings show that Ss preferred internal factors to explain success, whereas external factors were blamed for failure. Ego-defensive attributions following failure and ego-enhancing attributions following success were more pronounced in the 5-min condition than in the other conditions. Results support the idea that outcome-related affect mediates egotistical performance attributions. (42 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Internal attributions and types of depression in college students: The learned helplessness model revisited.

Tested the relation between attributions and types of depression (with and without low self-esteem) postulated by reformulated learned helplessness theory vs. an alternative (R. Janoff-Bulman; see record 1981-01320-001). 334 Ss completed the Beck Depression Inventory, Attributional Style Questionnaire, and Janis-Field Feelings of Inadequacy Scale. Scores above 8 on the Beck were considered depressed. A median split on the Janis-Field scale divided Ss into those with and without low self-esteem. Clearest support was found for Janoff-Bulman's formulations. Depressed Ss with low self-esteem made more internal characterological attributions for bad events than the other groups. Nondepressed Ss made more internal behavioral attributions than depressed Ss. The implications for counseling and future research on depression and learned helplessness are noted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)