H. Matute, LEARNED HELPLESSNESS AND SUPERSTITIOUS BEHAVIOR AS OPPOSITE EFFECTS OF UNCONTROLLABLE REINFORCEMENT IN HUMANS, Learning and motivation, 25(2), 1994, pp. 216-232
Learned helplessness and superstition accounts of uncontrollability pr
edict opposite results for subjects exposed to noncontingent reinforce
ment. Experiment 1 used the instrumental-cognitive triadic design prop
osed by Hiroto and Seligman (1975) for the testing of learned helpless
ness in humans, but eliminated the ''failure light'' that they introdu
ced in their procedure. Results showed that Yoked subjects tend to sup
erstitious behavior and illusion of control during exposure to uncontr
ollable noise. This. in turn, prevents the development of learned help
lessness because uncontrollability is not perceived. In Experiment 2,
the failure feedback manipulation was added to the Yoked condition. Re
sults of this experiment replicate previous findings of a proactive in
terference effect in humans-often characterized as learned helplessnes
s. This effect, however, does not support learned helplessness theory
because failure feedback is needed for its development. It is argued t
hat conditions of response-independent reinforcement commonly used in
human research do not lead to learned helplessness, but to superstitio
us behavior and illusion of control. Different conditions could lead t
o learned helplessness, but the limits between superstition and helple
ssness have not yet been investigated. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.