Martin Seligman: From Learned Helplessness Dogs to the PERMA Model

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Martin Seligman was born in Albany, New York, in 1942, studied philosophy at Princeton, and in 1967 at the University of Pennsylvania ran shuttle box experiments in which dogs received inescapable electric shocks. Later placed where a low barrier offered easy escape, those dogs simply lay down and took the shocks. Seligman called this learned helplessness and proposed that a perceived lack of control drives much of clinical depression. Early critiques focused on definitions, while ethical objections grew later, with academic Alastair Norcross arguing the benefits did not justify the harm and clinical psychologist Guy Holmes writing a critical novel. Working with Lyn Yvonne Abramson, Seligman added attributional style, showing that people who see bad events as internal, stable and global are most vulnerable.

If helplessness could be learned, Seligman reasoned, so could optimism. Elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1998, he launched positive psychology as a counterpart to the DSM. With Christopher Peterson he wrote the 2004 book Character Strengths and Virtues, which drew on texts from China, India, Greece, Rome and the modern West to define six virtues: wisdom and knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence. His 2011 book Flourish replaced happiness with well-being and introduced the PERMA model of positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement. That year he also advised Prime Minister David Cameron to measure national well-being alongside GDP.

• In 2003 he founded the first Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at Penn.
• He and his second wife, Mandy, have seven children, five of them homeschooled, and live in a house once owned by conductor Eugene Ormandy.
• He has won more than 50 regional contract bridge championships.
• In 1998 he finished second in the Blue Ribbon Pairs, one of three major North American pair championships.
• Peterson and Seligman stressed that none of the six virtues ranks above the others.