Learned Helplessness

As Seligman, Maier, and Overmier discovered, exposure to uncontrollable
aversive events can have profound impacts on future learning, a phenomenon
called “learned helplessness.” In learned helplessness, an organism
that has been exposed to uncontrollable aversive events later has an impaired
ability to learn to escape from aversive situations and even to learn
new, unrelated behaviors. The phenomenon was accidentally discovered in
laboratory research with dogs. Seligman and his colleagues found that dogs
that were exposed to electrical shocks in a harness, with no possibility of escape, later could not learn to escape shocks in a shuttle box in which they
had only to jump to the other side. Disturbingly, they would lie down and
whimper, not even trying to get away from the completely avoidable shocks.
Dogs that had not been exposed to the uncontrollable shocks learned to escape
in the shuttle box rapidly. More important, dogs exposed to the same
number and pattern of shocks, but with the ability to turn them off, also had
no trouble learning to escape in the shuttle box. In other words, it was the
exposure to uncontrollable shocks, not just shocks, that produced the later
deficit in escape learning. Moreover, the dogs that had been exposed to uncontrollable
aversive events also had difficulties learning other, unrelated,
tasks. This basic result has since been found many times with many different
types of situations, species, and types of aversive events. For example,
learned helplessness has been shown to occur in dogs, cats, mice, rats, gerbils,
goldfish, cockroaches, and even slugs. Humans show the learned helplessness
phenomenon in laboratory studies as well. For example, people exposed
to an uncontrollable loud static noise later solved fewer anagrams
(word puzzles) than people exposed to the same amount and pattern of
noise but who could turn it off.
Learned helplessness has major implications for the understanding and
treatment of human depression. Although certainly the case with people is
more complex, animals that have developed learned helplessness in the laboratory
show similarities to depressed people. For example, they have generalized
reduced behavioral output. Similarly, researchers discovered early on
that learned helplessness in rats could be prevented by treatment with antidepressant
medication. Furthermore, exposure to uncontrollable aversive
events produces deficiencies in immune system function, resulting in
greater physical ailments, in both animals and people. In people, serial combinations
of uncontrollable aversive events, such as sudden and unexpected
loss of a spouse or child, being laid off from a job, or losing a home to fire,
can result in the feeling that one is powerless and doomed. These feelings of
helplessness can then produce changes, such as decreased interest in life
and increased illness, which further compound the situation. Fortunately,
there are effective treatments for learned helplessness. One solution already
mentioned is antidepressant medication, which may work in part because
it overcomes the physiological changes produced by the helpless experience.
Additionally, therapy to teach effective coping and successful
learning experiences can reverse learned helplessness in people and laboratory
animals.