Discuss Dweck's theory of learned helplessness with regard to achievement motivation, noting (a) the kinds of causal attributions involved and (b) school experiences that might lead to an attitude of learned helplessness. What kind of experience has been found to be effective in countering learned helplessness?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Dweck's learned helplessness is based on the kinds of causal attributions children make for their successes and failures, in conjunction with their willingness to persist at achievement tasks. In particular, (a) learned helplessness involves a tendency to attribute failures to stable and internal causes such as a lack of ability, which leads the child to give up quickly; lack of ability would be something the child could do little about. (b) Experiences that might foster learned helplessness include having teachers who praise nonintellectual aspects of successes and focus on poor problem-solving skills when the child fails, and attribute successes to unstable causes such as high effort and failures to stable causes such as lack of ability. Dweck and colleagues found that the most effective strategy for helping children who have an attitude of learned helplessness is to provide a combination of success and failure experiences, where failures are attributed to lack of effort. They found that providing "only successes" did not counter learned helplessness.