Learned Helplessness Theory In Psychology (Seligman): Examples & Coping

Key Takeaways

Learned helplessness is a psychological phenomenon in which a person learns that they cannot avoid bad things happening in the future.

This causes a person to stop trying to prevent them. Learned helplessness is often associated with depression.

The Discovery of Learned Helplessness

Learned Helplessness is a phenomenon where repeated exposure to uncontrollable stressors results in people failing to use any methods to control their response to those stressors that are at their disposal in the future.

Essentially, those experiencing learned helplessness are said to learn that they lack behavioral control over the events in their environment, which, in turn, undermines their motivation to make changes or attempt to alter situations.

Seligman described a syndrome with three main features to describe this behavior (1967):

1. A motivational deficit is characterized by a failure to respond when challenged with further aversive events;

2. An associative deficit characterized by impairment of learning from successful coping;

3. An emotional deficit characterized by apparent underreactivity to painful events.

Despite this purported undereactivity to the stressors, later researchers found, through analyzing cortisol levels in the blood, that the animals were in fact very stressed (Ackerman, 2022).

Learned Helplessness and Mental Health

In the 1970s, Seligman extended the concept of learned helplessness from nonhuman animal research to clinical depression in humans and proposed a learned helplessness theory to explain how people become vulnerable to depression.

According to this theory, people who are repeatedly exposed to stressful situations beyond their control develop an inability to make decisions or engage effectively in purposeful behavior.

Subsequently, researchers have noticed that this learned helplessness theory is similar to posttraumatic stress disorder (Ackerman, 2022).

The Role of Explanatory Styles in Learned Helplessness

Although the initial learned helplessness theory was considered to be an important breakthrough in its time, it soon came to be accepted that the theory needed further development to apply to humans, who are more complex than other animals, as it relates to their cognitive processes.

Seligman and colleagues later reformulated the original learned helplessness model of depression (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978).

In their reformulation, they emphasized attributions (i.e., a mental explanation for why something occurred) that lead to the perception that one lacks control over negative outcomes and are important in fostering a sense of learned helplessness.

The explanatory style model of learned helplessness seeks to identify patterns in individual reactions to positive and negative events and occurrences in their lives.

The logic of the model is that when an individual finds themselves in a situation where something has either gone right or wrong, they will ask why.

The answers that that person tends to give when asking themselves that kind of question will dictate whether that person defaults to an optimistic or pessimistic explanatory style (Healy, 2017).

For example, say that a negative event occurs. If someone thinks of the cause of that event as stable or long-lasting — as opposed to temporary — that view could encourage chronic helplessness.

If that person thinks that the cause of the negative event will impact other areas of their life — as opposed to strictly relating to the issue at hand — then the person experiencing the issue may be vulnerable to widespread helplessness.

Finally, if someone decides that they are at fault for what has happened, otherwise known as ascribing an internal as opposed to external cause for the event, then that can have negative implications for self-esteem (Healy, 2017).

Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson (1967) stressed in their writing on explanatory styles that one’s explanatory style will tend to follow a pattern. That means that someone will tend to respond to positive and negative events in consistent, habitual ways.

This can be very advantageous to someone’s well-being if they happen to default to an optimistic explanatory style, but very problematic for those who tend toward pessimism.

In fact, learned helplessness and a pessimistic explanatory style are each linked with the development of depression in individuals (Healy, 2017).

The Optimistic vs. Pessimistic Explanatory Style

The markers of an optimistic explanatory style stand in direct contrast to those signaling their pessimistic counterpart.

For example, while the pessimistic style can view negative circumstances as something that will inevitably persist and positive occurrences as temporary, the optimistic style tends to view negative circumstances as temporary and expects positive occurrences to persist.

Additionally, while the negative explanatory style tends toward self-blame for outcomes that go awry and credit external factors when things go right, the positive style leads to individuals crediting themselves when things go right and identifying external factors as key when things go wrong (Healy, 2017).

Nonetheless, moderation is required in considering the extent to which an optimistic explanatory style is the most beneficial for overcoming learned helplessness.

For example, always defaulting to blaming others or circumstances when things go wrong and always attributing successes as exclusively one’s doing can, while meeting the criteria for the optimistic explanatory style, constitute a problem in itself (Healy, 2017).

Criticisms of Learned Helplessness

Seligman’s original (1967) learned helplessness theory, as well as the reformulations of others, have received a number of criticisms.

Psychologists believe that there is more to depression than learned helplessness. While the symptoms of learned helplessness may mirror those of depression, there is an array of complex neurological and psychological factors underlying the condition.

Indeed, depression may not necessarily arise from a repeat failure.

For example, students may become depressed after repeatedly blaming themselves for chronic school stress and poor exam results.

Additionally, those in learned helplessness experiments have often described their task as skill tasks despite acting as if they were chance tasks.

That is to say, people participating in these learned helplessness experiments, while seemingly behaving as if they have no control over the outcome, have been known to say verbally that they still believe that their effort can influence its outcomes (Ackerman, 2022).

Examples

Learned Helplessness in Education

Learned helplessness is a common subject of interest in the field of education. In particular, educators are interested in how early academic failure or low academic self-esteem can impact later success and how the relationship can be influenced to enhance chances of success (Firmin, Hwang, Copella, & Clark, 2004).

Learned helplessness in students creates a cycle where those who feel they are unable to succeed are unlikely to put effort into schoolwork. This, in turn, decreases their chances of success, leading to even less motivation and effort.

This cycle can culminate in a student having almost no motivation to learn a subject and no competence.

It can even lead to a more generalized sense of helplessness in which the student has no belief in their ability and no motivation to learn any subject at school (Firmin, Hwang, Copella, & Clark, 2004).

Educators have developed a few strategies that can help prevent students from learning to be habitually helpless, such as:

• Providing praise and encouragement based on the student’s abilities to help them believe they are good at these subjects.

• Providing praise and encouragement based on a student’s efforts.

• Working on individual goal-setting with students to help them learn that goals can be achieved and that outcomes can be in their control (Firmin, Hwang, Copella, & Clark, 2004).

Learned Helplessness in Relationships

Learned helplessness is also of interest to researchers focused on domestic violence, as it’s often observed in relationships involving abuse.

The phenomenon of learned helplessness has helped researchers answer questions such as why those who are abused do not tell others, try to get help or leave the relationships (Ackerman, 2022).

Often, in abusive relationships, abusers subject their victims to repeated abuse to acclimatize the victims to the abuse and teach them that they do not have control over the situation.

The abusers, as a result, maintain complete control, and the victims learn that they are helpless about their circumstances (Ackerman, 2022). Often, these perceptions are very difficult to get rid of, often requiring intensive therapy and support (Ackerman, 2022).

Studies of Learned Helplessness in Humans

Although experiments that are as extreme as Seligman’s have not been performed on humans — and would not pass ethically — experiments performed on humans have produced similar outcomes.

In one study of learned helplessness in humans, participants were split into three groups. One group was subjected to a loud and unpleasant noise but was able to end the noise by pressing a button four times, while the second group was subjected to the same noise, but the button was not functional.

Everyone was then given a box with a lever which, when manipulated, would turn off the sound. As in the animal experiments, those who had no control over the noise in the first part tended not even to try to turn the noise off, while the other participants did (Seligman, 1967; Ackerman, 2022).

Learned hopefulness at volunteer organizations

One example of an environment where individuals can learn hopefulness is voluntary organizations. Someone working at an after-school center, tutoring young children in mathematics and Seligman’s may be encouraged to see how their presence leads to students directly developing a better grasp of school material.

This may have run-off effects in other areas of the participant’s life. Zimmerman (1990) conducted a study of how empowered individuals felt after volunteering consistently in such environments, as measured by cognitive, personality, and motivational measures of perceived control.

He found that those who volunteered felt more in control of their own lives and were more likely to attribute their successes to their own actions (Zimmerman, 1990).