Learned Helplessness is a phenomenon that occurs when a series of negative outcomes or stressors cause someone to believe that the outcomes of life are out of one’s control. They believe that they are unable to control or change the situation, so they do not try, even when opportunities for change are available. If a person learns that their behavior makes no difference to their aversive environment, they may stop trying to escape from aversive stimuli even when escape is possible.
Psychologists first described learned helplessness in 1967 after a series of experiments on animals, suggesting that their findings could apply to humans. Martin Seligman and Steven F. Maier first identified learned helplessness as a phenomenon in the 1960s. These psychologists conducted experiments on dogs, finding that, when exposed to repeated shocks that they could not control, the animals refrained from taking action when they could prevent the shocks. One of the first was an experiment by Seligman & Overmier: In Part 1 of this study, three groups of dogs were placed in harnesses. Group 1 dogs were simply put in a harness for a period of time and were later released. Groups 2 and 3 consisted of “yoked pairs”. Dogs in Group 2 were given electric shocks at random times, which the dog could end by pressing a lever. Each dog in Group 3 was paired with a Group 2 dog; whenever a Group 2 dog got a shock, its paired dog in Group 3 got a shock of the same intensity and duration, but its lever did not stop the shock. To a dog in Group 3, it seemed that the shock ended at random because it was their paired dog in Group 2 that was causing it to stop. Thus, for Group 3 dogs, the shock was “inescapable”. In Part 2 of the experiment, the same three groups of dogs were tested in a shuttle-box apparatus (a chamber containing two rectangular compartments divided by a barrier a few inches high). All of the dogs could escape shocks on one side of the box by jumping over a low partition to the other side. The dogs in Groups 1 and 2 quickly learned this task and escaped the shock. Most of the Group 3 dogs – which had previously learned that nothing they did had any effect on shocks – simply lay down passively and whined when they were shocked. To change this expectation, experimenters physically picked up the dogs and moved their legs, replicating the actions the dogs would need to take in order to escape from the electrified grid. This had to be done at least twice before the dogs would start willfully jumping over the barrier on their own. In contrast, threats, rewards, and observed demonstrations had no effect on the “helpless” Group 3 dogs. Those kind of experiments are unethical and have been banned since the 1970s.
Learned helplessness leads to increased feelings of stress and depression. For some people, it is linked with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Prof. Martin Seligman, one of the psychologists has detailed three key features:
- becoming passive in the face of trauma
- difficulty learning that responses can control trauma
- an increase in stress levels