What is learned helplessness?

Hello friends!

One of the concepts that stood out to me the most while studying behavioral psychology in college was the concept of learned helplessness. I remember that the example used was that of the street child, who, throughout his history, ends up learning that no matter what he does, he will not manage to have the intended result, or the positive reinforcement of the action.

This concept is very important because it helps to explain several symptoms, present in some mental illnesses. For example, when a depressed person says “There’s nothing I can do” or “Nothing I do works” or “It’s no use trying”, he is probably expressing his feelings caused by situations of helplessness.

In this text, I will better explain what learned helplessness is and the history of its emergence.

We can define learned helplessness as follows: “Helplessness is a specific deficit of a specific response produced by exposure to specific uncontrollable aversive stimuli”.

A well-known experiment carried out in 1965 by psychologist Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania can serve as an example to explain the definition. The experiment is simple and to carry it out he used his own dogs as guinea pigs.

Although the experiment may seem somewhat aggressive, it can be said that it was actually harmless and did not cause any harm to the dogs.

Seligman did the following: he separated the dogs into two groups. One of the groups was placed in a cage where the floor was connected to an electric current, which from time to time triggered small, uncomfortable but low-intensity shocks. The other group was placed in an identical cage, however, there was a device where they could turn off the system that caused the shocks easily.

Thus, the second group could turn off the shocks, while the first group had to get used to the discomfort.

After an initial period in which the dogs got used to their cages, Seligman changed their environment, putting them in cages, with the same shock system, but with a very low barrier, which any of the animals could jump over without difficulty. .

While the first group – who couldn’t control the shocks – simply didn’t leave the cage, the second group – who could turn off the shocks – acted naturally and jumped over the barrier to get rid of the nuisance.

That is, the first group learned that they could not do anything and got so used to that situation that, when they were transported to another location, with the same discomfort, and there was already a solution, the solution was no longer sought. The dogs that stayed in the place where they couldn’t turn off the shocks got depressed, stopped eating or ate very little, didn’t play or try to copulate.

Thus, with the experiment, we can better understand the initial definition: “Helplessness constitutes a specific deficit of a specific response produced by exposure to specific uncontrollable aversive stimuli”, that is, dogs decrease their behavior when exposed to aversive stimuli ( the shock) over which they had no control.

Learned helplessness in a human experiment

After Seligman’s experiment, many other similar experiments were performed. One that is noteworthy was done with two groups of people. Instead of the shocks, the aversive stimulus was a loud noise. One group could get rid of the noise quickly by pressing a button and turning the sound off; while the other group couldn’t do anything and had to endure the loud sound.

After a period in the first environment, the two groups were taken to another location. The first group was taken to a place where there was a lever, which also turned off the sound. The second group – who could not turn off the sound in the first environment – ​​was also taken to an identical room, with a lever that could now interrupt the noise. However, as in the first situation they could not obtain their intention, in the second room (although the lever worked), no one in the group tried to find out what the use of the lever was.

It was as if everyone thought it simply wasn’t worth trying anymore, not even pulling down a lever. The aversive stimulus, the loud noise, was already a “reality” that it didn’t pay to try to overcome – exactly the concept of learned helplessness.

The group’s feeling that they couldn’t do anything continued for a while, as they weren’t interested in winning the game they were participating in, nor did they make the effort to complete simple crosswords.

What this experiment with humans demonstrates, as well as the experiment with Seligman’s dogs, is that a situation that brings an aversive stimulus is enough for organisms (human beings or animals) to get used to the situation and consider it immutable, with if it wasn’t possible to change, as if it wasn’t worth trying, as if discouragement and passive resignation were the only alternative.

In other words: “Studies with the design proposed by Seligman and Maier (1967) have shown that prior exposure to uncontrollable stimuli compromises learning in a later controllable condition. A hypothesis used to explain this data, widely accepted, suggests that in the condition of uncontrollability the organism learns that it has no control over the environment” (Altenor, Volpicelli, & Seligman, 1979; Maier & Seligman, 1976)

Conclusion

There is much controversy in the behavioral psychology literature regarding the relationship between learned helplessness and depression (or other mental illnesses). At first, the analogy between the apathy of animals and humans after exposure to an aversive stimulus (shock, noise or other) and the decrease in previously frequent behaviors would indicate that the cause of depression could also be in a environment with a lot of aversive stimulation and little positive reinforcement.

However, other experiments and other researchers have made it clear that the cause and effect relationship between depression and other mental illnesses is not that simple. In any case, the concept of learned helplessness remains an important reference for the behavioral treatment of mental illnesses.

Bibliographic reference:

FERREIRA, Darlene Cardoso e TOURINHO, Emmanuel Zagury. Learned helplessness and uncontrollability: relevance for a behavioral-analytic approach to depression. Psycho.: Teor. and Research 🇧🇷 2013, vol.29, n.2 , pp. 211-219 . Available from: . ISSN 0102-3772. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0102-37722013000200010.

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