ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, most of the investigations that were reviewed dealt with the effects of perceived control within circumscribed tasks or situations. For the most part, one would not anticipate that such effects would rapidly generalize to a variety of other tasks, nor that the organism under study would form some general self-conception on the basis of that limited experience. Nevertheless, the intractability of the dogs in Seligman's research (1968) and the surrender to death among Richter's animals (1959) do suggest that, for many organisms, the loss of perceived control is not taken as a simple isolated incident, but rather as a pervasive and profound reaction, holding implications for the creature's judgment of his potential for survival.
