The experiments required animals to jump over small hurdles to escape from or avoid electric shocks to the feet. The animals typically learn this quickly and easily, but a group of animals that were exposed to the task after having experienced a series of unavoidable shocks failed to learn. Indeed, many of them failed even to try. They sat passively and took the shocks, never venturing over the hurdle at all. The explanation for this failure was that when the animals were being exposed to the uncontrollable shocks, they learned that they were helpless. Having learned this helplessness, the
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