PSYCHOMANIPULATION - Tomasz Witkowski

process of learning about the lack of a connection between an action and its consequences. To do
this the dogs were placed in cages, in which they were subjected to electric shocks. The dogs in one
of the groups in the experiment could avoid this by pressing a board in their cages with their noses.
They had, therefore, an opportunity to learn how to avoid getting electric shocks. A second group
had no possibility of influencing the unpleasant stimulus – this was described by the authors of the
experiment as a helplessness training procedure. A third group, the so-called control group, was not
subjected to any shocks at all. After the first phase of the experiment, came the second phase, in
which the dogs were placed in cages containing a low barrier. Once again, the dogs were subjected
to electric shocks. The dogs from the first group quickly discovered that it was possible to avoid the
unpleasant stimulus by jumping over the barrier. The dogs from the control group also discovered
this possibility after a few seconds. Only the dogs from the second group which had not been given
the option of preventing the stimulus did not learn to jump over the barrier, but only lay on the
ground and whimpered with pain. The authors named this response (or rather, lack of response)
learned helplessness.
This experiment was soon followed by others on the same phenomenon, some of which
involved human subjects. In one of the earliest and simplest experiments, people were placed in a
room in which they were subjected to a loud and unpleasant noise from loudspeakers. Each of the
people in the experiment was sitting in front of a “control panel” with numerous buttons and lamps.
They were instructed to find the button or combination of buttons which would switch off the
loudspeakers. In fact, however, there was no such possibility. The subjects of the experiment spent
the whole time looking for the off switch, without success. Another group had the possibility of
switching off the unpleasant noise, and most of them succeeded in doing so. In the second stage of
the experiment, the subjects were removed to a second room, in which they were once again
subjected to an unpleasant noise, which they could switch off by putting their hand in the right place.
It turned out that the people in this experiment behaved just like the dogs described previously! Most
of those who had failed to switch the noise off during the first stage made no attempt whatsoever
to do so now. The others very quickly learned how to switch it off.
Since then, there have been thousands of experiments on learned helplessness, and several
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