Final answer:
Learned helplessness is a psychological phenomenon where individuals feel powerless to change or avoid negative situations, leading to passivity and potential depression. Martin Seligman's experiments demonstrated this with dogs, and his theory was later reformulated to focus on the attributions people make about uncontrollable negative events which can lead to hopelessness and depression.
Step-by-step explanation:
Learned helplessness is a psychological condition where an individual feels a loss of control over events in their life, often due to repeated exposure to aversive stimuli that they cannot escape or avoid. This concept was initially demonstrated in a seminal experiment by psychologist Martin Seligman in the 1960s, wherein dogs were exposed to electric shocks that they were unable to escape.
As a result, when given the chance to evade the shocks in a different setting, they did not even attempt to escape, exhibiting a state of helplessness similar to symptoms of depression. This passive behavior can be seen in humans who experience uncontrollable negative events, leading them to give up trying to improve their situation.
Seligman and colleagues reinterpreted learned helplessness through an attributional lens, emphasizing that when people perceive negative events as being uncontrollable, internal, stable, and global, they may develop depression. Seligman's work has since evolved into the hopelessness theory, a prominent psychological explanation for the onset of major depressive disorder.