Investigated failure to escape, the defining characteristic of learned helplessness, with perceived and instructed locus of control Ss in a learned-helplessness paradigm. 96 undergraduates in 3 groups, equally divided between internals and externals and counterbalanced for sex, received different treatments with an aversive tone prior to the testing for helplessness. Group I could neither escape nor avoid an aversive tone, Group II could escape the tone, and Group III was not exposed to the treatment. 18 escape-avoidance trials followed, using a human analogue to an animal shuttle box in which Ss 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 Ss more helpless than skill-set. Since uncontrollability of noise, externality, and chance instructional set all impaired escape-avoidance in parallel ways, it is speculated that a common state may underlie all 3 dimensions-expectancy that responding and reinforcement are independent. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)