College students (both male and female) were exposed to insoluble, soluble, no discrimination problems and an observational learning condition. Following pretreatment the subjects were given 20 soluble anagrams. Subsequent to this they were asked to make attributional ratings for their success or failure. It was hypothesized that (a) subjects not given a helplessness pretreatment but merely viewing a similar other receiving insoluble problems would exhibit learned helplessness more than corresponding subjects given soluble problems or no pretreatment and (b) females exposed to the helplessness pretreatment would make internal attributions for failure more than males. The first hypothesis was supported, but not the second hypothesis. The present study did yield data which suggest value in pursuing the issue of sex differences in learned helplessness.
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