Inescapable shock training in the shuttle box
Learned Helplessness is behaviour exhibited by a subject after
enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control. It was
initially thought to be caused from the subject's acceptance of their
powerlessness: discontinuing attempts to escape or avoid the aversive
stimulus, even when such alternatives are unambiguously presented. Upon
exhibiting such behavior, the subject was said to have acquired learned
helplessness.
Over the past few decades, neuroscience has provided insight into
learned helplessness and shown that the original theory actually had it
backwards: the brain's default state is to assume that control is not
present, and the presence of "helpfulness" is what is actually learned.
In humans, learned helplessness is related to the concept of self-efficacy, the individual's belief in their innate ability to achieve goals. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses may result from such real or perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation.
Foundation of research and theory
Early key experiments
American psychologist Martin Seligman initiated research on learned helplessness in 1967 at the University of Pennsylvania as an extension of his interest in depression.
This research was later expanded through experiments by Seligman and
others. One of the first was an experiment by Seligman & Maier: In
Part 1 of this study, three groups of dogs were placed in harnesses.
Group 1 dogs were simply put in a harnesses for a period of time and
were later released. Groups 2 and 3 consisted of "yoked pairs".
Dogs in Group 2 were given electric shocks at random times, which the
dog could end by pressing a lever. Each dog in Group 3 was paired with a
Group 2 dog; whenever a Group 2 dog got a shock, its paired dog in
Group 3 got a shock of the same intensity and duration, but its lever
did not stop the shock. To a dog in Group 3, it seemed that the shock
ended at random, because it was their paired dog in Group 2 that was
causing it to stop. Thus, for Group 3 dogs, the shock was "inescapable".
In Part 2 of the experiment the same three groups of dogs were
tested in a shuttle-box apparatus (a chamber containing two rectangular
compartments divided by a barrier a few inches high). All of the dogs
could escape shocks on one side of the box by jumping over a low
partition to the other side. The dogs in Groups 1 and 2 quickly learned
this task and escaped the shock. Most of the Group 3 dogs – which had
previously learned that nothing they did had any effect on shocks –
simply lay down passively and whined when they were shocked.
In a second experiment later that year with new groups of dogs,
Overmier and Seligman ruled out the possibility that, instead of learned
helplessness, the Group 3 dogs failed to avert in the second part of
the test because they had learned some behavior that interfered with
"escape". To prevent such interfering behavior, Group 3 dogs were
immobilized with a paralyzing drug (curare),
and underwent a procedure similar to that in Part 1 of the Seligman and
Maier experiment. When tested as before in Part 2, these Group 3 dogs
exhibited helplessness as before. This result serves as an indicator for
the ruling out of the interference hypothesis.
From these experiments, it was thought that there was to be only
one cure for helplessness. In Seligman's hypothesis, the dogs do not try
to escape because they expect that nothing they do will stop the shock.
To change this expectation, experimenters physically picked up the dogs
and moved their legs, replicating the actions the dogs would need to
take in order to escape from the electrified grid. This had to be done
at least twice before the dogs would start willfully jumping over the
barrier on their own. In contrast, threats, rewards, and observed
demonstrations had no effect on the "helpless" Group 3 dogs.
Later experiments
Later
experiments have served to confirm the depressive effect of feeling a
lack of control over an aversive stimulus. For example, in one
experiment, humans performed mental tasks in the presence of distracting
noise. Those who could use a switch to turn off the noise rarely
bothered to do so, yet they performed better than those who could not
turn off the noise. Simply being aware of this option was enough to
substantially counteract the noise effect. In 2011, an animal study
found that animals with control over stressful stimuli exhibited
changes in the excitability of certain neurons in the prefrontal cortex.
Animals that lacked control failed to exhibit this neural effect and
showed signs consistent with learned helplessness and social anxiety.
Expanded theories
Research
has found that a human's reaction to feeling a lack of control differs
both between individuals and between situations, i.e. learned
helplessness sometimes remains specific to one situation but at other
times generalizes across situations.
Such variations are not explained by the original theory of learned
helplessness, and an influential view is that such variations depend on
an individual's attributional or explanatory style.
According to this view, how someone interprets or explains adverse
events affects their likelihood of acquiring learned helplessness and
subsequent depression. For example, people with pessimistic
explanatory style tend to see negative events as permanent ("it will
never change"), personal ("it's my fault"), and pervasive ("I can't do
anything correctly"), and are likely to suffer from learned helplessness
and depression. Such people can often be helped to learn a more realistic explanatory style by cognitive behavioral therapy, a therapy heavily endorsed by Seligman.
Bernard Weiner
proposed a detailed account of the attributional approach to learned
helplessness. His attribution theory includes the dimensions of
globality/specificity, stability/instability, and internality/externality:
- A global attribution occurs when the individual believes that the cause of negative events is consistent across different contexts.
- A specific attribution occurs when the individual believes that the cause of a negative event is unique to a particular situation.
- A stable attribution occurs when the individual believes the cause to be consistent across time.
- An unstable attribution occurs when the individual thinks that the cause is specific to one point in time.
- An external attribution assigns causality to situational or external factors,
- while an internal attribution assigns causality to factors within the person.
- while an internal attribution assigns causality to factors within the person.
Neurobiological perspective
Research has shown that increased 5-HT (serotonin) activity in the dorsal raphe nucleus
plays a critical role in learned helplessness. Other key brain regions
that are involved with the expression of helpless behavior include the basolateral amygdala, central nucleus of the amygdala and
bed nucleus of the stria terminalis.
Activity in medial prefrontal cortex, dorsal hippocampus, septum and
hypothalamus has also been observed during states of helplessness.
In the article, "Exercise, Learned Helplessness, and the
Stress-Resistant Brain", Benjamin N. Greenwood and Monika Fleshner
discuss how exercise might prevent stress-related disorders such as
anxiety and depression. They show evidence that running wheel exercise
prevents learned helplessness behaviors in rats.
They suggest that the amount of exercise may not be as important as
simply exercising at all. The article also discusses the neurocircuitry
of learned helplessness, the role of serotonin (or 5-HT), and the
exercise-associated neural adaptations that may contribute to the
stress-resistant brain. However, the authors finally conclude that "The
underlying neurobiological mechanisms of this effect, however, remain
unknown. Identifying the mechanisms by which exercise prevents learned
helplessness could shed light on the complex neurobiology of depression
and anxiety and potentially lead to novel strategies for the prevention
of stress-related mood disorders".
Health implications
People
who perceive events as uncontrollable show a variety of symptoms that
threaten their mental and physical well-being. They experience stress,
they often show disruption of emotions demonstrating passivity or
aggressivity, and they can also have difficulty performing cognitive
tasks such as problem-solving.
They are less likely to change unhealthy patterns of behavior, causing
them, for example, to neglect diet, exercise, and medical treatment.
Depression
Abnormal and cognitive psychologists have found a strong correlation between depression-like symptoms and learned helplessness in laboratory animals.
Young adults and middle-aged parents with a pessimistic explanatory style often suffer from depression. They tend to be poor at problem-solving and cognitive restructuring, and also tend to demonstrate poor job satisfaction and interpersonal relationships in the workplace. Those with a pessimistic style also tend to have weakened immune systems,
having not only increased vulnerability to minor ailments (e.g., cold,
fever) and major illness (e.g., heart attack, cancers), but also poorer
recovery from health problems.
Social impact
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Learned helplessness can be a factor in a wide range of social situations.
- In emotionally abusive relationships, the victim often develops learned helplessness. This occurs when the victim confronts or tries to leave the abuser only to have the abuser dismiss or trivialize the victim's feelings, pretend to care but not change, or impede the victim from leaving.
- The motivational effect of learned helplessness is often seen in the classroom. Students who repeatedly fail may conclude that they are incapable of improving their performance, and this attribution keeps them from trying to succeed, which results in increased helplessness, continued failure, loss of self-esteem and other social consequences.
- Child abuse by neglect can be a manifestation of learned helplessness. For example, when parents believe they are incapable of stopping an infant's crying, they may simply give up trying to do anything for the child.
- Those who are extremely shy or anxious in social situations may become passive due to feelings of helplessness. Gotlib and Beatty (1985) found that people who cite helplessness in social settings may be viewed poorly by others, which tends to reinforce the passivity.
- Aging individuals may respond with helplessness to the deaths of friends and family members, the loss of jobs and income, and the development of age-related health problems. This may cause them to neglect their medical care, financial affairs, and other important needs.
- According to Cox et al., Abramson, Devine, and Hollon (2012), learned helplessness is a key factor in depression that is caused by inescapable prejudice (i.e., "deprejudice"). Thus: "Helplessness born in the face of inescapable prejudice matches the helplessness born in the face of inescapable shocks."
- According to Ruby K. Payne's book A Framework for Understanding Poverty, treatment of the poor can lead to a cycle of poverty, a culture of poverty, and generational poverty. This type of learned helplessness is passed from parents to children. People who embrace this mentality feel there is no way to escape poverty and so one must live in the moment and not plan for the future, trapping families in poverty.
Social problems resulting from learned helplessness may seem
unavoidable to those entrenched. However, there are various ways to
reduce or prevent it. When induced in experimental settings, learned
helplessness has been shown to resolve itself with the passage of time.
People can be immunized against the perception that events are
uncontrollable by increasing their awareness of previous experiences,
when they were able to effect a desired outcome. Cognitive therapy can be used to show people that their actions do make a difference and bolster their self-esteem.
Extensions
Cognitive scientist and usability engineer Donald Norman
used learned helplessness to explain why people blame themselves when
they have a difficult time using simple objects in their environment.
The US sociologist Harrison White has suggested in his book Identity and Control
that the notion of learned helplessness can be extended beyond
psychology into the realm of social action. When a culture or political
identity fails to achieve desired goals, perceptions of collective
ability suffer.
Emergence under torture
Studies on learned helplessness served as the basis for developing enhanced interrogation techniques. In CIA interrogation manuals,
learned helplessness is characterized as "apathy" which may result from
prolonged use of coercive techniques which result in a
"debility-dependency-dread" state in the subject, "If the
debility-dependency-dread state is unduly prolonged, however, the
arrestee may sink into a defensive apathy from which it is hard to
arouse him."
