Sex differences in learned helplessness: I. Differential debilitation with peer and adult evaluators.

Predicted that sex differences in learned helplessness (attributions of failure to uncontrollable factors) and the impaired performance associated with it would be agent specific. Two experiments were conducted with 105 female and 111 male 4th and 5th graders. Among girls, failure feedback from adults led to little improvement in performance on a series of digit-letter substitution problems, but failure from peers led to immediate and sustained improvement. Among boys, however, failure feedback from adults led to rapid improvement, but failure from peers led to no improvement over trials. Moreover, girls' and boys' attributions for failure varied systematically with the agent of evaluation. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)