College students faced with unsolvable problems eventually give up and make only half?hearted attempts to solve new problems, even when the new problems can be solved easily. This behavior is probably due to ______.

A) learned helplessness
B) contingency blocking
C) latent learning
D) response generalization

Learned Helplessness

A condition in which a person suffers from a sense of powerlessness, arising from traumatic events or persistent failure to succeed. It is thought to be one of the underlying causes of depression.

Contingency Blocking

A phenomenon in classical conditioning where a subject learns to associate a particular stimulus with an outcome, blocking the learning of an association with a new stimulus presented at the same time.

Response Generalization

The process by which a learned response is applied to similar stimuli beyond the original conditioned stimulus.