Learned helplessness and reinforcement responsibility in children.

Abstract

Attempted to demonstrate the effects of low expectancy of reinforcement and low expectancy for control of reinforcement on performance in an achievement situation. 20 male and 20 female 5th graders were given pretest successes (soluble WISC-type block designs) by 1 adult (success E), and failures (insoluble block designs) by another (failure E), with trials from each being randomly interspersed. In the test phase, all problems were soluble. A number of Ss failed to complete problems administered by the failure E when her problems became soluble, even though they had shortly before solved almost identical problems from the success E and continued to perform well on the success E's problems. The Ss who showed the largest performance decrements were those who took less personal responsibility for the outcomes of their actions (as measured by preexperimental Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Scale scores) and who, when they did accept responsibility, attributed success and failure to presence or absence of ability rather than to expenditure of effort. Those Ss who persisted in the face of prolonged failure placed more emphasis on the role of effort in determining the outcome of their behavior; moreover, males displayed this characteristic to a greater extent than females. Implications of the results for strategies of behavior change are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)