Learned helplessness

I was reading something that brought up the issue of learned helplessness. Researcher Martin Seligman electrically shocked dogs and the dogs who weren't given a way out learned to stop trying. They learned to be helpless. Can people follow from that research? Poor people aren't biologically lazy. In fact some poor people work more than 40 hours a week. But the issue is always on the apathetic poor, the ones who don't try, the cleche welfare mothers and such. But could it be that society has reinforced the helplessness and the poor have been trained to stop trying since only an idiot keeps touching the stove when they get burned.