Abstract

The present study was designed to investigate the effects of attribution and learned helplessness experiences on task performances and affective responses. In the learned helplessness training phase a modified Levine's discrimination task was administered to subjects who experienced the noncontingent feedback. Then, an attribution questionnaire was administered to 36 subjects who experienced the noncontingent feedback and they were classified into one of internal attribution group, external attribution group, and unclassified group. 12 subjects who have not experienced the learned helplessness served as a control group in the present study. In the test phase two different tasks, one similar to the training task(Logical deduction test) and the other unsimilar task(S-Maze test) were administered to the subjects, and then MAACL(Multiple Affect Adjective Check List) was also administered to all the subjects to check their depressive and hostile state. The major findings of the present study were as follows : The performance deficit of the subjects exposed to the helplessness condition was found only in the logical deduction task which is similar to the helplessness training task. Internal attribution group demonstrated lower performance than external attribution group in the similar task. Internal attribution group showed a higher level of depressive affect than external attribution group, and external attribution group showed a higher level of hostile affect than internal attribution group. These findings were discovered within a theoretical framework of the original model and the reformulated model of the learned helplessness.