Learned helplessness | Hacker News Reader

Learned helplessness

en.wikipedia.org

63 pointsgeorgecmu11 comments

The psychologist who discovered this, Seligman, had since turned to studying the opposite: the psychology of happiness. Check out his TED talk, where he talks about his new research: http://www.ted.com/speakers/martin_seligman.html

In summary, according to Seligman, the three levels of a happy life (in order of short to long-lasting): 1. pleasure (physical comfort, great food, etc.) 2. engagement (loving what you're doing, e.g. getting into flow state while coding) 3. meaning (be part of something larger than yourself, e.g. Mother Teresa, Gandhi)

Of note is that, in Seligman's original experiment, a percentage of the dogs never gave up, i.e. never learned that they were helpless. they kept on trying despite their efforts never paying off. when they were put in an environment where they actually had control, they quickly took charge of their own lives (at least in terms of avoid electric shocks) -- a heart-warming story to entrepreneurs.

> they quickly took charge of their own lives (at least in terms of avoid electric shocks) -- a heart-warming story to entrepreneurs.

I don't know that anything in or about that study could be described as "heart-warming", but ok

Helicopter parenting and teacher/student learning as compared to self directed learning strike me as two current trends that may lead to learned helplessness in our society.

So many people in my life need constant encouragement to help overcome learned apathy. I'm not really sure what the main cause is but they seem to be likely candidates.

The big difference between thirty years ago when I was a teen and now is the growth of organized extra-curricular activities. Children and teens have even fewer opportunities to decide and plan their own course than we used to. And you can't learn what you can't practice.

But how can you help people to get out of this 'learned helplessness'?

Learned Optimism.

Seriously. Seligman wrote a great book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Learned-Optimism-Change-Your-Mind/dp/0...

I started reading this back when it was new, but quit fairly early on, when the author wrote that pessimists had a much more accurate view of reality than optimists.

I wrote a post in March of last year, Optimism - Dangers and Benefits, http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/03/optimism-is-not-ne...

wikipedia says 'People with pessimistic explanatory style—which sees negative events as permanent ("it will never change"), personal ("it's my fault"), and pervasive ("I can't do anything correctly")—are most likely to suffer from learned helplessness and depression.'

It seems to me that if you tended to believe "it's my fault" then you would have the opposite result - empowerment. When you admit that something is your fault, you now are responsible for overcoming/solving/fixing it, which is the opposite of helplessness.

Not if it is combined with the other two (permanent and pervasive.) The idea is that if something is your fault, and cannot be changed, and in fact everything is your fault, then the conclusion is that you are hopelessly defective, and there is nothing to be done: learned helplessness.

I know a woman who was telling me about a cause she thought somebody should take up. I told her nobody else seemed to be interested in getting the ball rolling, so she should lead the charge. She looked like I'd suggested bending spoons with her mind. "A person like me can't do that," she explained.

She didn't mean that it would be too draining or impractical for somebody in her situation. She just wasn't capable — it was an a priori fact.

IIRC that happier people tend to (unrealistically) personalize successes and externalize failures. I.e. if it worked it was because I did it, if it didn't work then everything else conspired against it.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism

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