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Learned helplessness, a term initially used in experimental psychology, is a description of the effect of inescapable negative reinforcement (such as electrical shock) on animal (and by extension, human) behavior.
It is also evoked as an explanation for a human condition in which apathy and submission prevail, causing the individual to rely fully on others for help. This can result when life circumstances cause the individual to experience life choices as irrelevant. Chemical dependence may also foster such a condition.
Extremely predictable environments such as a total institution and extremely unpredictable environments such as war, famine and drought may tend to foster learned helplessness.
A tremendous crisis may rouse a person from learned helplessness as an alternative to death or ruin.
An example involves concentration camp prisoners during the Holocaust, when some prisoners, called Mussulmen, refused to care or fend for themselves. Present-day examples can be found in state-run mental institutions, orphanages or long-term care facitilites.
People in a state of learned helplessness, view problems as personal, pervasive, or permanent. That is,
- they may see themselves as the problem; that is, they have internalized the problem
- they may see the problem affecting all aspects of life
- they may see the problem as unchangeable
Questioning these so-called "3 Ps" usually helps individuals to break out of a mindset of learned helplessness.1
References
1 Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within
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