Martin Seligman

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Lore & Background

Seligman was born in Albany, New York, to a Jewish family. He earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy at Princeton University in 1964, graduating summa cum laude, and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. In June 1989, he received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Uppsala University, Sweden. He is the Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, previously directed the Clinical Training Program, and earlier taught at Cornell University. He was elected president of the American Psychological Association for 1998. Seligman's foundational experiments on learned helplessness began at the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. He and colleagues accidentally discovered that conditioned dogs did not respond to opportunities to learn to escape from electric shocks of moderate intensity. A fictionalised account of the experiment appears in clinical psychologist Guy Holmes' novel The Black Dogs of Glaslyn. Ethical critique was later raised by academic Alastair Norcross, who argued the expected human benefits were not large enough for the harm inflicted. Seligman developed the theory further, finding learned helplessness to be a psychological condition where a human or animal has learned to act helplessly after experiencing an inability to avoid an adverse situation. He saw a similarity with severely depressed patients. Later, alongside Abramson, he reformulated the theory to include attributional style. In his 2002 book Authentic Happiness, Seligman saw happiness as made up of positive emotion, engagement, and meaning. With Christopher Peterson, he created Character Strengths and Virtues (2004) as a positive counterpart to the DSM, listing six character strengths: wisdom/knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. In his 2011 book Flourish, he introduced the PERMA model of well-being: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Achievement. He encouraged British Prime Minister David Cameron to look into well-being as well as financial wealth for assessing national prosperity. The Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program at the University of Pennsylvania was established under his leadership in 2003.

Reader's Guide

Martin Seligman's significance lies in his foundational contributions to positive psychology and the theory of learned helplessness. His work shifted a portion of psychological research from pathology to human flourishing, influencing clinical practice, education, and public policy. The learned helplessness model provided a framework for understanding depression, while the PERMA model offered a multidimensional approach to well-being. His collaboration with Christopher Peterson produced a classification of character strengths intended as a counterpart to the DSM. Seligman's ideas have been adopted in coaching, organizational psychology, and school curricula, though the PERMA model is not considered the scientific consensus definition or model of well-being. His advocacy for measuring national well-being alongside economic indicators reflects his broader impact beyond academia. The ethical critique of his early animal experiments, raised later by Alastair Norcross, remains a point of discussion. Seligman plays bridge and finished second in the 1998 Blue Ribbon Pairs, one of the three major North American pair championships, and has won over 50 regional championships. He has seven children, four grandchildren, and two dogs. He and his second wife, Mandy, live in a house once occupied by Eugene Ormandy, and have home-schooled five of their seven children.

Did You Know?

• Seligman finished second in the 1998 Blue Ribbon Pairs, one of the three major North American bridge pair championships, and has won over 50 regional championships.
• He received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Uppsala University, Sweden, in June 1989.
• Seligman and his second wife Mandy have home-schooled five of their seven children.
• A fictionalised account of Seligman's learned helplessness experiment appears in clinical psychologist Guy Holmes' novel The Black Dogs of Glaslyn.
• Seligman was the founding editor-in-chief of Prevention and Treatment, the APA electronic journal.