Psychology Commons^™

Individual Differences In Taste, Body Weight, And Depression In The "Helplessness" Rat Model And In Humans., Clinton Chapman, Nancy Dess

Clinton D Chapman

In Exp 1, exposure of rats to unsignaled, inescapable shock resulted in finickiness about drinking a weak quinine solution. In contrast, exposure to escapable shock resulted in marked individual differences in finickiness that were predicted by prestress body weight. A more sensitive index of finickiness was used in Exp 2, and a correlation between body weight and finickiness was observed in nonshocked rats. In Exp 3, measures of quinine reactivity and body weight predicted depressive symptomatology in a nonclinical human sample of 37 undergraduates. Although research in the helplessness paradigm usually focuses on environmental determinants of distress, the paradigm may …