The effects of inescapable shock on appetitive motivation

Abstract

Exposure to inescapable shock is known to proactively interfere with the acquisition of instrumental responses to escape shock, as well as to obtain food. These effects have been termed learned helplessness. The present experiment investigated the possibility that the learned helplessness effect observed in an appetitive context may, at least in part, be due to the motivational effects of inescapable shock. The schedule-induced polydipsia paradigm, which is known to be sensitive to both deprivation level and incentive motivation, was used to assess the effects of inescapable shock on appetitive motivation. Despite the fact that learned helplessness was demonstrated in a shuttle escape task, no effect of inescapable shock was observed on polydipsia. Thus, the reinforcer generality of helplessness appears not to be due to shockinduced motivational factors.