Have you heard of learned helplessness? Have you observed it, or experienced it?
According to the website verywellmind, “learned helplessness occurs when an animal is repeatedly subjected to an aversive stimulus that it cannot escape. Eventually, the animal will stop trying to avoid the stimulus and behave as if it is utterly helpless to changes the situation. Even when opportunities to escape are presented, this learned helplessness will prevent any actions. While the concept is strongly tied to animal psychology and behavior, it can also apply to many situations involving human beings. When people feel that they have no control over their situation, they may begin to behave in a helpless manner. This inaction can lead people to overlook opportunities for relief or change.”
Psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven F. Maier wrote about the concept of learned helplessness after observing helpless behavior in dogs that were classically conditioned to expect an electrical shock after hearing a tone. Some dogs in the experiment were able to avoid the shocks by pressing a panel with their noses, while others were not able to control the shock.
All the dogs had an opportunity to jump over a barrier to avoid the shocks. But the group of dogs experiencing random shocks made no attempts to get away from them, while the animals who’d had access to the shock-avoidance panel took the opportunity to save themselves. The first group had learned to feel helpless — even though they had a chance for escape — because the pain they experienced was random.
We all experience pain, and it is often out of our control. Contracting COVID-19, developing a terminal illness, suffering a serious accident are misfortunes that can — and do — happen to anyone.
We may have some control over negative events — we can drive defensively, take precautions against contagion and adopt healthy habits — but there are no guarantees that these practices will protect us. It can be easy to develop an attitude of learned helplessness if we don’t feel our efforts are working, or if we focus on only the random aspects of misfortune.
As a child I had math phobia (I still do, as a matter of fact) and learned to feel helpless in that area. Though successful in other academic areas, I dreaded going to the blackboard to work out equations. Other pupils seemed to do sums and multiplication effortlessly, but I didn’t seem to “get it” no matter what. So I stopped trying.
Did I have a mild learning disability? It’s possible. But I do know that after a while I refused help with assignments because it seemed everyone but me understood. Because the rules of math seemed arbitrary — random — I felt bound to fail.
Giving up on math skills certainly caused me anxiety. Indeed, for many children and adults learned helplessness can cause not only anxiety but depression and lack of self-esteem. Then the effect can snowball, as the anxiety feels like yet another insurmountable problem. Nothing seems to ease the anxiety that seems to come out of nowhere, so the sufferer gives up trying.
I believe learned helplessness can apply not only to individuals but to societies. Right now America is in the midst of an epidemic of violence. Mass shootings in public places and schools are proliferating, and we feel helpless to stop them. But are we? Is this violence truly as random as it feels, or have we been conditioned to accept that we can’t change it?
It may be human nature to throw up our hands in despair when violence seems to strike the innocent so arbitrarily. But I would suggest that gun violence is not unpreventable.
Certain groups in our nation believe weapon ownership is crucial to our freedom. I won’t debate that point, but I will venture that nobody needs an assault rifle to defend his home. Our history shows that common-sense legislation can prevent mass shootings; when a ban on assault weapons was voted in in 1994, mass shootings virtually stopped. When the ban was revoked a decade later, they resumed.
Powerful groups lobby Congress to keep guns unregulated. Do these lobbies and the senators they influence really represent the American people? Is there really nothing we can do to keep weapons out of the hands of sociopaths?
Other nations have addressed this problem successfully. What holds us back? Surely we can do more than pray for the victims.
The web article I quoted above mentions that “A pessimistic explanatory style is associated with a greater likelihood of experiencing learned helplessness.”
People who tend to view negative outcomes as unavoidable — as random — feel helpless to change them. Perhaps we as a nation have adopted a pessimistic explanatory style about violence. If we regard it as unavoidable, we won’t try to change it. But if we see that certain steps can reduce violence, we will become agents in our own national fate again.
If helplessness can be learned, it can be unlearned. I believe our future depends on it
