Editing Learned helplessness (section)

==Expanded theories==
Research has found that a human's reaction to feeling a lack of control differs both between individuals and between situations, i.e. learned helplessness sometimes remains specific to one situation but at other times generalizes across situations.<ref name="Learned helplessness in man"/><ref>{{cite book |last1=Peterson |first1=C. |last2=Park |first2=C. |year=1998 |chapter=Learned helplessness and explanatory style |editor1-first=D. F. |editor1-last=Barone |editor2-first=M. |editor2-last=Hersen |editor3-first=V. B. |editor3-last=VanHasselt |title=Advanced Personality |location=New York |publisher=Plenum Press |pages=287–308 |isbn=978-0-306-45745-6 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cole |first1=C. S. |last2=Coyne |first2=J. C. |year=1977 |title=Situational specificity of laboratory-induced learned helplessness in humans |journal=Journal of Abnormal Psychology |volume=86 |issue=6 |pages=615–623 |doi=10.1037/0021-843X.86.6.615 |pmid=599212 }}</ref> Such variations are not explained by the original theory of learned helplessness, and an influential view is that such variations depend on an individual's attributional or [[explanatory style]].<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Peterson C, Seligman ME | title = Causal explanations as a risk factor for depression: theory and evidence | journal = Psychological Review | volume = 91 | issue = 3 | pages = 347–374 | date = July 1984 | pmid = 6473583 | doi = 10.1037/0033-295x.91.3.347 }}</ref> According to this view, how someone interprets or explains adverse events affects their likelihood of acquiring learned helplessness and subsequent depression.<ref name="Helplessness in humans">{{cite journal | vauthors = Abramson LY, Seligman ME, Teasdale JD | title = Learned helplessness in humans: critique and reformulation | journal = Journal of Abnormal Psychology | volume = 87 | issue = 1 | pages = 49–74 | date = February 1978 | pmid = 649856 | doi = 10.1037/0021-843X.87.1.49 }}</ref> For example, people with [[pessimistic]] explanatory style tend to see negative events as permanent ("it will never change"), personal ("it's my fault"), and pervasive ("I can't do anything correctly"), and are likely to suffer from learned helplessness and depression.<ref name="Learned Helplessness: A Theory for the Age of Personal Control">{{cite book |last1=Peterson |first1=C. |last2=Maier |first2=S. F. |last3=Seligman |first3=M. E. P. |year=1995 |title=Learned Helplessness: A Theory for the Age of Personal Control |location=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-504467-6 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/learnedhelplessn00chri }}{{pn|date=May 2025}}</ref>

In 1978, [[Lyn Yvonne Abramson]], Seligman, Paul and [[John D. Teasdale]] reformulated Seligman's & Paul's work, using [[attribution theory]]. They proposed that people differed in how they classified negative experiences on three scales, from internal to external, stable to unstable, and from global to specific. They believed that people who were more likely to attribute negative events to internal, stable, and global causes were more likely to become depressed than those who attributed things to causes at the other ends of the scales.<ref name="Helplessness in humans"/>

[[Bernard Weiner]] proposed a detailed account of the attributional approach to learned helplessness in 1986. His attribution theory includes the dimensions of globality/specificity, stability/instability, and [[Locus of control|internality/externality]]:<ref>{{cite book |doi=10.1007/978-1-4612-4948-1 |title=An Attributional Theory of Motivation and Emotion |date=1986 |last1=Weiner |first1=Bernard |isbn=978-1-4612-9370-5 }}{{pn|date=May 2025}}</ref>

* A ''global attribution'' occurs when the individual believes that the cause of negative events is consistent across different contexts.
** A ''specific attribution'' occurs when the individual believes that the cause of a negative event is unique to a particular situation.
* A ''stable attribution'' occurs when the individual believes the cause to be consistent across time.
** An ''unstable attribution'' occurs when the individual thinks that the cause is specific to one point in time.
* An ''external attribution'' assigns causality to situational or external factors,
** while an ''internal attribution'' assigns causality to factors within the person.<ref name="Helplessness in humans" />