Learned helplessness
Apathetic attitude stemming from the conviction that one’s action do not have the power to affect one’s situation
Post by on Saturday, June 19, 2021
 WILLAIM COLOME
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Martin
Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania developed the concept of learned
helplessness in the 1960s and 1970s. He found that animals receiving electric
shocks, which they had no ability to prevent or avoid, were unable to act in
subsequent situations where avoidance or escape was possible. Extending the
ramifications of these findings to humans, Seligman and his colleagues found
that human motivation to initiate responses is also undermined by a lack of
control over one’s surroundings. Further research has shown that learned
helplessness disrupts normal development and learning and leads to emotional
disturbances, especially depression.
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Learned
helplessness in humans can begin very early in life if infants see no
correlation between actions and their outcome. Institutionalized infants, as
well as those suffering from maternal deprivation or inadequate mothering, are
especially at risk for learned helplessness due to the lack of adult responses
to their actions. It is also possible for mothers who feel helpless to pass
this quality on to their children. Learned helplessness in children, as in adults,
can lead to anxiety or depression, and it can be especially damaging very early
in life, for the sense of mastery over one’s environment is an important foundation
for future emotional development.
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Learned
helplessness can also hamper education: a child who fails repeatedly in school
will eventually stop trying, convinced that there is nothing he or she can do
to succeed. In the course of studying learned helplessness in humans, it tends
to be associated with certain ways of thinking about events that form what he
termed a person’s ‘explanatory style.’
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The
three major components of explanatory style associated with learned
helplessness are permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization. Permanence
refers to the belief that negative events and/or their causes are permanent,
even when evidence, logic, and past experience indicate that they are probably
temporary (‘Amy hates me and will never be my friend again’ vs. ‘Amy is angry
with me today’; ‘I’ll never be good at math’). Pervasiveness refers to the tendency
to generalize so that negative features of one situation are thought to extend
to others as well (‘I’m stupid’ vs. ‘I failed a math test’ or ‘nobody likes me’
vs. ‘Janet didn’t invite me to her party’). Personalization, the third
component of explanatory style, refers to whether one tends to attribute
negative events to one’s own flaws or to outside circumstances or other people.
While it is important to take responsibility for one’s mistakes, persons suffering
from learned helplessness tend to blame themselves for everything, a tendency
associated with low self-esteem and depression. The other elements of
explanatory style—permanence and pervasiveness—can be used as gauges to assess
whether the degree of self-blame over a particular event or situation is
realistic and appropriate.
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It
is possible to change people’s explanatory styles to replace learned helplessness
with ‘learned optimism.’ To combat (or even prevent) learned helplessness in
both adults and children, there are successfully used techniques similar to
those used in cognitive therapy with persons suffering from depression. These
include identifying negative interpretations of events, evaluating their
accuracy, generating more accurate interpretations, and decatastrophizing (countering
the tendency to imagine the worst possible consequences for an event). Also devised
exercises to help children overcome negative explanatory style (one that tends
toward permanent, pervasive, and personalized responses to negative situations)
can be used to address learned helplessness. Other resources for promoting
learned optimism in children include teaching them to dispute their own
negative thoughts and promoting their problem solving and social skills.
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Parents
can also promote learned optimism in children who are too young for the types
of techniques outlined above by applauding and encouraging their mastery of new
situations and letting them have as much control as possible in everyday
activities such as dressing and eating. In addition, parents influence the
degree of optimism in their youngsters through their own attitudes toward life
and their explanatory styles, which can be transmitted even to very young
children.
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(Excerpt
from: William Colome ‘Coping Human Helplessness’)
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