The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

Mental Health 499

power when they are examined within the

context of environmental events. Research

on the brain is relatively new and also may

help to identify biological underpinnings of

depression in women and men.

Learned Helplessness

Learned helplessnessis the sense of giving up

because we perceive that nothing can be done

to alter a situation. If you have ever studied

long hours for a class without improving your

grade, you might have experienced learned

helplessness. Learned helplessness is the prod-

uct of three events (Seligman, 1992). First,

we learn an outcome is beyond our control;

second, we respond by giving up or ceasing

to respond; third, we generalize this response

to new situations—perceive that future re-

sponses cannot influence future outcomes.

A model of learned helplessness is shown in

Figure 13.5. According to the model, the chain

of events is set into motion by an environ-

mental event rather than by a characteristic of

the perceiver. That is, something happens to

lead to the perception of uncontrollability. For

example, you exercise daily and eat a healthy

diet for six months without losing any weight.

Or, with each passing quiz, you increase your

studying but your grade declines. After the

to depression? More recently, it has been

found that dysregulated patterns of oxytocin

are associated with depression. When levels

of oxytocin in the blood were measured in

depressed and nondepressed women during

two tasks, depressed women showed greater

variability in oxytocin than nondepressed

women (Cyranowski et al., 2008).

The Brain. More recently, researchers have

examined whether structural or functional

differences in women’s and men’s brains

contribute to sex differences in depression.

There is some evidence that women and men

use different regions of the brain to process

emotional stimuli (Robison & Shankman,

2008). When a sad mood was induced among

men and women, brain scans revealed greater

specificity in brain activation for males than

females (Schneider et al., 2000), suggesting

that negative emotions might be processed in

a more diffuse way among females.

Taken collectively, biological factors

alone are not sufficient to explain sex differ-

ences in depression. However, more research

is needed on this issue. Hormones, in partic-

ular, may play a role, but their effect is not a

direct one. The role of oxytocin in depression

is a promising avenue of research. Hormones

probably have their greatest explanatory

Expectation that

outcome is

independent of

response

(I can’t influence

the outcome)

Outcome

independent

of response

Cognitive

(difficulty perceiving

response-contingent

behavior)

Behavioral

(cease responding)

Emotional

(depression)

Environmental Event Cognition Deficits

FIGURE 13.5 A model of learned helplessness. An environmental event leads

to a cognition, which produces behavioral, cognitive, and emotional deficits.

Source: Adapted from Seligman (1992).

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