The Effects of Helplessness Manipulations on Perceptual Responding: A Signal Detection Theory Analysis

Abstract

This study was concerned with examining the effects of helplessness pre-treatment on performance in a perceptual task. Predictions from two different classes of helplessness hypothesis were considered. Cognitive hypotheses, such as the learned helplessness theory (Abramson, Seligman and Teasdale, 1978; Alloy and Seligman, 1979) suggest that the locus of helplessness effects is found in biases of perceptual and/or expectational mechanisms involved in analysing response-outcome events. These concepts were related to signal detection theory (SDT) and the predictions were that d' and/or beta would vary as a function of helplessness exposure. In contrast, noncognitive hypotheses (Costello, 1978; Roth, 1975) do not predict that any differences would be reflected in either parameter. They merely stipulate that response factors are influenced by helplessness pre-treatment and do not require that any cognitive mechanisms be involved in producing the effects. Performance on a post-treatment orientation task was assessed using a SDT analysis following different helplessness pre-treatment. The analyses showed that neither d' nor beta were affected by helplessness pre-treatment in the orientation task, even though the helplessness pre-treatment induced typical helplessness deficits in a parallel study using anagram solving as the post-treatment task. The only significant effects on the perceptual task were found in analyses of reaction times, with helpless individuals having faster responses. The results were most compatible with hypotheses suggesting that induced helplessness effects are the result of increasing levels of anxiety or arousal which affect performance factors such as responding time.