‘Helpless behaviour’ was first seen and examined in dogs. The animals which were conditioned into thinking that after hearing a specific tone they would expect to receive an electrical shock. Afterwards, the dogs were then put into a shuttle box in which contained two separated chambers.

 

There was however a low barrier in which the dog could jump over to reach the other side. One side of the floor was electrified whereas the other was not. Due to the fact that the dogs were ‘used’ to the conditioning of getting shocked, they made no effort to escape even though, all that they needed to do was jump over the barrier, to the other non-electrified side.

 

Martin Seligman and Steven F. Maier (the two psychologists) were interested as to why the dogs reacted this way, therefore, attempted to do a few other experiments in order to demonstrate learned helplessness. They then concluded that that learned helplessness does not only occur in animals, in this case; dogs, but also in humans.