PMID: 9554087Apr 29, 1998Paper

Performance deficits following failure: learned helplessness or self-esteem protection?

The British Journal of Social Psychology
T Witkowski, J Stiensmeier-Pelster

Abstract

We report two laboratory experiments which compare two competing explanations of performance deficits following failure: one based on Seligman's learned helplessness theory (LHT), and the other, on self-esteem protection theory (SEPT). In both studies, participants (Study 1: N = 40 pupils from secondary schools in Walbrzych, Poland; Study 2: N = 45 students from the University of Bielefeld, Germany) were confronted with either success or failure in a first phase of the experiment. Then, in the second phase of the experiment the participants had to work on a set of mathematical problems (Study 1) or a set of tasks taken from Raven's Progressive Matrices (Study 2) either privately or in public. In both studies failure in the first phase causes performance deficits in the second phase only if the participants had to solve the test tasks in public. These results were interpreted in line with SEPT and as incompatible with LHT.

Citations

Jun 20, 2006·Cyberpsychology & Behavior : the Impact of the Internet, Multimedia and Virtual Reality on Behavior and Society·Justin Chumbley, Mark Griffiths

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