Wow, Becky, thanks for that explanation... It really helps to explain a lot....

I've read a little bit about this before... As well as "Learned Optimism", at one stage I also read "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by David D. Burns, which is about how to use cognitive psychology to combat depression.... As you can probably tell from the books, I used to have a problem with depression.

Depression, it seems, can sometimes be bio-chemical, and in others it is purely psychological... I seemed to have had the psychological kind, and books such as these two helped me (over the course of a few years) to get out of depression and turn my life around.... That was several years ago now....

As a result of your post, I did a quick online search and read a little bit about behaviorism (i.e. the idea that our behavior is a result of rewards and punishments) versus cognitive psychology (i.e. the idea that our behaviour is affected by what we THINK)....

The example of the "learned helplessness" in dogs goes against "behaviorism", since the dogs are not rewarded by staying in the box and being shocked, they'll stay in the box and be shocked even if they are not rewarded.... Instead, it supports the "cognitive psychology" approach....

I wonder how this affects advertising?

Have you seen these long ads online, where people offer umpteen different bonuses if you order "now".... This is a common approach.... It works, in order to inflate how appealing the offer looks, as well as set a time limit so people feel they have to rush to get the offer....

I'm actually a little bit uncomfortable with this approach. I can see now that this approach (at least all the different offers) are in a sense based on "behaviorism" -- they are offering to reward people for acting soon....

However, I wonder if there would be other approaches suggested by "cognitive psychology"?

Changing people's thinking patterns is difficult, though, I expect.... I wonder if it can be done in a short ad?

Perhaps all those cola and soft drink ads on TV may be like this... There, they try to influence people's thinking, to associate drinking Coke or Pepsi with having a good time... It is a type of conditioning, like with Pavlov's dogs or Seligman's dog experiment....

Thanks Becky, this has set off some trains of thoughts in me, it's something I'm going to look into more... I'm very glad you're around... :)

- Dien