According to the learned helplessness hypothesis, organisms exposed to uncontrollable events learn the independence between their responses and environmental outcomes. This learning is believed to interfere with subsequent behavior. To further examine the dimension of uncontrollability, 48 college students were given solvable, unsolvable, or no-pretreatment anagrams in varying percentages. All received 20 solvable anagrams immediately following pretreatment. The inclusion of partial-control groups in a learned helplessness model seemed to indicate that some degree of controllability enhanced initial performance compared to the group receiving no control, but had a deleterious effect on performance compared to a group with complete control. Data also seemed to indicate that the group receiving no pretreatment initially performed as poorly as the no-control group. This finding is inconsistent with the hypothesis. (JAC)