Martin Seligman - 2025 ACF Nationals

Tossup

This scholar wrote a paper comparing typical “efficacy study” methodology to a flawed Consumer Reports survey on the effectiveness of psychotherapy. This man co-authored “Agency in ancient China” with his former grad student Yukun Zhao, who in 2023 used all of this man’s writings without consent to train an AI chatbot based on him. With two younger researchers, this man found that people who blame internal, stable, and global causes for life events tend to have an “attributional style” conducive to depression. This man and Christopher Peterson (10[1])co-wrote the book Character Strengths (10[2])and Virtues as a counterpart (10[1])to the (10[1])DSM. (10[1])This man’s book Flourish (10[1])presents the five-attribute PERMA model (10[1])of well-being. For (-5[1])10 points, name this American founder (10[1])of positive psychology (10[1]-5[4])whose dog-shocking (10[1])experiments (10[1])underlie (10[1])learned (10[1]-5[1])helplessness theory. (10[1])■END■ (10[3]0[2])

ANSWER: Martin Seligman [or Martin Elias Peter Seligman; prompt on Ask Martin by asking “what real person is that chatbot based on?”] (The younger researchers mentioned in the third line are Lyn Abramson and Carl L. von Baeyer.)

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Buzzes

Player	Team	Opponent	Position	Value
Chris Sims	Northwestern	Ohio State	86	10
Akshar Goyal	Illinois A	Penn State	91	10
Parth Jagtap	Toronto C	Virginia	91	10
Raymond Chen	Toronto B	Minnesota	96	10
Ryan Rosenberg	NYU	Rutgers	98	10
Amogh Kulkarni	Georgia State	Virginia Tech	99	10
Swapnil Garg	UC Berkeley A	Toronto A	103	10
Albert Yingzhi Nyang	LSE	Cornell A	108	10
Anuttam Ramji	UC Berkeley B	Johns Hopkins	111	-5
Rayton Lin	Waterloo B	Texas	117	10
Jay Kim	Chicago B	RIT	120	-5
Jeffrey Xu	Georgia Tech	Columbia B	120	-5
Neal Joshi	WUSTL A	Indiana	120	-5
Ethan Skolnick	WUSTL B	Chicago A	120	-5
Nitin Rao	Harvard	Waterloo A	120	10
Yared Tadesse	Cornell B	Iowa State	122	10
Jonathan Shauf	North Carolina A	Maryland	123	10
Moses Kitakule	Columbia A	British Columbia	124	10
Leo Law	Florida	MIT	125	-5
Nathan Sheffield	MIT	Florida	125	10
Sinecio Morales	Johns Hopkins	UC Berkeley B	127	10
Cade Reinberger	RIT	Chicago B	128	0
Olin Bose	Columbia B	Georgia Tech	128	0
Jakob Myers	Indiana	WUSTL A	128	10
Ned Tagtmeier	Chicago A	WUSTL B	128	10
Jem Burch	Yale	Illinois B	128	10

Summary

Tournament	Exact Match?	TUH	Conv. %	Power %	Neg %	Average Buzz
2025 ACF Nationals	Yes	20	90%	0%	30%	111.89