Learned helplessness

Learned helplessness, a term initially used in experimental psychology, is a description of the effect of inescapable negative reinforcement (such as electrical shock) on animal (and by extension, human) behavior.

It is also evoked as an explanation for a human condition in which apathy and submission prevail, causing the individual to rely fully on others for help. This can result when life circumstances cause the individual to experience life choices as irrelevant. Chemical dependence may also foster such a condition.

Extremely predictable environments such as a total institution and extremely unpredictable environments such as war, famine and drought may tend to foster learned helplessness. An example involves concentration camp prisoners during the Holocaust, when some prisoners, called Mussulmen, refused to care or fend for themselves. Present-day examples can be found in state-run mental institutions, orphanages or long-term care facitilites. People in a state of learned helplessness, view problems as personal, pervasive, or permanent. That is,

• Personal - They may see themselves as the problem; that is, they have internalized the problem.
• Pervasive - They may see the problem affecting all aspects of life.
• Permanent - They may see the problem as unchangeable.

Questioning these so-called "3 Ps" usually helps individuals to break out of a mindset of learned helplessness.¹ A tremendous crisis may, however, also rouse a person from learned helplessness, a fictional example portrayed in the novel Titus Groan, as the aristocrat Gertrude wakes from a state of childlike apathy into the role of leadership as disaster threatens her home. Once the crisis passes, she returns to her previous placid state.

Early work

The early work on learned helplessness was done by Martin Seligman² at the University of Pennsylvania in 1975. His experiment involved three dogs affixed in harnesses. The first dog was simply put in the harness for a period of time and later released. The second dog was put in the harness, and given painful electric shocks, which he could end by pressing a lever. The third dog was wired in parallel with the second dog, receiving shocks of identical intensity and duration, but his lever didn't do anything. The first and second dogs quickly recovered from the experience, but the third dog suffered chronic symptoms of clinical depression.

A slightly different experiment was conducted where 2 groups of dogs were put in hammocks. One group was given shocks and were able to make them stop, the other group was unable to stop them. Later they were put in a room that was divided in half by a low barrier. One group of dogs were given electric shocks and jumped over the barrier to escape. The other group were given shocks, but as they had "learned helplessness" from the previous experiment, they just lay down and whined, and even though they could have escaped the shocks, they didn't try. Other experiments were performed with different animals with similar results. In all cases, the strongest predictor of a depressive response was lack of control over the negative stimulus.

A similar experiment was done with people performing mental tasks in the presence of distracting noise. If the person had a switch that would turn off the noise, their performance improved, even though they rarely bothered to turn off the noise. Simply being aware of the ability to do so was enough to substantially counteract its distracting effect.

References

¹ Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within

² Martin Seligman, MEP, 1998, Learned Optimism, Basic Booksde:Erlernte Hilflosigkeit nl:Aangeleerde hulpeloosheid