Learned helplessness
Sometimes we don't give up because we can't. We give up because we never learned that we could.
The phenomenon is very well established. What has changed is the explanation: 50 years on, its own discoverers acknowledged that the original theory had it "backwards".
Sound familiar?
You've failed several maths exams in a row. For the next one you don't even study: "What's the point, I'll fail anyway." That "what's the point" has a name in psychology.
What it is
Learned helplessness describes what happens when a person (or an animal) goes through negative situations they can't control, again and again. Over time they stop trying to escape or improve things, even when the situation changes and they could.
The idea helped explain why some people get "stuck" when facing problems, and it was highly influential in the study of depression.
The experiment
In 1967, Martin Seligman and Steven Maier worked with three groups of dogs.1 The first received electric shocks they could stop by pressing a panel with their nose. The second received exactly the same shocks but could do nothing to stop them. The third received no shocks.
Afterwards, all of them were placed in a box where they only had to jump over a low barrier to escape. Dogs from the first and third groups learned quickly. Most dogs from the second group, however, didn't even try: they stayed still and endured it.
(Today, animal research is subject to far stricter ethical oversight than it was then.)
What we know today
The original idea was that the animals learned that nothing they did mattered. But in 2016, fifty years later, Maier and Seligman published a neuroscience-based review with a surprising conclusion: the original theory got it backwards.2
Passivity in the face of prolonged suffering isn't learned: it's the brain's default response, regulated by a brainstem area called the dorsal raphe nucleus. What is learned is the opposite: a sense of control. When we detect that our actions make a difference, the prefrontal cortex puts the brakes on that passive response.
Myth vs. reality
Myth "People who give up are just weak or lazy."
Reality Giving up in the face of what we can't control is an automatic brain reaction. The good news is that a sense of control can be learned.
In everyday life
- Look for small wins: achievable goals that show you your actions change the outcome.
- Separate what you control from what you don't: put your energy into the former.
- If the "nothing works" feeling drags on and affects your life, talk to a mental health professional.
Sources
- Seligman, M. E. P., & Maier, S. F. (1967). Failure to escape traumatic shock. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(1), 1–9. doi.org/10.1037/h0024514
- Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2016). Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience. Psychological Review, 123(4), 349–367. doi.org/10.1037/rev0000033