Locus of Control and Learned Helplessness ' Donald

Failure to escape, the defining characteristic of learned helplessness, was investigated with perceived and instructed locus of control 5s in a learnedhelplessness paradigm. Three groups, equally divided between internals and externals and counterbalanced for sex, received different treatments with an aversive tone prior to the testing for helplessness. The first group could neither escape nor avoid an aversive tone, the second group could escape the tone, and the third group was not exposed to the treatment. Eighteen escape-avoidance trials followed, using a human analogue to an animal shuttle box, in which 6s received an instructional set describing the task as skill or chance determined. In addition to a complete replication of learned helplessness in man, externals were significantly more helpless than internals, and chance-set 5s were more helpless than skill-set 5s. Since uncontrollability of noise, externality, and chance instructional set all impaired escapeavoidance in parallel ways, it was speculated that a common state may underlie all 3 dimensions—expectancy that responding and reinforcement are independent.