Learned Helplessness

Learned helplessness is the behavior exhibited by a subject after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control. It was initially thought to be caused by 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.^[rx][rx] Over the past few decades, neuroscience has provided insight into learned helplessness and shown that the original theory had it backward: the brain’s default state is to assume that control is not present, and the presence of “helpfulness” is what is learned first. However, it is unlearned when a subject is faced with prolonged aversive stimulation.^[rx]

The concept of learned helplessness is a cornerstone of many important theories and ideas in psychology, and it’s the basis for several foundational concepts in positive psychology.

Even outside the field of psychology, it’s pretty widely understood.

It provides an explanation for some human behaviors that might seem odd or counterproductive, and understanding learned helplessness provides pathways to removing or reducing its negative impacts.

Learned helplessness was discovered through some well-known laboratory experiments that you might have learned about in a Psychology 101 class. Those experiments were conducted using methods that likely would horrify any reasonable member of an institutional review board today.

Although it has been about 50 years since learned helplessness became a well-understood psychological theory, it still looms large in the field. If you’re interested in learning more about this important concept, you’ve come to the right place. This article will cover what learned helplessness is, what impact it can have on a person’s life, how to neutralize or reverse that impact, and how to measure one’s degree of learned helplessness.

What Is Learned Helplessness?

Learned helplessness is a phenomenon observed in both humans and other animals when they have been conditioned to expect pain, suffering, or discomfort without a way to escape it (Cherry, 2017). Eventually, after enough conditioning, the animal will stop trying to avoid the pain at all—even if there is an opportunity to truly escape it.

When humans or other animals start to understand (or believe) that they have no control over what happens to them, they begin to think, feel, and act as if they are helpless.

This phenomenon is called learned helplessness because it is not an innate trait. No one is born believing that they have no control over what happens to them and that it is fruitless even to try gaining control. It is a learned behavior, conditioned through experiences in which the subject either truly has no control over his circumstances or simply perceives that he has no control.

Martin Seligman’s Experiments That Led to the Theory

The initial experiments that formed the basis for this theory were conducted in the late 1960s and early 1970s by psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier.

These experiments will be described in detail below. Please note that some readers may find the descriptions upsetting—such experiments were more commonplace in the ’60s and ’70s, but they would likely meet lots of resistance from activists and the general public today.

Seligman and Maier were working with dogs at the time and testing their responses to electrical shocks. Some of the dogs received electrical shocks that they could not predict or control.

For this experiment, the dogs were placed in a box with two chambers divided by a low barrier. One chamber had an electrified floor and the other was not (Cherry, 2017).

When the researchers placed dogs in the box and turned on the electrified floor, they noticed a strange thing: Some dogs didn’t even attempt to jump over the low barrier to the other side. Further, the dogs who didn’t attempt to jump the barrier were generally the dogs who had previously been given shocks with no way to escape them, and the dogs who jumped the barrier tended to be those who had not received such treatment.

To further investigate this phenomenon, Seligman and Maier gathered a new batch of dogs and divided them into three groups:

1. Dogs in Group One were strapped into harnesses for a period of time and were not administered any shocks;
2. Dogs in Group Two were strapped into the same harnesses but were administered electrical shocks that they could avoid by pressing a panel with their noses;
3. Dogs in Group Three were placed in the same harnesses and also administered electrical shocks, but were given no way to avoid them.

Once these three groups had completed this first experimental manipulation, all dogs were placed (one at a time) in the box with two chambers. Dogs from Group One and Group Two were quick to figure out that they only needed to jump over the barrier to avoid the shocks, but most of the dogs from Group Three didn’t even attempt to avoid them.

Based on their previous experience, these dogs concluded that there was nothing they could do to avoid being shocked (Seligman & Groves, 1970).

Once these results had been confirmed with dogs, Seligman and Maier conducted similar experiments on rats. Just as they did with dogs, the researchers split the rats into three groups for training: One group received escapable shocks, one received inescapable shocks, and one received no shocks at all.

The rats in the group that received escapable shocks were able to avoid shocks by pressing a lever in the box, while those in the group receiving inescapable shocks could press the lever, but would still receive shocks (Seligman & Beagley, 1975).

Later, the rats were placed in a box and received electrical shocks. A lever was present within the box that, when pressed, would allow the rats to escape the shocks.

Again, rats who were initially placed in the inescapable shock group generally did not even attempt to escape, while most of those rats in the other two groups succeeded in escaping.

The rats who did not attempt to escape were showing behavior that is classic to learned helplessness: even when presented with a potential option to avoid pain, they do not attempt to take it.

This phenomenon can also be seen in elephants. When an elephant trainer starts working with a baby elephant, he or she will use a rope to tie one of the elephant’s legs to a post. The elephant will struggle for hours, even days, trying to escape the rope, but eventually, it will quiet down and accept its range of motion (Wu, 2009).

When the elephant grows up, it will be more than strong enough to break the rope, but it won’t even try—it’s been taught that any kind of struggle is useless.

Examples of Learned Helplessness in Humans

Such extreme experiments have not been performed on humans (nor should they), the experiments that have been conducted on humans have produced similar outcomes. Although the human response to such situations may be more complex and dependent on several different factors, it still resembles the responses of dogs, rats, and other animals.

One study of learned helplessness in humans was conducted in 1974. In that study, the human participants were split into three groups: One group was subjected to a loud and unpleasant noise but was able to terminate the noise by pressing a button four times; the second group was subjected to the same noise, but the button was not functional; and the third group was subjected to no noise at all.

Later, all human participants were subjected to a loud noise and given a box with a lever which, when manipulated, would turn off the sound. Just like in the animal experiments, those who had no control over the noise in the first part of the experiment generally did not even try to turn the noise off, while the rest of the subjects generally figured out how to turn the noise off very quickly.

Seligman and colleagues proposed that subjecting participants to situations in which they have no control results in three deficits: motivational, cognitive, and emotional (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978). The cognitive deficit refers to the subject’s idea that his circumstances are uncontrollable. The motivational deficit refers to the subject’s lack of response to potential methods of escaping a negative situation.

Finally, the emotional deficit refers to the depressed state arises when the subject is in a negative situation that he feels is not under his control.

Based on his research, Seligman found an important connection: the link between learned helplessness and depression.

Learned Helplessness and Depression

To understand the proposed connection between learned helplessness and depression, we need to understand the two types of learned helplessness, as outlined by Seligman and colleagues.

Universal helplessness is a sense of helplessness in which the subject believes nothing can be done about the situation she is in. She believes no one can alleviate the pain or discomfort.

On the other hand, personal helplessness is a much more localized sense of helplessness. The subject may believe others could find a solution or avoid the pain or discomfort, but he believes that he, personally, is incapable of finding a solution (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978).

Both types of helplessness can lead to a state of depression, but the quality of that depression may differ. Those who feel universally helpless will tend to find external reasons for both their problems and their inability to solve them, while those who feel personally helpless will tend to find internal reasons.

In addition, those who feel personally helpless are more likely to suffer from low self-esteem since they believe others could probably solve the problems they feel incapable of solving.

Although the cognitive and motivational deficits are the same for people suffering from both personal and universal helplessness, people experiencing personal helplessness tend to have a greater and more impactful emotional deficit.

In addition to this differentiation between types of helplessness, learned helplessness can on two other factors: generality (global vs. specific) and stability (chronic vs. transient).

When a person suffers from global helplessness, they experience negative impacts in several areas of life, not just the most relevant area. They are also more likely to experience severe depression than those who experience specific helplessness.

Further, those suffering from chronic helplessness (those who have felt helpless over a long period of time) are more likely to feel the effects of depressive symptoms than those who experience transient helplessness (a short-lived and nonrecurrent sense of helplessness).

This model of learned helplessness has important implications for depression. It posits that when highly desired outcomes are believed to be improbable and/or highly aversive outcomes are believed probable, and the individual has no expectation that anything she does will change the outcome, depression results.

However, the depression will vary based on the type of helplessness. The range of depressive symptoms will depend on the generality and stability of the helplessness, and any impact on self-esteem is dependent on how the individual explains or attributes their experience (internally vs. externally).

This proposed framework identifies the cause of at least one type of depression—that which stems from helplessness—and provides the path to a cure for it. The researchers outlined four strategies for treating helplessness-related depression (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978):

1. Change the likelihood of the outcome. Alter the environment by increasing the likelihood of desired events and decreasing the likelihood of negative events;
2. Reduce the desire for preferred outcomes. This can be done by either reducing the negativity of events that are outside the individual’s control or by reducing the desirability of events that are extremely unlikely to happen;
3. Change the individual’s expectation from uncontrollability to controllability when the desired outcomes are attainable. In other words, help the depressed person realize when the outcomes they desire are actually within their control;
4. Change unrealistic explanations for failure toward those that are external (not due to some inherent flaw in the depressed person himself), transient (not chronic), and specific (due to one specific problem rather than a larger pattern of problems). Likewise, change unrealistic explanations for success to those that are internal (due to some inherent strength in the depressed person), stable (chronic), and global (due to an overall competence rather than a specific area of competence).

These strategies will be covered in more detail later.

It’s Likely to Be Associated With

Learned helplessness is, unsurprisingly, associated with many negative symptoms, traits, and tendencies, including:

• Age: The older one’s age, the more likely they are to experience change or loss of roles and physical decline. Residing in an institution is also linked to learned helplessness (Foy & Mitchell, 1990);
• Stress, especially poverty-related stress (Brown, Seyler, Knorr, Garnett, & Laurenceau, 2016);
• Anxiety and worry, specifically about tests for students (Raufelder, Regner, & Wood, 2018);
• A greater negative response to anticipated pain (Strigo, Simmons, Matthews, Craig, & Paulus, 2008).

It’s Most Likely to Promote

Not only is learned helplessness often associated with other negative conditions, but it also seems to contribute to or cause many negative outcomes, including:

• Negative health symptoms as well as negative emotions about one’s disease (Nowicka-Sauer, Hajduk, Kujawska-Danecka, Banaszkiewicz, Czuszyńska, Smoleńska, & Siebert, 2017);
• Maladaptive perfectionism (Filippello, Larcan, Sorrenti, Buzzai, Orecchio, & Costa, 2017);
• Turnover intentions (Tayfur, Karapinar, & Camgoz, 2013);
• Burnout, or emotional exhaustion and cynicism (Tayfur et al., 2013);
• Aggravated depression, anxiety, phobias, shyness, and loneliness in those already suffering (Cherry, 2017).

Learned Helplessness in Education

The topic of learned helplessness comes up quite regularly in the education field.

There’s quite a bit of interest 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.

Learned helplessness in students creates a vicious cycle. Those who feel that they are unable to succeed are unlikely to put much effort into their schoolwork, which decreases their chances of success, leading to even less motivation and effort (Catapano, n.d.).

This vicious cycle may culminate in a student having virtually no motivation to learn a subject and no competence in that subject. Even worse, it could lead to a more generalized sense of helplessness in which the student has no belief in her ability and no motivation to learn any subject at school.

The reasons students give to explain their failure or success is critical in school. If a student believes he failed because the teacher hates him or he’s simply stupid, he is blaming factors that are not within his control and is likely to develop a greater sense of helplessness.

If a student believes she failed because she didn’t study hard enough, she is blaming factors that are within her control, which is much less likely to lead to an overall sense of helplessness related to school.

Luckily, there are a few strategies that can help prevent students from learning to be habitually helpless, including:

• Teachers providing praise and encouragement based on the student’s abilities (e.g., “You’re good at math” or “You have a knack for this subject, I can tell”) to help them believe they are good at these tasks or subjects;
• Teachers providing praise and encouragement based on the student’s efforts (e.g., “Your hours of hard work paid off on this test!”) to help them believe their effort will make a difference;
• Working on smart, individual goal-setting with students to help them learn that goals can be achieved and that outcomes are often within their realm of influence (Catapano, n.d.).

In addition, Edutopia’s Andrew Miller (2015) suggests a few very important strategies for teachers and parents:

• Curate and create learning resources (which include people, books, websites, and community organizations, among other resources) to help students become comfortable with not knowing the answer and with looking for the answer in the right places;
• Use questions for learning rather than about learning (e.g., use questions that encourage the student to think about his own learning and thought patterns instead of just thinking about what he knows);
• Stop giving students the answers. Instead, help them learn it at their own pace and through their own methods—they’ll be more likely to remember it this way!
• Allow them to fail. Failing and trying again is vital for children—as long as you are there to support them when they fail.

In addition to these strategies, later on in this piece we’ll discuss some insights into treating or “curing” learned helplessness that can be applied to students.

Social impact

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. As the situation continues and the abuse gets worse, the victim will begin to give up and show signs of this learned helplessness.^[rx] This often results in a traumatic bonding with ones victimizer, as in Stockholm syndrome or Battered woman syndrome.
• Complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
• According to Gregory Bateson’s theory of schizophrenia, the disorder is a pattern of learned helplessness in people habitually caught in double binds in childhood. In such cases, the double bind is presented continually and habitually within the family context from infancy on. By the time the child is old enough to have identified the double bind situation, it has already been internalized, and the child is unable to confront it. The solution then is to create an escape from the conflicting logical demands of the double bind, in the world of the delusional system (see in Towards a Theory of Schizophrenia – Illustrations from Clinical Data).
• 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. This becomes a pattern that will spiral downward if it continues to go untreated.^[rx][rx]
• 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. This learned helplessness will negatively impact both the parent and child.^[rx]
• 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 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.^[rx]
• 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”).^[rx] Thus: “Helplessness born in the face of inescapable prejudice matches the helplessness born in the face of inescapable shocks.”^[rx]
• 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.^[rx]

Learned Helplessness in Relationships and Domestic Violence

In addition to education, learned helplessness comes up often for people focused on domestic violence. It’s often observed in relationships and in victims of domestic violence.

In fact, this phenomenon has helped us find an answer to some of the questions people have for victims who stay with their abusers, such as:

• Why didn’t they tell someone?
• Why didn’t they try to get help?
• Why didn’t they just leave?

It’s hard to explain the impact of abuse on the victim’s behavior. After all, observers might think it makes no sense that victims choose to stay with someone who is hurting them.

However, in cases of domestic violence and abuse, abusers often administer a series of “electrical shocks” (i.e., the form of abuse they subject their victims to) to acclimatize the victims to the abuse and teach them that they do not have control over the situation. The abusers maintain complete control, and the victims learn that they are helpless about their circumstances.

In such cases, it is easy to see how abuse can lead to learned helplessness, which can subsequently lead to a lack of motivation or effort to escape on the victim’s part. Just as the dogs in Seligman and Maier’s experiments learned that no matter what they did, they would be shocked, the victims of domestic violence and abuse learn that no matter what they do, they will always remain powerless and under the abusers’ control.

These perceptions are incredibly hard to shake, often requiring intensive therapy and support in order to shake them.

Based on learned helplessness, a specific theory was developed for victims of domestic violence called the theory of cyclic abuse, a cycle that is sometimes known as battered women syndrome. In this theory, a relationship in which domestic violence has occurred is likely to continually involve violence that’s doled out in a predictable and repetitious pattern.

This pattern generally follows this structure:

1. Stage One: a period of tension-building in which the abuser starts to get angry, communication breaks down, and the victim feels the need to concede and submit to the abuser;
2. Stage Two: the acting-out period, in which the abuse occurs;
3. Stage Three: the honeymoon period, in which the abuser may apologize, show remorse, and/or try to make up for the abuse. The abuser might also promise never to abuse the victim again or, alternatively, blame the victim for provoking the abuse;
4. Stage Four: the calm period, in which the abuse stops, the abuser acts like it never happened, and the victim may start to believe the abuse has ended and the abuser will change (Rakovec-Felser, 2014).

Viewed from this perspective, it’s not surprising that many victims of domestic violence develop learned helplessness. When the abuse is inflicted upon them in a continuing cycle, no matter what they do, they are likely to feel completely helpless and unable to avoid the abuse.

The theory of cyclic abuse posits that not only will abuse victims feel helpless, they will also:

• Re-experience the battering as if it were recurring even when it is not;
• Attempt to avoid the psychological impact of battering by avoiding activities, people, and emotions;
• Experience hyperarousal or hypervigilance;
• Have disrupted interpersonal relationships;
• Experience body image distortion or other somatic concerns;
• Develop sexuality and intimacy issues (Rakovec-Felser, 2014).

Clearly, learned helplessness is a serious and urgent concern for victims of domestic violence and other abuse. Luckily, there are some ways to treat learned helplessness (see the section on treatments).

A Possible Cure—Potential Treatments for Children and Adults

While learned helplessness can be hard to overcome, there exist promising treatments to address it in humans (and in other animals, for that matter).

One potential treatment based on neuroscience research is the relationship between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (a part of the brain that plays a role in the inhibition of emotional responses) and the dorsal raphe nucleus (a part of the brainstem associated with serotonin and depression) and learned helplessness (Maier & Seligman, 2016).

This potential treatment may focus on stimulating the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and inhibiting the dorsal raphe nucleus through medication, electrical stimulation, or trans-magnetic stimulation, or psychologically through therapy.

Trans-magnetic stimulation (TMS) in particular has been shown in recent studies to be quite effective in the treatment of depression (Mayo Clinic, 2017). Given the link between learned helplessness and depression, it makes sense to think that a treatment for one may be an effective treatment for the other.

Speaking of effective treatments for depression, therapy is also a good choice for people struggling with learned helplessness. Those who feel helpless can benefit from working with a licensed mental health professional to explore the origins of their helplessness, replace old and harmful beliefs with newer and healthier beliefs, and develop a healing sense of compassion for themselves (Thompson, 2010).

Insightful research from psychologist Carol Dweck (the researcher who went on to propose the theory of growth vs. fixed mindset) showed that there is another extremely effective way to alleviate learned helplessness: through failure.

In Dweck’s 1975 study on the subject, participants (who all experienced extreme reactions to failure) were split into two groups: one received intensive training in which they failed tasks and were instructed to take responsibility for their failure and attribute it to a lack of effort, while the other group received intensive training in which they only experienced success.

The results showed that those in the success-only treatment group showed no improvement in their extreme reactions to failure, while the group that failed showed a marked improvement.

This experiment was one of several studies throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s that laid the foundation for a new theory of human behavior related to failure, learned helplessness, and resilience.

Seligman’s Learned Optimism Model

Seligman—one of the researchers who helped discover the learned helplessness phenomenon—later found his attention drawn to what is perhaps the complete opposite of learned helplessness: optimism.

Although Seligman’s name was synonymous with learned helplessness for many years, he knew he had a lot more to offer the world. His work on the subject led him to wonder what other mindsets and perspectives can be learned and whether people could develop positive traits instead of developing feelings of helplessness.

Seligman’s research led him to create the model of learned optimism. He found that, through resilience training, people can learn to develop a more optimistic perspective. This ability has been observed in children, teachers, members of the military, and more (Seligman, 2011).

It might not be as easy to learn optimism as it is to learn helplessness, but it can be done. If you’re interested in learning more about optimism and how it can be learned, check out Seligman’s book Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life at this link. In addition to getting a brief overview of the research on this subject, you will also read about several simple techniques you can apply to develop a more positive and self-compassionate explanatory style.

Relevant Tests, Scales, and Questionnaires

Although many people have included measures of learned helplessness in their studies, they are often informal measures. However, there are two measures that have been used fairly often and/or recently.

The Learned Helplessness Scale (LHS) was developed by Quinless and Nelson (1988) to capture and calculate a score for learned helplessness. The scale is composed of 20 items rated on a scale from 1 (strongly agree) to 4 (strongly disagree). The minimum score on this measure is 20 and the maximum score is 80, with higher scores indicating a greater degree of learned helplessness.

The Learned Helplessness Questionnaire (LHQ) was created in Sorrenti and colleagues’ 2014 study on learned helplessness and mastery orientation. The LHQ consists of 13 items rated on a scale from 1 (not true) to 5 (absolutely true), for a total possible score between 13 and 65. An example item from this scale is the statement, “When you encounter an obstacle in schoolwork you get discouraged and stop trying. You are easily frustrated.”

If you’d like to use any of these scales for research purposes, please refer to the original scale development article for more information.

Methods for unlearning learned helplessness

At the root of it, learned helplessness is a form of conditioning. Conditioning is based on the idea that human behavior is learned via associations and responses in the environment. Simply put: If something is reinforced/rewarded, we are more likely to repeat that behavior again. And likewise, if we are punished, we’re more likely to avoid that same behavior in the future.

Unlearning this association and deconditioning the response takes just a little bit of practice. In the sections that follow we’ll focus on how to reverse this way of thinking/behaving so that you can grow positively and be motivated in taking risks and trying new things out.

Method 1: Adopt an optimistic explanatory style

You need to first identify your characteristic explanatory style. This refers to how you explain the events that happen in your day to day. The patterns of this are tightly linked to learned helplessness. It all comes down to differences in optimism vs. pessimism.

First, take this survey adapted from Dr. Seligman’s book, Learned Optimism. This will tell you your baseline explanatory style. Don’t read on until you’ve finished the survey and gotten your results. We’ll explain what they mean below.

Done? Got your results? Okay great. Your final output should look something like this:

Before diving into your results though, we’ll walk through the different features of the assessment.

The main goal in unlearning learned helplessness is to adopt a more optimistic explanatory style.

Psychologists believe that you can change learned helplessness behavior by changing the way you look at the causes of events in your life. This is known as something called attributional style or explanatory style. Your attributional style can be categorized in three ways:

• Internal vs. external (Personal)
  • This is how you explain the cause of an event, and where you attribute the “responsibility”. A person who classifies an event as internal will see themself as the cause, rather than an external factor. For example, “I’m terrible at public speaking”(internal), as opposed to “people in the crowd always distract me by talking so I can never give a good presentation” (external)
• Stable vs. temporary (Permanent)
  • This is the explanation of the lifespan of an event and whether the experience of the event will have permanent effects or not. Example: “I always get laughed at whenever I speak up in a meeting. It’s happened to me since grade school” (stable), as opposed to “I didn’t get enough sleep last night and my colleagues laughed at me when I mixed up a couple words when I spoke up about something today but it was only because I was tired and wasn’t thinking clearly”. (temporary)
• Global vs. specific (Pervasive)
  • This is how we explain the context of an event; whether the situation is consistent across all environments or specific to one environment. For example, “I don’t enjoy meeting people at meet-ups” (global), as opposed to “I didn’t really enjoy chatting with the people at the last meet-up we went to” (specific).

Pessimists fall into patterns of learned helplessness by seeing personal situations as:

• Internally related:
  • “Something is wrong with me …”
  • “I’m never good at … ”
• Stable and long-lasting:
  • “This will happen again, I know it …”
  • “I’m doomed to repeat this again …”
• Global and all-encompassing:
  • “I will botch all my pitches …”
  • “This screw-up will be everywhere …”

Optimists avoid patterns of learned helplessness by seeing personal situations as:

• Externally related:
  • “I didn’t get enough sleep so I wasn’t thinking as clearly as normal …”
  • “My business partners missed a key point …”
• Temporary and short-lived:
  • “This is probably a one-off occurrence …”
  • “It happened once, but who knows what’ll happen in the future …”
• Situation-specific:
  • “My weakness is in this one area, not all …”
  • “This setback is only related to X not Y …”

Now let’s go back to your personal results table. It shows you your style of optimism vs. pessimism for good/bad events based off of these three explanatory styles:

Personalization

• Personalization bad score: Optimistic score here means you blame bad events on external causes rather than continuously blaming yourself.
• Personalization good score: Optimistic score here means you internalize positive events instead of externalizing them.

Permanence

• Permanence bad score: Optimistic score here indicates that you view bad events as temporary and tend to bounce back quickly from failure.
• Permanence good score: Optimistic score here means you believe that good events are permanent and happen for a reason.

Pervasiveness

• Pervasiveness bad score: Optimistic score here means you compartmentalized helplessness and don’t allow one failure to reflect failure in other areas
• Pervasiveness good score: Optimistic score here means you allow the good things to brighten other areas in life

The total bad score will give you an idea of how you look at bad events in life (whether from an optimistic or pessimistic point of view). The total good score will give you an idea of how you look at good events in your life. And finally, the good minus bad score is the total difference score summary statistic of your baseline explanatory style.

This baseline will help you figure out which of the three attribution styles you should work on in order to view events more positively. Each time you find yourself trying to make sense of a situation, take a close look at the patterns of your explanation. Aim for those that are rooted in optimism, not pessimism.

Method 2: The ABC Method for reframing negative situations

When faced with disappointment or any sort of negativity, you can begin to change your helpless and pessimistic perspective by using the ABC method developed by Dr. Albert Ellis and Dr. Martin Seligman. This method allows a more flexible response to negativity and is the perfect next-step antidote to the defeatist mindset of learned helplessness.

Here’s the step-by-step process to strengthen your optimistic thinking:

A- Adversity

• Describe the event that happened. Here leave out any evaluations or judgments. Simply put a description to the event that happened in a way thats as unemotional as possible
• For example: “A team member missed an important deadline and put us behind schedule for the rest of the checkpoints.”

B- Belief

• Explain how adversity was interpreted. Not how you think it ought to be, but what your default belief/interpretation was.
• For example: “I can’t believe they are so selfish and are unwilling to take the business seriously … it must be a sign of their overall lack of dedication.”

C- Consequence

• Think about the feelings and actions that result from these beliefs. Go back with a level of introspection and ask yourself how you handled things. Dig deep. How and when do those emotions/feeling lead to certain behaviors and actions.
• For example: “I’m overcome with anger and frustration. I feel betrayed and discouraged. I noticed I began raising my voice and I became hostile towards the team member.”

D- Disputation

• Do you have any grounds to dispute these automatic reactions? What are the possible repercussions of following through on those emotions? Think about whether there are greater benefits to moving on from the situation and stopping that baseline (often impulsive) response in its tracks.
• For example: “Maybe I am overreacting here. I don’t know what the exact situation is. Maybe he/she has had a really stressful week, tried to get the work done but ran into some issues along the way.”

E- Energization

• This is the last step that’s done when successful disputation occurs. Did you manage to turn things around? Put all your focus on the positive feelings that ensued as a result of reframing your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Ask yourself, what’s different between how I just handled this situation versus how I would normally handle it? Relish in those personal rewards.
  For example: “I feel proud of myself that I was able to intervene in my automatic reactions and stop my reactions part way through. I’m happy that I’m accomplishing more by looking at things in a more reasonable manner.”
• The regular application of this method will get you into the habitual groove of optimistic responding. Here are some different techniques for altering your perspective (to overcome anxiety specifically). It will get you out of the damaging pattern of pessimism. In a short time you’ll notice a natural reframing in response to negative situations. Positivity is a key step to unlearning learned helplessness.

Method 3: Use the SMART method to feel in control

Now that we have figured out how to find our attribution style and how to overcome pessimistic thinking, the third and final method is to understand a basic principle of self-hood: That you are in control.

Psychological research has shown that a belief that failure is beyond your control or that a situation is unlikely to change, is associated with worse performance and lower self-efficacy.

One way you can accomplish this is through active goal setting. Goal setting has been shown to increase behavior change as it increases your desire to act in a particular way (motivation). Setting reasonable goals that are likely to be achieved, will provide the sense of control over your outcomes – especially as you begin to meet those goals on a consistent basis.

A highly actionable way of organizing your goal-setting is through the S.M.A.R.T method.

Specific

It’s important to be completely aware of what it is you want to achieve.

For example, if your goal is to have your company start bringing in revenue this year you would ask yourself what exactly this means to you (and/or your team). Remember, you want the goal to be as clear as possible.

Here are some of the questions you should ask yourself:

• What is it exactly that I want to achieve? List concrete, tangible outcomes.
• Where is this going to happen? Give names, locations, offices, cities, etc.
• When am I going to make this happen? Give specific dates and timelines. Work backwards.
• Who is going to be involved? Give names and team members as well as potential partners and others to lean on.
• How am I going to make this happen? With all the information above, lay out a detailed strategy, tactic, and plan.
• Why do I want to reach this goal? Tie it into your bigger vision for yourself and your business. These relate to your principles, values, missions – the things that you stay true to.

Measurable

Making sure your goal is measurable is important for determining how you will track your progress. The brain prefers this in gaining a sense of control.

For example:

• Using the example from above you might make your goal quantitative by saying you would like your business to hit $8K in monthly recurring revenue.  This will:
  • Make it easy to determine where you stand with your progress
  • Help refine exactly what it is you want.

Important! This is where many people go wrong with goal setting. Micro goal-setting, as it’s called, improves the likelihood that each stage will be accomplished.

Achievable

This is an important one. Is your goal achievable and realistic? If it’s not, you’re just going to get stuck in the same learned helplessness cycle because of the likelihood of failure.

Things you should consider:

• Is the sales target you made (from above example) achievable?
• What will happen to your business if you fall short of this goal?
• Consider any constraints or obstacles you may face and whether you’ll be able to overcome them.

Relevant

This is where you sit and determine how relevant the goal is to you. Will it be fulfilling towards you as an individual? This is where you’re going to come back to the “why?” question. Why is earning $8K in monthly recurring revenue really important for you and your company this year?

At this step, it is also important to figure out how your goals fit with your other plans and things set for your life. Maybe getting up to that $8K /month earning will require you to put in 12 hour days so you won’t have time to work on your other hobbies/things that make you happy. Are you going to be ok with that?

Timed

This means setting a timeline/deadline for this goal. This will help you identify the necessary steps and then stick to the actions you need to accomplish in order to achieve them. If you don’t set a timeline, there will be no internal pressure to accomplish the goal which allows or things to slip away. Here are the steps you should try to take with step:

• Establish a time frame
  • Set a deadline or a time for completion
• Set benchmarks
  • This is particularly useful if your goal is set over a long period of time
  • This will keep you motivated and makes your progress more measurable
• Continue to check in between the present and the future
  • Are there certain steps you can be taking right now that can help your long-term goal to be achieved?
  • What should you get done over the next week to contribute to your goal?
  • What should you get done over the next month to contribute to your goal?

We recommend pairing the S.M.A.R.T method with any of the handy goal-setting apps available out there. One program that’s particularly good, called Stickk, incorporates personalized nudges to assist in goal-setting, such as donating to an anti-charity (where you give money to a cause you strongly dislike if you fail to hit the goal) or involving a friend to hold you accountable.

Recap on methods to overcome learned helplessness

Learned helplessness is a dangerous state for any developing business. It will cut motivation, productivity and negatively affect the culture of a team. Following these steps will help you overcome entering this learned state of mind. Let’s take a look at what we’ve covered:

How can we unlearn this behaviour?

• Figure out if your explanatory style is inherently optimistic or pessimistic:
  • Optimistic = external, temporary, and specific
  • Pessimistic = internal, stable, and global
• Use the ABC method to change your interpretation of negative situations:
  • A- Adversity;  B- Belief; C- Consequence; D- Disputation; E- Energization
• Use the S.M.A.R.T method to reinstate control via goal-setting:
  • Make sure goal-setting is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timed.

Implement these actions throughout your day to keep track of potential learned helplessness behavior. As an entrepreneur we deal with many repeated failures. Don’t fall into the learned helplessness mindset.

Most Interesting Research

It’s been about five decades since the very first studies on learned helplessness, but there is still interesting new research coming out on the subject.

For instance, in 2017 researchers discovered that, although learned helplessness has been observed in honey bees, they don’t display the “freezing” behavior that other species do (Dinges, Varnon, Cota, Slykerman, & Abramson).

In 2016, researchers in Brazil found some evidence that even zebrafish experience learned helplessness (do Nascimento, Walsh-Monteiro, & Gouveia).

Not even the simple tree shrew is safe from the effects of learned helplessness—research from 2016 confirmed the presence of such behavior in tree shrews who received uncontrollable shocks to the foot (Meng, Shen, Li, Li, & Wang, 2016).

In terms of more broadly applicable research on learned helplessness, many recent experiments are probing the link between learned helplessness and the brain.

An oft-cited study from researchers Kim and colleagues (2016) showed that brain activity in mice displaying non-helpless behavior was generally much higher than that of the helpless mice. However, this pattern was reversed in the part of the brain known as the locus coeruleus, which is involved in physiological responses to stress and panic.

This finding is interesting, as it suggests that individuals experiencing learned helplessness are directing their energy toward responding to their own distress, while more resilient individuals keep their energy more normally distributed.

Research on the cellular basis of learned helplessness-related depression has shown that increased activity of the lateral habenula neurons (an area of the brain involved in communications between the forebrain and midbrain structures) in rats is associated with increased learned helplessness behavior (Li, Piriz, Mirrione, Chung, Proulx, Schulz, Henn, & Malinow, 2011).

The implications of connecting learned helplessness to activity in specific parts of the brain are potentially huge; these findings could contribute to new and more effective methods of treating and preventing depression.

This is the kind of exciting research that is happening right now—research that could have huge impacts on treating disorders and healing those who have suffered. Keep an eye out for the fascinating findings that continue to result from this line of research.

The Neural Circuitry of Learned Helplessness

We now go through the neural circuitry dataset in detail using the PASSIVITY/ANXIETY, DETECT, ACT, and EXPECT terminology both to make the argument more easily understood and because we believe that it is a useful translation from the neural level of analysis to the psychological level of analysis. We are aware that any such translation is merely a hypothesis that can be tested and falsified.

By the mid-1990s it seemed that the neuroscience tools that had become available might allow a more detailed understanding of how the brain produces the behavioral consequences of uncontrollable aversive events. As noted above, a variety of neurotransmitters and receptors had already been implicated, but how the sequelae of inescapable shock are actually caused was obscure.

We state inclusion/exclusion criteria for any adequate neural learned helplessness study at the outset. A study must meet two criteria. First, control over the stressor must be manipulated to determine whether any neural change measured is indeed a consequence of the uncontrollability/controllability of the event. Otherwise, the measured change could be a simple consequence of the stressor per se. There are numerous consequences of exposure to an aversive event that are, in fact, not modulated by control (Helmreich et al., 1999; Maier, Ryan, Barksdale, & Kalin, 1986; McDevitt, et al., 2009; Woodmansee, Silbert, & Maier, 1993). Thus, it is not enough to compare only inescapable shock and non-shocked controls. In the research to be described below, rats are the subject and the response that the ESC subjects can perform to terminate each shock is the turning of a small wheel located on the front of the chamber. Of course, once having established that a particular outcome that follows a particular stressor is indeed a function of controllability, the triadic design may not then be needed in further studies designed to explore the mechanisms by which the incontrollable stressor produces behavioral outcomes. Second, the initial stressor must occur in an environment very different from the test environment since one of the hallmarks of learned helplessness is trans-situationality. When common cues are shared between the first environment and the test environment, processes such as fear conditioning could mediate the behavioral change. For example, there are a large number of reports under the label “biological mechanisms of learned helplessness” that have delivered inescapable gridshocks while the subjects are constrained to one side of a shuttlebox, and then escape learning is tested in that very same shuttlebox. Poor test shuttlebox escape learning could be mediated by fear conditioning to the shuttlebox environment, since freezing is a prominent fear response. Indeed, Greenwood, Strong, and Fleshner (2010) have shown this to be the case. In their studies, manipulations that reduce fear conditioning reduce the shuttle escape deficit when the prior inescapable shocks were administered in the shuttlebox, but not when they were administered outside the shuttlebox.

FAQ

A Take-Home Message

In this piece, we defined learned helplessness, went over the experiments that laid the foundation for the theory, discussed the known associations and outcomes of learned helplessness, and dove into potential treatments for this harmful condition, including strategies to build learned optimism instead of helplessness.

If this piece sparked your curiosity about the subject that goes beyond this piece, we encourage you to check out the sources referenced here in greater detail.