Personal Control Beliefs

1. Personal Control Beliefs Mastery vs Helpless Motivation Orientations

2. Mastery • Comes by different names. • Competence: capable, well-qualified. • Self-Efficacy: ability to produce the required effect. • Empowerment: personal strength and confidence.

3. Mastery orientation • Clearly seen when life gets difficult. • Hard tasks and times. • Protect the self when encounter failure. • Person remains task-focused. • Emphasis on achievement. • Seize the challenge. • Energized by setbacks.

4. Helpless orientation • Shy away from challenges. • Fall apart in face of setbacks. • Begin to doubt their abilities. • Low self-efficacy. • Lack of empowerment. • Caught up in failure.

5. Contrasting Orientations • Mastery orientation My behavior  Outcomes Other (Uncontrollable) Influences • Helpless orientation My behavior ----> Outcomes Other (Uncontrollable) Influences

6. Orientations are learned • Mastery develops from attempting and succeeding at challenges. • Helplessness develops through experience as well.

7. Learned Helplessness • Martin Seligman • Grad student working with Richard Solomon. • Learning model for anxiety using dogs. • Problem: some of the dogs were not behaving as predicted.

8. Solomon Experiment (part 1) • Classical conditioning. • Start with innate reflex. • Shock  fear. UCSUCR • Pairings. CS and UCS • Tone followed by shock. • Mild shock (“touch a doorknob on a dry day”). • Tone  fear. CS  CR Shock tone

9. Solomon Experiment (part 2) tone • Used a shuttle-box. • One side has shock grid in floor. • Unconditioned dog will jump to the other (safe side) when shock turns on. • Conditioned dogs would not jump when tone sounded. • Didn’t jump even when shock came on. • Laid down, endured shock. shock

10. Learned to be Helpless • Seligman saw the potential in the problem. • In part 1 of the experiment, dogs were learning that they could not avoid shocks. • Nothing they did really mattered. • Learned to be helpless. • Perhaps, on the positive side, they could be taught to overcome this helplessness. • Application to the human condition.

11. Escapable shock. Had coping mechanism. Press nose button to terminate shock. “Active” Control. Got no shocks. Placed in sling. Seligman Experiment: part 1 • Inescapable shock. • Got shock. • No coping mechanism. • No way to terminate shock. • “Passive”

12. Seligman Experiment: part 2 • All groups received the same condition: escapable shock. • Put in shuttle box. • Light dimmed. • 10 second later got shock unless they jumped to safe side.

13. Shuttle box behavior • 1. Dogs in the escapable shock quickly learned to jump to safe side. • 2. Dogs in control group also learned to jump to safe side within a few trials. • 3. Dogs in inescapable shock did not jump to safe side. Agitated at first but later laid down and took the shock. • Dogs in inescapable shock group learned helplessness

14. College students, as well • Part 1: Press button to turn off load noise. • Escapable: button worked. • Inescapable: button did nothing. • Part 2: Finger shuttle boxes. Move finger to other side turned off noise. • Only escapable noise group lifted a finger.

15. Deficits in Helplessness • Motivational: Decreased willingness to try. Human subjects: “Why try?” • Learning: Pessimistic set interferes with ability to learn new responses. Attempts to escape noise failed. Believe same is true for shuttle box. • Emotional: Listlessness, apathy, depressed.

16. Parallels with Reactive Depression • Triggered by traumatic life event (ex. death of loved one). • Passivity • Difficulty in learning responses that bring relief. • Physical symptoms. • Stress related disorders.

17. Directive Therapy • Dogs that had been exposed to inescapable shock. • Remove barrier and push them to safe side. • Reinstall barrier and force them over it. • Eventually learn to jump.

18. Parallels to Treating People • Encourage depressed people to get back into life. Ex: not willing to leave home. • Small steps. (Go out to movie, then mall.) • Increase difficulty. • Show them they do have control over their lives. • Motivational, learning and emotional gains.

19. Hospital study • 24 Depressed patients. • Read paragraph aloud. • Read with feeling. • Interpret paragraph, argue points of view. • Give short speech. • Praised at each step. • 19/24 showed marked elevation in mood.

20. Prevention of Helplessness • Seligman suggests the best prevention for helplessness is early experience with mastery. • Based on life histories of people who were resilient in situations likely to cause helplessness. • Self-efficacy, competence already in existence. Served as a buffer.

21. Langer and Rodin Study • Both Yale Professors. • Arden House in Hamden. • Nursing homes can be decision-free environment. • Give patients some control over small decisions in their lives. • Responsibility Induced Group.

22. Responsibility Induced • At floor meeting, residents told they had choices on: • Arrangement of furniture. • Visiting hours. • Entertainment. • Given small plant to care for.

23. Control Group • Floor meeting. • Nurses would take care of every need. • Told what entertainment to expect. • Visiting hours set. • Room layout remains as is. • Nurses would care for plants.

24. Conditions and Measurements • One floor for each group. • Nurses not aware of other condition (floor). • Residents rarely traveled beyond floor. • Pre and Posttest on: • Locus of control. • General Mood. • Staff rated patients on alertness and social activity.

25. Results • Responsibility induced group. • Better mood. • More active. • More alert. • Jelly bean jar on each floor. • Guess the number. • 10 entered contest on RI floor. • Only 1 on control floor.

26. Conclusions • Small amount of responsibility has impact on mood and activity. • Important for people to have some control over their environment. • Healthier for people. • No info on the health of the plants.