Martin Seligman

Learned helplessness

Seligman's foundational experiments and theory of "learned helplessness" began at University of Pennsylvania in 1967, as an extension of his interest in depression. Seligman and colleagues accidentally discovered that the experimental conditioning protocol they used with dogs led to behaviors which were unexpected, in that under the experimental conditions, the recently conditioned dogs did not respond to opportunities to learn to escape from an unpleasant situation ('electric shocks of moderate intensity'). A fictionalised account of the experiment, and illustration of anti-vivisection arguments about the ethics of shocking dogs in the name of psychological research, occur in clinical psychologist Guy Holmes' novel The Black Dogs of Glaslyn.

At the time, and in subsequent years, very little ethical critique of the experiment was published, although definitional and conceptual issues were critiqued. Ethical critique would later be raised by the academic Alastair Norcross, who argued that the expected human benefits were not large enough for the harm inflicted to the dogs that occurred.

Seligman developed the theory further, finding learned helplessness to be a psychological condition in which a human being or an animal has learned to act or behave helplessly in a particular situation—usually after experiencing some inability to avoid an adverse situation—even when it actually has the power to change its unpleasant or even harmful circumstance. Seligman saw a similarity with severely depressed patients, and argued that clinical depression and related mental illnesses result in part from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation. In later years, alongside Abramson, Seligman reformulated his theory of learned helplessness to include attributional style.

Happiness

In his 2002 book Authentic Happiness, Seligman saw happiness as made up of positive emotion, engagement and meaning.

Positive psychology

Seligman worked with Christopher Peterson to create what they describe as a "positive" counterpart to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). While the DSM focuses on what can go wrong, Character Strengths and Virtues (2004) is designed to look at what can go right. In their research they looked across cultures and across millennia to attempt to distill a manageable list of virtues that have been highly valued from ancient China and India, through Greece and Rome, to contemporary Western cultures.

Their list includes six character strengths: wisdom/knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Each of these has three to five sub-entries; for instance, temperance includes forgiveness, humility, prudence, and self-regulation. The authors do not believe that there is a hierarchy for the six virtues; no one is more fundamental than or a precursor to the others.

Well-being

In his book Flourish, 2011, Seligman wrote on "Well-Being Theory", and said, with respect to how he measures well-being:

Each element of well-being must itself have three properties to count as an element:

1. It contributes to well-being.
2. Many people pursue it for its own sake, not merely to get any of the other elements.
3. It is defined and measured independently of the other elements.

Seligman concluded that there are five elements to "well-being", which fall under the mnemonic PERMA:

• Positive emotion—Can only be assessed subjectively
• Engagement—Like positive emotion, can only be measured through subjective means. It is presence of a flow state
• Relationships—The presence of friends, family, intimacy, or social connection
• Meaning—Belonging to and serving something bigger than one's self
• Achievement—Accomplishment that is pursued even when it brings no positive emotion, no meaning, and nothing in the way of positive relationships.

There have been some attempts to empirically validate a PERMA model of well-being, with evidence suggesting a high correlation with other measures of subjective well-being. However, it is not considered the scientific consensus definition or model.

In July 2011, Seligman encouraged the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, to look into well-being as well as financial wealth as ways of assessing the prosperity of a nation.

MAPP program

The Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program at the University of Pennsylvania was established under the leadership of Seligman as the first educational initiative of the Positive Psychology Center in 2003.

Personal life

Seligman plays bridge and finished second in the 1998 installment of one of the three major North American pair championships, the Blue Ribbon Pairs, as well as having won over 50 regional championships.

Seligman has seven children, four grandchildren, and two dogs. He and his second wife, Mandy, live in a house that was once occupied by Eugene Ormandy. They have home-schooled five of their seven children.

Seligman was inspired by the work of the psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck at the University of Pennsylvania in refining his own cognitive techniques and exercises.