Psychologist Martin Seligman’s Life and Work

 

 

 

 

Psychologist Martin Seligman’s Life and Work

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Life of Martin Seligman

On the 12th of August the year 1942, a baby boy who later became a great psychologist named Martin Seligman was brought into the world, in New York place known as Albany. He went to Albany academy after attending his first half of basic education in a public school. He merited and graduated from high school, after which he joined and attended University level education at Princeton University. Martin Seligman successfully pursued his bachelor degree-level education and earned his degree of A.B in the year 1964. Before finalizing and attaining his bachelor’s degree during his final year, Seligman was faced with a decision making situation where he was expected to decide on which offer to take after three offers were presented to him. This offers typically included joining of the bridge team of Penn, Oxford University’s offer for psychology, and University of Pennsylvania’s offer for psychological studies. Among the choices that were presented to him, Seligman resolved at taking University of Pennsylvania’s offer for psychological studies. He later earned his psychology PhD in the year 1967 from the University of Pennsylvania.

Seligman went back to the University of Pennsylvania for the teaching of psychology after performing his duties at Cornell University, where he functioned as an assistant professor. He discovered a concept idea known as learned helplessness while he was at the University of Pennsylvania. He launched his research on the learned helpless idea. Seligman found out that people happen to give up and lose hope in lieu of control fight when they develop a feeling that the situation or circumstance presented to them is out of their control.

 

 

Struggles/Accomplishments of Seligman

Martin Seligman has had quite a number of accomplishments in his psychological career. In the year 1998, he was elected an APA (American Psychological Association) president. As an APA (American Psychological Association) president, Positive Psychology promotion to the scientific study field was one of his presidential inventiveness. In the learned helplessness, resilience, Positive Psychology, pessimism, depression, and optimism fields, Seligman is the authority that is leading. On the prevention of depression, well-being, and strength building interventions, Dr Seligman is also an appreciated authority. Thirty (30) books and three hundred and fifty (350) scholarly journals have been composed by Psychologist Martin Seligman. The books written by Dr Seligman have had over fifty (50) dialects interpretations and have been greatly sold both abroad and in America. Some of his accomplished studies that are best known include Flourish, The Circuit Hope, Learned Optimism, Authentic Happiness, What You Can & Can’t Change, Helplessness, Abnormal Psychology and The Optimistic Child.

On the Newsweek, Time, Times of New York, World Report and United States news, Fortune, Parents, the Reader’s Digest, Red-book, U.S Today, Family Circle, and other several journal’s front pages Dr Seligman’s work has been displayed. Numerously, on the radio shows and TV shows, Dr Seligman has been a spokesperson for the psychology’s practice and science. On topics that are far-flung such as violence, education, therapy, and happiness, he has been able to write a lot. Around the globe, Seligman has given talks to professionals in mental health care, parents, industries, and other educators. Several awards have been issued and attained by Dr Seligman. Such awards to Dr Seligman include Psychology lifetime achievement, Tang Award given in (2014); APA (American Psychological Association) award for his contribution for a lifetime in psychology (2017); achievement of lifetime award of the research society in Psychopathology (1997); scientific contribution distinguished award for APA (2006); and the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology’s (1992) Distinguished Contribution Award for Fundamental Research of Applied Significance. He has got multiple American Psychological Society prizes: the William Fellow Award for Fundamental Research Contributions (1991) and the McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for Psychological Information Applications (1995).

The writing and research of Dr Seligman have been extensively sponsored by a variety of institutions, such as the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Aging, the United States Education Agency, the Foundation of National Science, the Foundation of MacArthur, and the Foundation of Guggenheim. In 1991, he won the MERIT Award from the National Institute of Mental Health for his study on depression reduction. The Psychology Department in the University of Pennsylvania’s Program of Clinical Training had Dr Seligman as the director for fourteen (14) years. Seligman was designated by the Academies of National Practice as “Distinguished Practitioner,” and received the “Distinguished Services to practice and Science” award from the Pennsylvania Psychological Association in 1995.

Relation of research work that Dr Seligman participated in

Martin Seligman participated in numerous work, including writing and publishing of about thirty (30) books and scholarly journals about three hundred and fifty (350). Most of his publications were based on the psychological element. I refer to one of his joint research work of the learned helplessness, where he participated together with other two researchers Teasdale and Abrahamson. They tried to include the tendency of humans by questioning why the happening of an event may result in answers that can be predicted and noted with possible outcomes by an individual. They found, and that non-contingent people were capable of increasingly becoming displayers of the pattern of helplessness. The pattern of helplessness in humans was not only not specific to learning, as some critics had presented it. It was found and summed up by Seligman together with Hiroto that the pattern was continuous and could be generalized from one event or situation to the other. Suggestion and presentations by critics pointed that in the face of failure it was by adaptation that the individual’s response stopped and that the phenomenon of helplessness was speared headed by not uncontrollability, and failing to get a solution to a problem.

In relation to the learned helplessness study by Seligman and others, researchers Peterson and Villanova made some learned helplessness literature’s meta-analysis. They found that humans do not only happen to exhibit deficits in a performance that is subsequent just after failures but also this happening’s tendency magnitude is quite vigorous for subsequent events. Besides, the outcomes from their analysis noted that there was the consistency of these findings of helplessness pattern across gender, type of task, and age.

Contribution to the Field of Psychology

Martin Seligman has greatly impacted the field of psychology. He has done a lot in the promotion of psychology as a disciple. Through the influence from thinkers who were humanist like Maslow Abraham and Rogers Carl Dr Seligman was motivated to do more in his psychological research. His writing of the positive psychology study grew faster in the research field, adding and promoting the psychological field a great deal. His work was greatly taken for references in many articles and journals proving how his work is of great importance to the field of psychology. Positive psychology’s father is known to be Martin Seligman; this is the tag that Dr Seligman is commonly known and identified with. Most work published and written by Seligman is of great impact and affect to research world. Some of the important and most referred works of Seligman include the writing about helplessness which was published in the year 1975. He also wrote on Death, Development, and Depression. In the years 1991, 2002, and 1993 Seligman wrote and published the following research works; Learned Optimism, Happiness that is Authentic, and What You Can’t Change and What You Can Change respectively.

Dr Seligman’s career and full-time professional works have also greatly impacted the psychological research fields. At the University of Pennsylvania, Seligman serves there as a professor. As a professor, his is greatly contributing to nurturing other scholars and students of psychology, a recommendable and reputable contribution in the field of psychology. He was also the head of the centre of positive psychology in the University before becoming a professor, whereby as the director his daily roles were of great effect and impact to the positive growth of psychology discipline. A magazine known as the Parents has Seligman offering his ideas and advises as one of its board members. Seligman has also been the president of APA (American Psychological Association) in the year 1998. The roles played by Seligman as the President of APA, including his first presidential inventiveness of Positive Psychology promotion to the scientific study field highly boosted the psychological research field. Therefore, Seligman, the father of positive psychology, had generally, a great contribution to the discipline of psychology.

 

Connection of his work to today’s practice/theories

Martin Seligman’s work is greatly connected with today’s practices. For instance, the learned helplessness theory is prevalently applied in learning institutions (schools). For researchers to understand the control of a person over pattern of helplessness they conducted research on school-children. An examination to determine classroom interaction behaviour of a teacher and learners and the view of learners of being able to do what is expected of them was performed. The finding revealed that student’s confidence and better strategy combined produced positive actions of the learner. Learners’ with this qualities displayed proper engagement in class. However, for the learners who had learned helplessness were unable to produce required outcomes not because they cannot do it but because they have a belief and just know that they cannot perform the task to generate better outcomes.

Through a variety of studies, it was learned that unlearning can be done in the situation of learned helplessness. Taking an example of a dog locked in box learned to escape after being taught how to escape, learners can also be taught to unlearn the learned helplessness that may greatly affect their performance. Learners being taught to take failure as not engaging required efforts for better outcomes rather than an inability to perform would subsequently change the learners’ performance. Therefore, the learned helplessness theory and other Seligman’s work are very relevant to end applicable in daily practices.

 

 

 

 

References

Cherry K. & Lacy J., (2020). Martin Seligman Biography. Retrieved from: https://www.verywellmind.com/martin-seligman-biography-2795527

Hiroto, D. S., & Seligman, M. E. (1975). Generality of learned helplessness in man. Journal of personality and social psychology, 31(2), 311.

Dweck, C. S., & Leggett, E. L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological review, 95(2), 256.

Maier, S. F. (1969). Pavlovian fear conditioning and learned helplessness. Punishment, 299-343.

Maier, S. F., Peterson, C., & Schwartz, B. (2000). From helplessness to hope: The seminal career of Martin Seligman. The science of optimism and hope: Research essays in honor of Martin EP Seligman, 11-37.

Seligman, M. E., Maier, S. F., & Solomon, R. L. (1971). Unpredictable and uncontrollable aversive events. In Aversive conditioning and learning (pp. 347-400). Academic Press.