So far as I am aware, Seligman never wrote about "learned pessimism." His early work on learned helplessness is probably what you're thinking of. More recently, he turned his attention to learned optimism and helped to found the positive psychology movement. 

If you want to conduct research relating to learned helplessness in humans, you'll probably want to use the Attributional Style Questionnaire. Introduced in the late 1970s as I recall, this measure reflects the social cognitive reconceptualization of Seligman's earlier work, which was purely behavioristic. I'll attach a copy.

great. thanks Stephen.

Dear Lyyunni

Yow say that Martin Seligman Learned pessimism (vicious cycles) in behavior is a well known phenomena and that it has detrimental implications to managing complex projects.

Like Stephan, as far as I know, Seligman never spoke about learned pessimism. Probably you want to refer to learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is a concept Seligman coined to refer to humans' (and also animals') behavior that occurs, for example, after their several unsuccessful attempts, for example, to solve a given  problem or deal with a certain situation. If, for example, a student always gets bad marks regardless of how much s/he studies, then it is likely that s/he learns, as it were, to give up studying. In other words, that student learns that his/her studying behavior has no positive effect on his/her marks and, hence, his/her studying behavior is of no help for him. As you certainly know, there is amassing evidence that shows that learned helplessness has detrimental effects on many, if not all, domains of behavior, be it cognitive, social, emotional, project management, and so forth. To be more specific, there is much evidence that reveals that learned helplessness lies at the heart of many depressions. Given the very nature of learned helplessness it is more than natural that it leads to pessimism, negative mood, giving up, and the like. So, it is almost true by definition that learned helplessness has, more than could have, negative, debilitating or detrimental implications while one's manage a complex project. Of a complex project, we can say that it is difficult to implement and, hence, unsuccessful attempts are likely to follow. This shows that we can look at learned helplessness as a cause or condition and as a consequence.

As you say learned pessimism instead of learned helplessness, it is feasible that your knowledge of Seligman's writing is, say, a second-hand knowledge. If this were the case (obviously I can be wrong), you would profit a lot from reading him directly.

Best, regards.    

Thank you for your response, Orlando.

I am looking for publications on learned helplessness or learned optimism in the context of managing projects.

Interesting topic!

Here is a reading list to start you off.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22learned+helplessness%22+%22project+management%22

Thanks Ian. I didn't think of searching like that. That's a pretty large list. While I can see a link between role stresses and learned helplessness (I did a pilot survey) - the survey instruments for project performance are pretty blunt (did you do this or did you achieve that ...).