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In 1967, psychologist Martin Seligman performed an experiment on dogs by shocking them with electricity which appeared to start and stop at random. After the dogs were conditioned, he put the dogs into a box with a divider in the middle. The expectation was that the dogs would jump the divider in order to escape the shock.

But, interestingly enough, that's not what happened - most of the dogs just laid there, whined, and took the shock. In other words, they didn't even try to escape it, even when they could.

Learned helplessness shuttlebox

In part two of the Seligman and Maier experiment, these three groups of dogs were tested in a shuttle-box apparatus, in which the dogs could escape electric shocks by jumping over a low partition. For the most part, the Group 3 dogs, who had previously "learned" that nothing they did had any effect on the shocks, simply lay down passively and whined. Even though they could have easily escaped the shocks, the dogs didn't try...

However, not all of the dogs in Seligman's experiments became helpless. Of the roughly 150 dogs in experiments in the latter half of the 1960s, about one-third did not become helpless, but instead managed to find a way out of the unpleasant situation despite their past experience with it. The corresponding characteristic in humans has been found to correlate highly with optimism: an explanatory style that views the situation as other than personal, pervasive, or permanent. This distinction between people who adapt and those who break down under long-term psychological pressure was also studied in the 1950s in the context of brainwashing...

There are several aspects of human helplessness that have no counterpart among other animals. One of the most intriguing aspects is "vicarious learning (or modelling)": that people can learn to be helpless through observing another person encountering uncontrollable events... Learned helplessness can contribute to poor health when people neglect diet, exercise, and medical treatment, falsely believing they have no power to change. The more people perceive events as uncontrollable and unpredictable, the more stress they experience, and the less hope they feel about making changes in their lives...

Learned helplessness can also be a motivational problem. Individuals who have failed at tasks in the past conclude erroneously that they are incapable of improving their performance.[21] This might set children behind in academic subjects and dampen their social skills.

Children with learned helplessness typically fail academic subjects, and are less intrinsically motivated than others. They may use learned helplessness as an excuse or a shield to provide self-justification for school failure. Additionally, describing someone as having learned to be helpless can serve as a reason to avoid blaming him or her for the inconveniences experienced. In turn, the student will give up trying to gain respect or advancement through academic performance.

Learned Helplessness

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Original posting by Braincrave Second Life staff on Apr 14, 2011 at http://www.braincrave.com/viewblog.php?id=529

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