Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance · chapter 9 · id grit-c9-02-martin-seligmans-learned-helpl
“Martin Seligman's learned helplessness experiments with dogs in the 1960s demonstrated that animals subjected to inescapable shocks would later fail to escape when escape was possible, a finding Duckworth connects to the opposite of grit.”
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Wikipedia - Learned helplessnesssource alive
Seligman and Overmier's 1967 experiment involved three groups of dogs: one with controllable shocks, one with uncontrollable shocks, and a control group. Dogs exposed to inescapable shocks later failed to escape even when escape was possible.
Maier & Seligman (2016), Annual Review of Psychology - Learned Helplessness at Fiftysource alive
Seligman and Maier now believe the original theory got it backwards. Passivity is not learned -- it is the default, unlearned response to prolonged aversive events.
Seligman's UPenn page - Learned Helplessness Theory and Evidencesource alive
The theory of learned helplessness proposes that exposure to uncontrollable events produces deficits in motivation, learning, and emotion.
This claim is a stable, citable object. If you can falsify a verdict, tell us — corrections are loud here.