achievement motivation, psychological reactance, and learned helplessness

Motivation and Emotion, VoL 5, No. 2, 1981

Achievement Motivation, Psychological and Learned Helplessness 1

Elizabeth Jardine and Anthony H. Winefield 2 The University o f Adelaide

Reactance,

Two experiments are reported in which the behavior o f subjects classified as high or low on achievement motivation was studied following experience o f uncontrollable, nonaversive outcomes, using a triadic design. In both experiments, subjects high on achievement motivation displayed facilitation, whereas subjects low on achievement motivation displayed slight interference or no effect. In the second experiment it was shown that the experimental treatment was successful in inducing the expectation o f response-outcome independence without associated perceptions o f failure. It differed in this respect f rom manipulations used in most reported studies o f human helplessness. The results are discussed in relation to theories o f achievement motivation, psychological reactance, and learned helplessness.

A good many studies have been reported recently concerned with the question of how people respond to uncontrollable outcomes. Much of this work was stimulated by Seligman's (1975) theory of learned helplessness, which, although based on experiments involving shock/escape conditioning in dogs, has been applied increasingly to human behavior. Indeed, recent versions of the theory (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978; Miller & Norman, 1979) are specifically oriented to human, rather than animal behavior.

1The first experiment was conducted by the first author under the supervision of the second author in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the B.A. Honors degree in psychology at the University of Adelaide. The authors wish to thank J. M. Innes and E. E. Rump for their helpful comments.

2Address all correspondence to A. H. Winefield, Department of Psychology, University of Adelaide, South Australia 5001, Australia.

99

0146-7239/81/0600-0099503.00/0 © 1981 Plenum Publishing Corporation

100 Jardine and Winefield

Although the theory of learned helplessness predicts that experiencing uncontrollable outcomes, regardless of whether or not they are aversive, should produce a deficit in subsequent performance, a number of studies have found the opposite effect. In order to accommodate these apparently contradictory findings, Wortman and Brehm (1975) have proposed a model integrating helplessness theory, which predicts a deficit in performance, and reactance theory (Brehm, 1966), which predicts enhanced performance. According to this integrative model, when subjects' expectation of control remains high, despite experiencing uncontrollable outcomes, psychological reactance should ensue, resulting in enhanced performance; but when subjects' expectation of control is low, learned helplessness should occur. Support for the integrative model has been reported in studies that have varied the amount of exposure to uncontrol- able outcomes (Pittman & Pittman, 1979; Roth & Kubal, 1975; Tennen & Eller, 1977). Further support for the integrative model has been obtained from studies that have examined individual difference variables. For ex- ample, Hiroto (1974) and Cohen, Rothbart, and Phillips (1976), studying groups differing in locus of control, found that externals were more in- clined to show learned helplessness than were internals. Also, Glass (1977) found that individuals exhibiting a Type A (coronary-prone) behavior pattern were more likely than Type B individuals to display enhanced performance following brief exposure and more likely to display impaired performance following extended exposure to uncontrollable outcomes. These findings are consistent with the integrative model assuming that internals and Type A individuals will have greater expectations of control than externals and Type B individuals, respectively.

Miller and Norman (1979) listed four individual difference variables that, according to them, should mediate the occurrence of learned helplessness via the attributional process: achievement motivation, sex, prior expectations, and mood (p. 107). However they do not quote evidence relating to differences in achievement motivation.

In the experiments described in this paper, groups differing in achievement motivation were compared using a yoked, triadic design with nonaversive outcomes. Because of the controversy associated with the experimental designs of many of the published reports of learned helplessness (Costello, 1978), a justification of the experimental procedure is in order. In general, most human helplessness studies fall into one of two categories: those that have used a yoked, triadic design with unpleasant, aversive outcomes such as loud noise, and those that have used an unyoked, triadic design with nonaversive outcomes. Those in the first category are subject to the criticism of systematic bias, following Church (1964), as both Levis (1976) and Costello (1978) have argued. On the other hand, those in the second category, where typically an unsolvable

Achievement Motivation, Reactance, and Learned Helplessness 101

concept formation problem is used in the pretreatment instead of inescap- able noise, are also suspect on methodological grounds. As Cohen et al. (1976) pointed out, where concept formation problems are used, subjects in the noncontingent (uncontrollable) group receive 500/0 random reinforcement, whereas those in the contingent (controllable) group receive substantially more. Thus, controllability is confounded with amount of reinforcement. Cohen et al. attempted to avoid this difficulty by means of a yoking procedure that equated noncontingent and contingent groups for amount of reinforcement. However, their procedure is open to the ob- jection that it confounded controllability with pattern of reinforcement. Under the contingent condition subjects continued until they reached a criterion of 10 consecutive correct choices, whereas under the noncontingent condition "the reinforced responses were distributed randomly over the total number of trials" (p. 1051). Thus, the probability of a reinforced response increased in the contingent group but remained constant in the noncontingent group.

A further difficulty connected with the use of unsolvable concept formation problems is that, strictly speaking, they do not provide response- outcome independence as originally defined by Maier, Seligman, and Solomon (1969). According to this definition, the conditional probability of the outcome given a response, p(O/R), must be equal to the conditional probability of the outcome given no response, p(O/R). In concept formation problems, whether they are solvable or unsolvable, the outcome (usually "right" or "wrong") does not occur unless and until a response is forthcoming. Therefore although the outcome may be un- related to the nature of the response, it is not independent of the occurrence of a response. In short, unsolvable concept problems provide cue - outcome independence, not response- outcome independence.

In order to avoid these difficulties, we devised a novel technique based on Hudson's (1966) Uses of Objects test, which allowed true response-outcome independence to be provided in the pretreatment. A yoked, triadic design ensured that the contingent and noncontingent groups received identical amounts and patterns of reinforcement.

E X P E R I M E N T 1

In Experiment 1 it was predicted that psychological reactance would be produced in the high achievement motivation subjects, resulting in enhanced performance as a consequence of experiencing uncontrollable outcomes. On the other hand, it was predicted that the low achievement motivation subjects would become helpless and exhibit depressed performance as a consequence of experiencing uncontrollable outcomes.


Method

Experimental Design. The experiment took the fo rm of a 3 × 2 × 2 factorial arrangement of pretreatment (controllable outcomes, uncontrollable outcomes, no treatment) × achievement motivat ion level (high, low) x sex. The experiment consisted of two phases: pretreatment and test.

Subjects. Seventy-two subjects participated in the experiment, all 1 st-year psychology students at the University of Adelaide. Thirty-six men and 36 women were selected f rom a populat ion of 286 so as to form extreme groups on the basis o f their scores on Smith's (1973) test of achievement motivation. The test, chosen because it is quick and easy to administer, consists o f 17 t r u e - f a l s e items, of which 10 form the achievement motivat ion scale and the remaining 7 form a "carelessness" scale. Smith reported a statistically significant correlation of .48 with the T A T in a sample of 89 males, which is high by comparison with most other proposed measures of achievement motivat ion (Fineman, 1977). Smith also reported correlations between his test questionnaire scores and scores on measures of intelligence, educational level, social class, and verbal fluency that were lower than the corresponding correlations with the TAT. The mean scores were 8.41 for the high achievement subjects and 4.32 for the low achievement subjects. The scale ranged f rom 0 to 10.

Procedure. Subjects were tested individually in a small room con- taining a table and two chairs. The experimenter sat at a side of the table adjacent to that where the subject was seated so as to be able to moni tor the subject's behavior.

Pretreatment Phase. The two experimental groups that experienced the pretreatment will be designated EC (experimental, controllable outcomes) and EU (experimental, uncontrollable outcomes) and the control group that did not experience the pretreatment as C.

The pretreatment task was presented to subjects as a test of divergent thinking, or creativity. It was an adaptat ion of Hudson 's (1966) Uses of Objects test, which simply required subjects to name as many uses as they could think of for each of 10 selected objects. The objects were chosen on the basis o f a pilot study so as to produce highly variable numbers of responses f rom different subjects with an average of roughly 5 or 6. The I0 objects used were as follows: milk bottle, shoe, $1 note, pane of glass, tin of shoe polish, blanket, telegraph pole, elastic band, paper clip, and barrel. Each object name was printed at the top of a slip of paper measuring 10 × 25 cm. Subjects were instructed as follows:

What you are going to do is a test by Liam Hudson of divergent thinking, a measure of creativity. Face-down on your desk is a slip of paper with the name of an object printed at the top. I want you to write on it as many possible uses for the objects as you can think of in 2 minutes. I will time you. Whe I tell you time is


up, give me the list to check and I will give you another slip. There are 10 such objects. You may receive a small cash reward for your responses from time to time. I will give you further instructions later. Please ask any questions you may have now as I won't be able to answer any during the test time.

Following completion of each item, the experimenter checked it, counting the number of responses aloud, and then said clearly, "You g e t cents for that," writing down the amount in question. This was to try to ensue that subjects had an ongoing awareness of the contingericy or noncontingency of reinforcement. When all 10 items were completed in this way, the total cash sum was given to the subject.

For subjects in the EC group, reinforcement was contingent on the number of responses that were made to each item. No attempt was made to evaluate the responses. The reinforcement contingency was 1 ¢ for each response, provided at least five responses were made for an item. Fewer than five responses failed to produce a reinforcement. Each subject in the EU group was yoked to a different subject in the EC group and received the identical pattern of reinforcements no matter how many responses were made. Subjects in the experimental groups commenced the test phase following completion of the pretreatment phase.

Test Phase. All three groups o f subjects were presented with an anagrams task that has been used in previous experiments of learned helplessness (Hiroto & Seligman, 1975; Winefield & Tiggemann, 1978). It consisted of 25 five-letter, unique-solution anagrams taken from lists pre- pared by Tresselt and Mayzner (1966). Each anagram was constructed according to the pattern "35241." The anagrams were presented on separate cards and subjects were allowed 90 seconds to solve each one. They were not permitted to use aids, such as pencil and paper, in order to help solve or keep a record of the anagrams presented. Subjects received the following instructions:

You have before you a series of anagrams (jumbled words) to be solved. There is a time limit of one and a half minutes on each of these. As you solve each one tell me what it is and turn to the next one. You must not write anything. All the anagrams are soluble and each has only one solution. There may be a pattern to their construction, this is up to you to discover. Any questions? Turn over the top blank card.

The experimenter timed each subject with a stopwatch and recorded the number of seconds required to solve each anagram. No material reinforcement was used in the test phase.

Results

Pretreatment Phase. The numbers of responses made in the Uses of Objects task were analyzed by analysis of variance, which showed no


Table I. Experiment 1 Test Task: Means and Standard Deviations on Three Response Measures

Trials to Level of Latency Number unsolved criterion Achievement Motivation Treatment Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD

High EC 26.80 11.10 3.50 3.40 19.67 6.30 EU 16.78 9.34 1.21 1.35 15.09 6.18 C 24.39 5.92 2.66 1.27 19.50 5.96

Low EC 22.55 12.75 2.30 1.79 18.33 6.21 EU 30.57 14.23 3.75 3.21 19.50 6.06 C 24.41 15.97 3.30 3.70 18.22 6.82

significant effects. In the controllable condition the means were 6.79 for the high subjects, and 7.13 for the low subjects. In the uncontrollable condition the respective means were 6.71 and 6.68.

Test Phase. Three dependent response measures were obtained on the anagrams task: mean latency, number of unsolved anagrams, and trials to criterion. The criterion used was three successive anagrams solved with a combined latency of no more than 15 seconds (Hiroto & Seligman,

1975). Preliminary analysis of the data revealed that no significant effects

on any of the three response measures were due to sex. Moreover the male and female achievement motivation levels were similar for both high and low subgroups. Consequently, in the analyses presented below, the male and female subgroups were combined. The results of performance on the test task are summarized in Table I.

Analysis of variance revealed no significant main effects due to pretreatment or to achievement motivation level on any of the three response measures. On the other hand, a significant pretreatment × achievement motivation level interaction effect was found on the latency measure, F(2,60) = 4.44, p < .05, but not on either of the other response measures. 3 Planned comparisons were carried out separately on the three high and the three low achievement motivation subgroups, because it had been predicted that the EU group could perform better than the EC and C groups in the case of high achievement motivation subjects (psychological reactance) and worse in the case of low achievement motivation subjects (learned helplessness). Table I shows that in both cases the mean

~Where an anagram was not solved within the permitted time, a value of 90 seconds was assigned. Because this produced a truncated distribution, the latency measures were analyzed following both logarithmic and square root transformations as well as untransformed in both experiments. In all cases the results of the analyses were the same with or without the transformations; consequently, only the results of the tests performed on the untransformed data are reported.


differences were in the predicted directions. For the high achievement motivation groups the difference between EU and the other two groups was significant both on latency, F(1,60) = 5.29, p < .05, and on the number of unsolved anagrams, F(1,60) = 5.43, p < .05, but not on trials to criterion. For the low achievement motivation groups, the difference between EU and the other two groups was not significant, but in the opposite direction to that for the high achievement motivation groups, on all three measures. In all cases there was no significant difference between the EC and C groups.

Discussion

The results of Experiment 1 provide clear evidence of facilitation of performance as a result of prior experience of uncontrollability in subjects scoring high on a test of achievement motivation. By contrast, subjects who scored low on achievement motivation showed no evidence of enhanced performance as a result of the same prior experience. In fact, if anything, their performance was slightly impaired. It is worth noting that had the subjects not been separated in terms of achievement motivation, their results would have canceled out the observed differences between the experimental groups. As Smith (1973) observed: "It is possible that true differences in other functions are not detected because they are masked by differences in achievement motivation which have contributed excessively to an error-variance term."

Insofar as our results show evidence of psychological reactance for high achievement subjects only, and no evidence of learned helplessness, they reveal the limitations of both theories. On the other hand, they are not inconsistent with the integrative model proposed by Wortman and Brehm (1975), which assumes that high initial expectation of control will tend to produce reactance and low initial expectation of control, helplessness. It is also possible that our results could be explained by differences in perceived success/failure, in the light of achievement motivation theory. One of the weaknesses of the study, however, was our neglecting to ask subjects about perceived success/failure. Further, no manipulation check was made on perceived contingency/noncontingency of reward. Since without such data it was impossible to make any in- formed interpretation, we decided to attempt a replication of the study, incorporating a postexperimental questionnaire. This was to elicit infor- mation about perceived control and contingency of reward, motivation, task importance, and generalization from pretreatment to test task, and included questions aimed at obtaining attributional data relating to possible differences in perceived success/failure.


EXPERIMENT 2

Method

Experimental Design. The design followed that of Experiment I; however, since sex of subjects had been shown not to relate to differences in performance, this was not designated as a separate independent variable. Groups were, however, counterbalanced for sex of subjects. The design then was a 3 × 2 factorial arrangement of pretreatment (controllable outcome, uncontrollable outcome, no pretreatment) by level of achievement motivation (high, low). The experiment incorporated three phases, pretreatment, test, and postexperimental questionnaire.

Subjects. Subjects were 72 lst-year psychology students, 36 men and 36 women. They were selected from a population of 237 who had completed both the Smith (1973) and Mehrabian (1968) tests of achievement motivation. Subjects were selected so as to form extreme groups on the achievement motivation scores. This was done by applying the double criterion that their scores must (a) differ by at least 1 SD from the mean in the appropriate direction on the Smith test and (b) lie in the appropriate direction above or below the median on the Mehrabian test. The scored range on the Smith test was 1 - 10, mean scores being 8.25 for the high achievement motivation group and 4.21 for the low. The scored range on the Mehrabian test was -44 to + 56, mean scores for the high and low groups being + 18.82 and -13.46, respectively. (In the population studied the means and standard deviations were 6.36 and 1.57, respectively, on the Smith test and 4.76 and 17.45, respectively, on the Mehrabian test. The correlation between the tests was .53).

Procedure. The procedure followed that of Experiment 1, except for the addition of a postexperimental questionnaire. On 7-point scales, subjects indicated the degree to which they felt that they had control over the administration of cash rewards during the Uses of Objects test, the extent to which they were aware of the contingency between number of responses and size of reward, the degree of importance they attached to success on the first task, and the degree to which they believed that performance on the task would be a guide to performance on the anagrams task. Finally, they were asked to classify their performance on the Uses of Objects test as successful or unsuccessful and to assign to it one of four causal attributions (ability, luck, effort, ease/difficulty of task.)

Results

Pretreatment Phase. As in Experiment 1, analyses showed no significant differences between groups. In the controllable condition the means

Achievement Motivation, Reactance, and Learned Helplessness

Table II. Experiment 2 Test Task: Means and Standard Deviations on Three Response Measures

107

Level of Latency Number unsolved Achievement motivation Treatment Mean SD Mean SD

Trials to criterion

Mean SD

High EC 25.95 8.85 4.13 1.00 16.60 5.25 EU 13.30 6.52 1.50 .93 14.50 6.41 C 25.19 4.49 2.38 1.52 19.50 6.84

Low EC 26.20 8.29 3.75 2.17 20.25 4.96 EU 28.84 11.55 3.63 2.13 17.12 7.68 C 26.12 12.49 2.75 3.15 17.88 7.72

were 6.56 for the high subjects, and 6.21 for the low subjects. In the uncontrollable condition the respective means were 7.29 and 5.88.

Test Phase. Results of performance on the test task are summarized in Table II. Analysis of variance showed no significant main effects for level of achievement motivation or experimental condition. A significant pretreatment x achievement motivation level interaction effect was, however, obtained for latency, F(2,60) = 3.74, p < .05. No significant effects were obtained for number of unsolved anagrams or trials to criterion. Planned comparisons were carried out separately on the high and low achievement motivation subgroups. For the high achievement motivation subgroups, the difference between EU and the other two groups was significant both on latency F(1,60) = 16.81, p < .001, and on number of unsolved anagrams, F(1,60) = 4.62, p < .05, but not on number of trials to criterion. There were no significant differences between the low achievement motivation subgroups. In no case was there a significant difference between the EC and C groups.

Postexperimental Questionnaire. The results of the questionnaire are summarized in Table III. Only the three questions concerned with the contingency manipulation produced significant effects. In each case, subjects in the contingent EC group gave higher scores than subjects in the noncontingent EU group, and the difference was more marked for the high achievement motivation subgroups. For the question concerning perceived control over whether a reward was received, F(1,44) = 16.78, p < .01 for the pretreatment, and F(1,44) = 6.94, p < .05 for the pretreatment x achievement motivation level interaction; for the question on the contingency between number of responses and size of reward, F(1,44) = 11.64, p < .01 for the pretreatment; and for the question on response- reward contingency, F(1,44) = 51.79, p < .001 for the pretreatment, and F(1,44) = 5.50, p < .05 for the pretreatment x achievement motivation level interaction. The significant interactions in each case reflected a greater awareness of the contingency manipulation in the high achievement subjects.

i

Tab

le I

II.

Exp

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ent

2 Q

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aire

Dat

a: M

eans

for

Eac

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and

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s (i

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rent

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s)

Lev

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f C

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/ R

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ask

2 T

ask

1 m

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men

t of

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cont

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mot

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impo

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Gen

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Hig

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5~63

4.

37

6.63

4.

75

3.71

2.

29

(1.5

3)

(2.2

8)

(.9

1)

(1.4

2)

(1.6

0)

(.9

5)

EU

2.

13

1.76

2.

37

5.25

4.

13

2.25

(1

.36)

(1

.62)

(1

.44)

(1

.39)

(1

.62)

(1

.45)

L

ow

EC

3.

75

3.38

5.

63

3.25

4.

00

2.13

(2

.19)

(1

.59)

(1

.50)

(1

.67)

(2

.28)

(1

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E

U

3.13

2.

62

3.50

2.

63

4.50

3,

25

(1.4

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(.5

1)

(1.3

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(2.1

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(1.4

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(1.9

3)

.z I=

m°

¢D


There were no significant effects revealed in relation to perceived success/failure, attribution, generalization from pretreatment to test task, or task importance.

Discussion

In Experiment 1, subjects were selected on the basis of their scores on Smith's (1973) test of achievement motivation. It was decided that in Experiment 2, prospective subjects should be given the more widely known Mehrabian (1968) test of achievement motivation as well as the Smith test. It was assumed that a double criterion, based on two scales, would give a more reliable measure of achievement motivation and thus strengthen our conclusions. Furthermore, in Experiment 2, we incorporated a manipulation check on subjects' perceptions of controUability/uncontrollability and contingency/noncontingency of their pretreatment reinforcement, and on their perception of success/failure during the pretreatment.

Results for the test phase of Experiment 2 are strikingly similar to those of Experiment 1. Clear-cut significant results were obtained from the high achievement motivation subgroups on measures of anagram latency and number of unsolved anagrams, and not on trials to criterion.

Questionnaire results matched those of the test task, subjects in the high achievement motivation subgroups clearly being more aware of controllability or uncontrollability of reward and response-reward contingency or noncontingency, respectively. Interestingly, this difference was not associated with any difference in perceived success/failure. This result was also obtained by Cohen et al. (1976). We seem to have succeeded in manipulating perceived contingency/noncontingency inde- pendently of perceived success/failure. It is also interesting to note that the low achievement motivation subgroups showed less awareness of the contingency manipulation than the high achievement subgroups, which could explain the lack of performance difference between them on the anagrams task. Attributions were examined, but no clear-cut differences were found. While we did not succeed in eliciting a helplessness effect, we would have expected some attributional differences to be associated with the facilitation observed in the high achievement motivation subjects. A number of studies (Dweck & Reppucci, 1973; Klein, Fencil-Morse, & Seligman, 1976; Tennen & Eller, 1977) have found that attribution of noncontingent failure to ability or personal competence is associated with increased learned helplessness. On the other hand, other studies that have deliberately manipulated subjects' attributions for failure have found that


subjects who attributed failure to lack of ability showed enhanced performance on a suosequent ta~K (Hanusa & Schulz, 1977; Wortman, Panciera, Shusterman, & Hibscher, 1976).

GENERAL DISCUSSION

In summary, we have shown that a personality variable not previously examined in studies of uncontrollable outcomes can mediate generalized facilitation where the outcomes are nonaversive. Most previous experiments that have studied personality differences in relation to learned helplessness have used aversive outcomes (e.g., Hiroto, 1974; Miller & Seligman, 1975). Moreover, other studies that have reported facilitation effects are open to the criticism *.hat "controllable" and "uncontrollable" groups were not yoked in the pretreatment task (e.g., Roth & Kubal, 1975; Tennen & Eller, 1977).

Results for the test phase of Experiment 2 almost exactly replicated those of Experiment 1. Achievement motivation level was confirmed by using a second test of the variable, and a manipulation check showed conclusively that subjects were aware of controllability or uncontroU- ability and response-reward contingency or noncontingency in the respective treatment conditions, although this awareness was not associated with differences in perceived success/failure. This finding is of particular significance in the light of recent claims that all studies of human helplessness have involved experimenter-induced failure (Coyne, Metalsky, & Lavelle, 1980).

A set of findings that are similar to those reported here has been described by Glass (1977). He and his associates investigated behavioral differences between individuals diagnosed as being high risk (Type A) or low risk (Type B) of coronary heart disease on the basis of the Jenkins Activity Survey (Jenkins, Rosenman, & Zyzanski, 1974). Glass postulated that Type A individuals possess a greater need to assert control over the environment than do Type B individuals and should consequently react differently when confronted with uncontrollable events. This prediction was confirmed in a series of studies showing that Type A individuals displayed enhanced performance following brief exposure to uncontrollable events and "learned helplessness" following extended exposure. Other factors found to be important were stress level and the salience of the cues signifying lack of control. The relation between the A-B dimension and achievement motivation has been looked at in a recent paper by Matthews and Saal (1978). They found that although there was no overall correlation between the two, male college students with the highest Type A scores


were those classified as both high on need to achieve and low on need to avoid failure.

The results we have obtained seem to be consistent with those reported by Glass (1977), and both seem to fit the Wortman and Brehm integrative model (1975), although the latter does not explicitly recognize the importance of individual difference variables in mediating responses to uncontrollable outcomes. On the other hand, our results are not consistent with the theory of learned helplessness, even its recently revised versions (Abramson et al., 1978; Miller & Norman, 1979), which does not provide for improved performance following experience of uncontrollable outcomes. To dismiss such improvement as a trivial, short-term effect is not an acceptable reply. Short-term effects may be just as real as long- term effects and no less important from either a practical or a theoretical standpoint.

An obvious development, suggested by our findings, relates to recent revisions of the theory of achievement motivation by Weiner (1972, Chap. 4), Revelle and Michaels (1976), and Kuhl and Blankenship (1979a), which stress the dynamic aspects of achieving tendencies, following Atkinson and Birch (1970). Indeed, Weiner has reported a similar interaction between individual differences in achievement motivation, giving rise to the following empirical generalizations: (1) Motivation is enhanced following failure among individuals high in resultant achievement motivation. (2) Motivation is inhibited following failure among individuals low in resultant motivation (Weiner, 1972, pp. 229-230). Recent empirical support for the theory has come from studies looking at risk preference (Revelle & Michaels, 1976; Kuhl & Blankenship, 1979b) rather than at responses to uncontrollable outcomes, and the theory has tended to stress reactions to success/failure. Nevertheless, the possibility that the theory may be applicable to helplessness experiments deserves further investigation and is not precluded by the finding that differences in perceived control need not reflect differences in perceived success/ failure. Whether perceived lack of control is identified as failure may well depend on its being accorded an internal attribution. It appears from the recent revisions of helplessness theory that incorporate attributional as- sumptions (Abramson et al., 1978; Miller & Norman, 1979) that although internal attributions may produce negative affect, they are not a necessary condition for the occurrence of learned helplessness. Indeed, Abramson et al. argue for two kinds of helplessness: "personal helplessness" mediated by internal attributions, and "universal helplessness" mediated by external attributions (Abramson et al., 1978, pp. 52-53). Certainly our findings, together with those of Glass (1977), suggest that an integration of the helplessness literature and the achievement motivation literature could well prove fruitful.


R E F E R E N C E S

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Atkinson, J. W., & Birch, D. The dynamics of action. New York: Wiley, 1970. Brehm, J. W. A theory of psychological reactance. New York: Academic Press, 1966. Church, R. M. Systematic effect of random error in the yoked control design. Psychological

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Costello, C. G. A critical review of Seligman's laboratory experiments on learned helplessness and depression in humans. Journal of A bnormal Psychology, 1978, 87, 21-31.

Coyne, J. C,, Metalsky, G. I., & Lavelle, T. L. Learned helplessness as experimenter- induced failure and its alleviation with attentional redeployment. Journal of Ab- normal Psychology, 1980, 89, 350-357.

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Hanusa, B. H., & Schulz, R. Attributional mediators of learned helplessness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1977, 35, 602-611.

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achievement motivation, psychological reactance, and learned helplessness

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