Learned helplessness
Learned helplessness is the behavior exhibited by a subject after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control.
In humans, learned helplessness is related to the concept of self-efficacy, the individual's belief in their innate ability to achieve goals.
Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses may result from a real or perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation.
Foundation of research and theory
It was initially thought to be caused by the subject's acceptance of their powerlessness, by way of their discontinuing attempts to escape or avoid the aversive stimulus, even when such alternatives are unambiguously presented. Upon exhibiting such behavior, the subject was said to have acquired learned helplessness. Over the past few decades, neuroscience has provided insight into learned helplessness and shown that the original theory was the wrong way about—the brain's default state is to assume that control is not present. The presence of control is therefore learned. However, it is unlearned when a subject is faced with prolonged aversive stimulation.Early experiments
American psychologist Martin Seligman initiated research on learned helplessness in 1967 at the University of Pennsylvania as an extension of his interest in depression. This research was later expanded through experiments by Seligman and others. 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. 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 which had previously learned that nothing they did had any effect on simply lay down passively and whined when they were shocked.
In a second experiment later that year with new groups of dogs, Maier and Seligman ruled out the possibility that, instead of learned helplessness, the Group 3 dogs failed to avert in the second part of the test because they had learned some behavior that interfered with "escape". To prevent such interfering behavior, Group 3 dogs were immobilized with a paralyzing drug and underwent a procedure similar to that in Part 1 of the Seligman and Overmier experiment. When tested as before in Part 2, these Group 3 dogs exhibited helplessness as before. This result serves as an indicator for the ruling out of the interference hypothesis.
From these experiments, it was thought that there was to be only one cure for helplessness. In Seligman's hypothesis, the dogs do not try to escape because they expect that nothing they do will stop the shock. 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.
Later experiments
Later experiments have served to confirm the depressive effect of feeling a lack of control over an aversive stimulus. For example, in one experiment, humans performed mental tasks in the presence of distracting noise. Those who could use a switch to turn off the noise performed better than those who could not turn off the noise. Simply being aware of this option was enough to substantially counteract the noise effect. In 2011, an animal study found that animals with control over stressful stimuli exhibited changes in the excitability of certain neurons in the prefrontal cortex. Animals that lacked control failed to exhibit this neural effect and showed signs consistent with learned helplessness and social anxiety. A 1992 study showed that the non-contingency between responses and outcomes when solving chess problems leads to a state of learned helplessness with chess players ranging from weak amateurs to professional players. The effects were proportional to the degree of similarity between the treatment and the task used in the post-test.Expanded theories
Research has found that a human's reaction to feeling a lack of control differs both between individuals and between situations, i.e. learned helplessness sometimes remains specific to one situation but at other times generalizes across situations. Such variations are not explained by the original theory of learned helplessness, and an influential view is that such variations depend on an individual's attributional or explanatory style. According to this view, how someone interprets or explains adverse events affects their likelihood of acquiring learned helplessness and subsequent depression. For example, people with pessimistic explanatory style tend to see negative events as permanent, personal, and pervasive, and are likely to suffer from learned helplessness and depression.In 1978, Lyn Yvonne Abramson, Seligman, Paul and John D. Teasdale reformulated Seligman's & Paul's work, using attribution theory. They proposed that people differed in how they classified negative experiences on three scales, from internal to external, stable to unstable, and from global to specific. They believed that people who were more likely to attribute negative events to internal, stable, and global causes were more likely to become depressed than those who attributed things to causes at the other ends of the scales.
Bernard Weiner proposed a detailed account of the attributional approach to learned helplessness in 1986. His attribution theory includes the dimensions of globality/specificity, stability/instability, and internality/externality:
- A global attribution occurs when the individual believes that the cause of negative events is consistent across different contexts.
- * A specific attribution occurs when the individual believes that the cause of a negative event is unique to a particular situation.
- A stable attribution occurs when the individual believes the cause to be consistent across time.
- * An unstable attribution occurs when the individual thinks that the cause is specific to one point in time.
- An external attribution assigns causality to situational or external factors,
- * while an internal attribution assigns causality to factors within the person.
Neurobiological perspective
bed nucleus of the stria terminalis. Activity in medial prefrontal cortex, dorsal hippocampus, septum and hypothalamus has also been observed during states of helplessness.
In the article, "Exercise, Learned Helplessness, and the Stress-Resistant Brain", Benjamin N. Greenwood and Monika Fleshner discuss how exercise might prevent stress-related disorders such as anxiety and depression. They show evidence that running wheel exercise prevents learned helplessness behaviors in rats. They suggest that the amount of exercise may not be as important as simply exercising at all. The article also discusses the neurocircuitry of learned helplessness, the role of serotonin, and the exercise-associated neural adaptations that may contribute to the stress-resistant brain. However, the authors finally conclude that "The underlying neurobiological mechanisms of this effect, however, remain unknown. Identifying the mechanisms by which exercise prevents learned helplessness could shed light on the complex neurobiology of depression and anxiety and potentially lead to novel strategies for the prevention of stress-related mood disorders".
In developmental psychology the order of various stages of neurobiological development is important. From this perspective there are two different kinds of "helplessness" that appear at different stages of development. In early development, the infant is naturally helpless and must learn "helpfulness" toward mature neurophysiology. The "helplessness" that appears after maturation is what is properly termed "learned helplessness", although some researchers conflate this infantile form of "helplessness" with the pathological, adult, form.
Health implications
People who perceive events as uncontrollable show a variety of symptoms that threaten their mental and physical well-being. They experience stress, they often show disruption of emotions demonstrating passivity or aggressivity, and they can also have difficulty performing cognitive tasks such as problem-solving. They are less likely to change unhealthy patterns of behavior, causing them, for example, to neglect diet, exercise, and medical treatment.Depression
and cognitive psychologists have found a strong correlation between depression-like symptoms and learned helplessness in laboratory animals. Steven Maier, a professor from the University of Colorado, states that a model of depression could be caused by "impaired medial prefrontal cortical inhibitory control over stress-responsive limbic and brainstem structures." Comorbidity between psychological disorders and learned helplessness may be due to stressful events. Maier also mentions depression may not be the only mental illness that this involves, which could link to other mental illnesses. Similarly, the National Institutes of Health, in 2021, looked at a wide range of depressive models. It highlights the learned helplessness model. The model allows one to predict depressive symptoms because of its high rates of overlap with post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder, which is the leading research in the article, "Overlapping neurobiology of learned helplessness and conditioned defeat: Implications for PTSD and mood disorders."Young adults and middle-aged parents with a pessimistic explanatory style often suffer from depression. They tend to be poor at problem-solving and cognitive restructuring and demonstrate poor job satisfaction and interpersonal relationships in the workplace. Those with a pessimistic style can have weakened immune systems. It includes increased vulnerability to minor ailments and major illnesses. It can also cause poorer recovery from health problems.