Learned Optimism

Seligman's general-reader treatment of the research programme behind learned helplessness. The core idea is explanatory style: when setbacks get explained as permanent, pervasive, and personal, effort stops feeling worth spending, and the domain gets written off. Seligman's point is that this style is learned rather than fixed, and can be disputed and rebuilt. That is the mechanism underneath Chapter 1's argument that agency erodes inside a specific domain and can be reinstalled there.

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