On the second floor the patients were given the same things, under crucially different circumstances.

Here’s what the director told them:

I was surprised to learn that many of you don’t know about the things that are available to you. We feel that it’s our responsibility to make this a home of which you can be proud, and we want to do all we can to help you. I want to take this opportunity to give each of you a present from Arden House. [Each patient is handed a plant by a nurse.] The plants are yours to keep. The nurses will water and care for them for you. One last thing; I wanted to tell you that we’re showing a movie two nights a week, Thursday and Friday. We’ll tell you later on which day you’re scheduled to see it.

The patients on the first floor had control over these new events in their lives whereas those on the second floor, who were given the same things, had no such control. The residents on the first floor became more active, had higher morale and were less depressed. Eighteen months later they were also more likely still to be alive.
(Peterson et al 1993 p. 6)

We are closing in on the mechanics of learned helplessness. This profoundly intimidating, enervating and demotivating condition afflicts just about everybody to some extent in some areas of their life, of course. We can all think of something we dread having to do, something at which we ‘know’ we are incompetent and are therefore sure we will do badly. Mostly we are able to finesse circumstances such as to avoid an unmasking. An ABE student, however, is inevitably expected to perform occasionally in public, usually cold, in that area of their life which holds genuine fear and real doubt. ABE students have the greatest difficulty seizing literacy bulls by the horns or even the tails. Literacy, at least in circumstances where finesse is impossible - and these circumstances may well include their experience of tuition - makes many students minds either stop or go to pieces. Their troubled and complex response is the direct result of previous experiences associated with literacy. Literacy engenders helpless behaviour. This behaviour has been learned. It is learned helplessness. As Butkowsky & Willows said (1980 p. 408):

…poor readers displayed characteristics indicative of learned helplessness and low self-concepts of ability. These included significantly lower initial estimates of success, less persistence, attribution of failures to lack of ability and of success to factors beyond personal control, and greater decrements in expectancy of success following failure.

It is not, of course, by any means only students who exhibit learned helplessness. Teachers, like everyone else, may have irrational expectations and attributions and so may affect students’ attributions. Teachers’ beliefs, particularly about their students but also about learning itself and the likelihood, character and consequences of learning difficulties, will affect their teaching practice. (Agne et al 1994, Fang 1996, Jordan et al 1993, Westwood 1995) Muthukrishna & Borkowski (1995 p. 444) say that ‘… motivational goals and cognitive skills develop in a reciprocal fashion’ and ‘… it is possible to influence motivational goals and beliefs…’. Bar-Tal says simply that ‘… teachers greatly influence pupils’ use of causes to explain their successes or failures.’ (Barnes et al p. 211) Fang (1995 p.51) claims that ‘… teachers who believe that all children can learn will promote literacy development while those who believe that lack of ability is a stable state will produce a debilitating environment.’ Johnston (1985 p.170) writes that

Teachers treat less able students quite differently from more able students and, in doing so, tell the less able students that they are constitutionally less able. This attribution of failure to a cause for which there is little hope of a cure is profoundly unmotivating.