Learned helplessness
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Learned helplessness is a psychological condition in which a human or animal has learned to believe that it is helpless. It thinks that it has no control over its situation and that whatever it does is futile. As a result it will stay passive when the situation is unpleasant or harmful and damaging.
It is a well-established principle in psychology, a description of the effect of inescapable punishment (such as electrical shock) on animal (and by extension, human) behaviour. Learned helplessness may also occur in everyday situations where environments in which people experience events in which they feel or actually have no control over what happens to them, such as repeated failure, prison, war, disability, famine and drought may tend to foster learned helplessness. An example involves concentration camp prisoners during the Holocaust, when some prisoners, called Mussulmen, refused to care or fend for themselves. Present-day examples can be found in mental institutions, orphanages, or long-term care facilities where the patients have failed or been stripped of agency for long enough to cause their feelings of inadequacy to persist.
Not all people become depressed as a result of being in a situation where they appear not to have control; in what Seligman called "explanatory style," people in a state of learned helplessness view problems as personal, pervasive, or permanent. That is,
Personal - They may see themselves as the problem; that is, they have internalized the problem.
Pervasive - They may see the problem affecting all aspects of life.
Permanent - They may see the problem as unchangeable.
The concept of "explanatory style" is related to the fundamental attribution error
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Learned helplessness is a psychological condition in which a human or animal has learned to believe that it is helpless. It thinks that it has no control over its situation and that whatever it does is futile. As a result it will stay passive when the situation is unpleasant or harmful and damaging.
It is a well-established principle in psychology, a description of the effect of inescapable punishment (such as electrical shock) on animal (and by extension, human) behaviour. Learned helplessness may also occur in everyday situations where environments in which people experience events in which they feel or actually have no control over what happens to them, such as repeated failure, prison, war, disability, famine and drought may tend to foster learned helplessness. An example involves concentration camp prisoners during the Holocaust, when some prisoners, called Mussulmen, refused to care or fend for themselves. Present-day examples can be found in mental institutions, orphanages, or long-term care facilities where the patients have failed or been stripped of agency for long enough to cause their feelings of inadequacy to persist.
Not all people become depressed as a result of being in a situation where they appear not to have control; in what Seligman called "explanatory style," people in a state of learned helplessness view problems as personal, pervasive, or permanent. That is,
Personal - They may see themselves as the problem; that is, they have internalized the problem.
Pervasive - They may see the problem affecting all aspects of life.
Permanent - They may see the problem as unchangeable.
The concept of "explanatory style" is related to the fundamental attribution error
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