They come to believe that they are unable to control or change the situation, so they do not try — even when opportunities for change become available. Psychologists first described learned helplessness in after a series of experiments in animals, and they suggested that their findings could apply to humans.
Learned helplessness leads to increased feelings of stress and depression. For some people, it is linked with post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD. In this article, we explore the state of learned helplessness and suggest some ways to overcome it.
According to the American Psychological Association , learned helplessness occurs when someone repeatedly faces uncontrollable, stressful situations, then does not exercise control when it becomes available. Once a person having this experience discovers that they cannot control events around them, they lose motivation. Even if an opportunity arises that allows the person to alter their circumstances, they do not take action.
Martin Seligman, one of the psychologists credited with defining learned helplessness, has detailed three key features :. In , Prof. Seligman and Prof. Steven F. Maier first described their theory of learned helplessness. The researchers conducted studies on dogs, in which they exposed the animals to a series of electric shocks.
The dogs that could not control the shocks eventually showed signs of depression and anxiety. Those that could press a lever to stop the shocks did not. In follow-up research, the dogs that could not control the shocks in the first experiment did not even try to avoid the shocks, despite the fact that they could have done so by jumping over a barrier. They had learned to become helpless. Many years later, however, Prof. Maier conducted neuroscientific research that suggested that the dogs did not, in fact, learn helplessness — instead, they had not learned control.
In adults, learned helplessness presents as a person not using or learning adaptive responses to difficult situations. People in this state typically accept that bad things will happen and that they have little control over them.
They are unsuccessful in resolving issues even when there is a potential solution. If this occurs regularly, the state of learned helplessness may persist into adulthood. Children with a history of prolonged abuse and neglect, for example, can develop learned helplessness and feelings of powerlessness.
Some characteristics of learned helplessness in children include:. In childhood, learned helplessness often presents at school. If a child studies hard in order to do well in their schoolwork, but ultimately does poorly, they may feel helpless and hopeless.
People then fail to seek out options that may help which then contributes to greater feelings of helplessness and anxiety. So what explains why some people develop learned helplessness and others do not? Why is it specific to some situations but more global in others? Attribution or explanatory styles may also play a role in determining how people are impacted by learned helplessness.
This view suggests that an individual's characteristic style of explaining events helps determine whether or not they will develop learned helplessness. A pessimistic explanatory style is associated with a greater likelihood of experiencing learned helplessness. People with this explanatory style tend to view negative events as being inescapable and unavoidable and tend to take personal responsibility for such negative events. So what can people do to overcome learned helplessness? Research suggests that learned helplessness can be successfully decreased, particularly if intervention occurs during early onset.
Long-term learned helplessness can also be reduced, although it may require longer-term effort. Therapy can be effective in reducing symptoms of learned helplessness. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a form of psychotherapy that can be beneficial in overcoming the thinking and behavioral patterns that contribute to learned helplessness.
The goal of CBT is to help patients identify negative thought patterns that contribute to feelings of learned helplessness and then replace these thoughts with more optimistic and rational thoughts. This process often involves carefully analyzing what you are thinking, actively challenging these ideas, and disputing negative thought patterns. One animal study suggested that exercise may be helpful in reducing symptoms of learned helplessness.
Learned helplessness can have a profound impact on mental health and well-being. People who experience learned helplessness are also likely to experience symptoms of depression , elevated stress levels, and less motivation to take care of their physical health.
Not everyone responds to experiences the same way. Some people are more likely to experience learned helplessness in the face of uncontrollable events, often due to biological and psychological factors.
Children raised by helpless parents, for example, are also more likely to experience learned helplessness. If you feel that learned helplessness might be having a negative impact on your life and health, consider talking to your doctor about steps you can take to address this type of thinking.
Further evaluation can lead to an accurate diagnosis and treatment that can help you replace your negative thought patterns with more positive ones. Such treatment may allow you to replace feelings of learned helplessness with a sense of learned optimism instead.
Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter. Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience. Psychol Rev. American Psychological Association. Learned helplessness. Nuvvula S. Contemp Clin Dent. Seligman ME. Annu Rev Med. Vollmayr B, Gass P. Learned helplessness: unique features and translational value of a cognitive depression model. Cell Tissue Res. Learned helplessness in social situations. J Pers Soc Psychol.
Cognitive-motivational characteristics of children varying in reading ability: Evidence for learned helplessness in poor readers. Journal of Educational Psychology. Overlapping neurobiology of learned helplessness and conditioned defeat: implications for PTSD and mood disorders. Learned helplessness, test anxiety, and academic achievement: a longitudinal analysis. Child Dev. Peterson C, Park C. Learned helplessness and explanatory style. Self-esteem is particularly susceptible to learned helplessness.
Research findings imply that individuals who experience noncontingent outcomes may become increasingly likely to display the helpless pattern. An early question in the human learned helplessness literature was whether or not helplessness actually generalized from one situation to another, as it did in animals.
This was crucial to the advancement of the theory. These findings continue to support the idea of helplessness as a coherent set of deficits, rather than simply a task-specific problem. Individuals who demonstrate helpless patterns make statements suggesting that they believe themselves to be personally responsible for failure, to attribute their failures to stable circumstances, and to state that these characteristics encompass their whole selves. In other words, they seem to believe that they have failed because they are stupid, they are going to remain stupid, and everything they do is stupid—controllability, cognitions, and behavior.
Critics suggested that perhaps it is adaptive for an individual to stop responding in the face of failure and that failure to solve the problem, not uncontrollability, underlies the helplessness phenomenon. To test this idea, Kofta and Sedek set up an experiment that separated uncontrollability from failure. They demonstrated that, whereas failure resulted in decreased mood, it was the condition of uncontrollability that resulted in task performance deficits.
Their data support the idea that participants can distinguish uncontrollability and failure and that passivity as a behavior is a deficit, rather than an appropriate response. In , Villanova and Peterson conducted a meta-analysis of the literature on learned helplessness in humans. Meta-analysis is a statistical procedure that combines data from many different studies.
Findings suggest not only that humans tend to reliably demonstrate deficits in subsequent performance after failures, but also that the magnitude of this tendency is relatively robust. Furthermore, these findings appear to be consistent across age, gender, and type of task. Evidence of generality is surprising, considering that many researchers believed that certain types of people e.
Carol Dweck and colleagues have studied the presence of helplessness deficits in children, finding evidence that children as young as 4 and 5 are susceptible. They demonstrate many of the same characteristics as older children and adults. Children exhibiting this pattern have difficulty acquiring and demonstrating cognitive skills in the face of adversity.
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