Learned Helplessness

Type of psychology: Learning
Fields of study: Cognitive learning; critical issues in stress; problem
solving
The concept of learned helplessness, first observed in laboratory animals, has been applied
to humans in various situations; in particular, it has been applied to depression.
The idea holds that feelings of helplessness are often learned from previous experience;
therefore, it should also be possible to unlearn them.
Key concepts
• attribution
• helplessness
• learning
• personality
• self-concept
The concept of learned helplessness originated with experiments performed
on laboratory dogs by psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman and his
colleagues. Seligman noticed that a group of dogs in a learning experiment
were not attempting to escape when they were subjected to an electric
shock. Intrigued, he set up further experiments using two groups of dogs.
One group was first given electric shocks from which they could not escape.
Then, even when they were given shocks in a situation where they could
avoid them, most of the dogs did not attempt to escape. By comparison, another
group, which had not first been given inescapable shocks, had no
trouble jumping to avoid the shocks. Seligman also observed that, even after
the experiment, the dogs that had first received the unavoidable shocks
seemed to be abnormally inactive and had reduced appetites.
After considerable research on the topic, Seligman and others correlated
this “learned” helplessness and depression. It seemed to Seligman that
when humans, or other animals, feel unable to extricate themselves from a
highly stressful situation, they perceive the idea of relief to be hopeless and
they give up. The belief that they cannot affect the outcome of events no
matter what force they exert on their environment seems to create an attitude
of defeat. Actual failure eventually follows, thereby reinforcing that belief.
It seems that the reality of the situation is not the crucial factor: What
matters is the perception that the situation is hopeless.