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= Learned helplessness =
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Introduction
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Learned Helplessness is behaviour exhibited by a subject after
enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control. It was
initially thought to be caused from the subject's acceptance of their
powerlessness: 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 actually had it backwards: the brain's default state is to
assume that control is not present, and the presence of "helpfulness"
is what is actually learned.
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 such real or
perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation.
Early key experiments
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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 & Maier: In Part 1 of this study, three
groups of dogs were placed in harnesses. Group 1 dogs were simply put
in a harnesses 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.
In a second experiment later that year with new groups of dogs,
Overmier 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 (curare), and underwent
a procedure similar to that in Part 1 of the Seligman and Maier
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
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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
rarely bothered to do so, yet they 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.
Expanded theories
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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 ("it will never change"), personal ("it's
my fault"), and pervasive ("I can't do anything correctly"), and are
likely to suffer from learned helplessness and depression. Such people
can often be helped to learn a more realistic explanatory style by
cognitive behavioral therapy, a therapy heavily endorsed by Seligman.
Bernard Weiner proposed a detailed account of the attributional
approach to learned helplessness. 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 u'nstable 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
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Research has shown that increased 5-HT (serotonin) activity in the
dorsal raphe nucleus plays a critical role in learned helplessness.
Other key brain regions that are involved with the expression of
helpless behavior include the basolateral amygdala, central nucleus of
the amygdala and
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 (or 5-HT), 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".
Health implications
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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
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Abnormal and cognitive psychologists have found a strong correlation
between depression-like symptoms and learned helplessness in
laboratory animals.
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 also tend to
demonstrate poor job satisfaction and interpersonal relationships in
the workplace. Those with a pessimistic style also tend to have
weakened immune systems, having not only increased vulnerability to
minor ailments (e.g., cold, fever) and major illness (e.g., heart
attack, cancers), but also poorer recovery from health problems.
Social impact
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Learned helplessness can be a factor in a wide range of social
situations.
*In emotionally abusive relationships, the victim often develops
learned helplessness. This occurs when the victim confronts or tries
to leave the abuser only to have the abuser dismiss or trivialize the
victim's feelings, pretend to care but not change, or impede the
victim from leaving .
*The motivational effect of learned helplessness is often seen in the
classroom. Students who repeatedly fail may conclude that they are
incapable of improving their performance, and this attribution keeps
them from trying to succeed, which results in increased helplessness,
continued failure, loss of self-esteem and other social consequences.
*Child abuse by neglect can be a manifestation of learned
helplessness. For example, when parents believe they are incapable of
stopping an infant's crying, they may simply give up trying to do
anything for the child.
*Those who are extremely shy or anxious in social situations may
become passive due to feelings of helplessness . Gotlib and Beatty
(1985) found that people who cite helplessness in social settings may
be viewed poorly by others, which tends to reinforce the passivity.
*Aging individuals may respond with helplessness to the deaths of
friends and family members, the loss of jobs and income, and the
development of age-related health problems. This may cause them to
neglect their medical care, financial affairs, and other important
needs.
*According to Cox et al., Abramson, Devine, and Hollon (2012), learned
helplessness is a key factor in depression that is caused by
inescapable prejudice (i.e., "deprejudice"). Thus: "Helplessness born
in the face of inescapable prejudice matches the helplessness born in
the face of inescapable shocks."
*According to Ruby K. Payne's book 'A Framework for Understanding
Poverty', treatment of the poor can lead to a cycle of poverty, a
culture of poverty, and generational poverty. This type of learned
helplessness is passed from parents to children. People who embrace
this mentality feel there is no way to escape poverty and so one must
live in the moment and not plan for the future, trapping families in
poverty. However, a critique of this type of reasoning would point out
that in many societies ever mounting higher levels of inequality,
lowering wages, rising prices, especially of accommodation and
education and healthcare, mean that to blame those in poverty for
remaining there due to attitudes or beliefs maybe said to be akin go
'taking a piss on someone and telling them it's raining'. Indeed, in
this it could be said that learnt helplessness helps the status quo or
the rising elite share of wealth by a failure to rebel, ask questions,
or refuse to work for peanuts.
Social problems resulting from learned helplessness may seem
unavoidable to those entrenched. However, there are various ways to
reduce or prevent it. When induced in experimental settings, learned
helplessness has been shown to resolve itself with the passage of
time. People can be immunized against the perception that events are
uncontrollable by increasing their awareness of previous experiences,
when they were able to effect a desired outcome. Cognitive therapy can
be used to show people that their actions do make a difference and
bolster their self-esteem.
Extensions
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Cognitive scientist and usability engineer Donald Norman used learned
helplessness to explain why people blame themselves when they have a
difficult time using simple objects in their environment.
The US sociologist Harrison White has suggested in his book 'Identity
and Control' that the notion of learned helplessness can be extended
beyond psychology into the realm of social action. When a culture or
political identity fails to achieve desired goals, perceptions of
collective ability suffer.
Emergence under torture
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In CIA interrogation manuals, learned helplessness is characterized as
"apathy" which may result from prolonged use of coercive techniques
which result in a "debility-dependency-dread" state in the subject,
"If the debility-dependency-dread state is unduly prolonged, however,
the arrestee may sink into a defensive apathy from which it is hard to
arouse him."
External links
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* An
[http://www.noogenesis.com/malama/discouragement/helplessness.html
introductory article on "Learned Helplessness"] at noogenesis.com
* An
[http://www.flyfishingdevon.co.uk/salmon/year2/psy221depression/psy221depression
.htm
in-depth discussion of "Learned Helplessness" with helpful charts and
graphs] at University of Plymouth's "Study and Learning Materials
On-line"
*
* [https://nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Testimonials/v13n2.htm
Scholarly Prowess or Learned Helplessness? The Case of Nazarbayev
Intellectual Schools in Kazakhstan]
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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness