Learned helplessness is a psychological condition where a person feels powerless to change their circumstances, leading to severe depression and low self-esteem. It can be a coping mechanism in abusive situations or in classrooms. The link between learned helplessness and depression is well established, and it can be transmitted through observation. A famous experiment involving dogs showed that those who had no control over painful shocks became passive and depressed. Many people require therapy to recover from its effects.
One thing that often spares people feelings of depression or helplessness is a sense of control over their immediate or long-term circumstances. A person should be able to walk away from an abusive relationship, for example, or voluntarily leave a stressful job. A psychological condition known as learned helplessness, however, can cause a person to feel completely powerless to change their circumstances for the better. The result of learned helplessness is often severe depression and extremely low self-esteem.
Learned helplessness can be viewed as a coping mechanism that some people employ to survive difficult or abusive circumstances. An abused child or spouse may eventually learn to remain passive and compliant at the hands of their abuser, as efforts to fight back or flee seem futile. Even if the opportunity to report or escape the abuse presents itself, many victims of long-term abuse choose to stay in the relationship due to learned helplessness.
Another common example of this phenomenon can be seen in classrooms. Individual students are free to get up from their seats at any time to use the bathroom, or even to leave the building. However, most students quickly learn that such actions result in quick and ultimate punishment, so they eventually learn to stay in place throughout the lesson. This form of learned helplessness helps instructors maintain control over a large group of students, and students eventually regain a sense of control over their own circumstances.
The link between learned helplessness and depression has been well established in the psychology community. Some experts suggest that this phenomenon can be transmitted through observation, as in the case of a daughter watching her abused mother passively obey her husband’s commands. The daughter may begin to associate passivity and low self-esteem with the “normal” demands of married life, leading to a perpetuation of the cycle.
A famous experiment examining the phenomenon of learned helplessness involved three groups of dogs. One group of dogs was placed in regular harnesses and became the control group. The second set of dogs were fitted with shock collars and placed in boxes with a foot switch. These dogs could turn off the pain shocks by flipping the switch at any time. The third set of dogs were bonded to the second set with shock collars, but their foot switches were rendered useless by the experimenters. They had no control over the duration or intensity of the electric shocks.
The results of the experiment showed that the third group of dogs eventually stopped pressing the ineffective foot switches and became very passive and depressed. For those dogs, painful shocks have become an inevitable part of their existence, with no possible way to control or escape the situation. During a second experiment in which the dogs could end the shocks by jumping over a low barrier, the dogs in the third group did not even attempt to jump. This passivity and loss of self-esteem is a direct result of learned helplessness, and many people suffering from clinical depression require extensive therapy to recover from its effects.
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