# Learned Helplessness? Or Unlearned Hope?



## David Baxter PhD (Jun 29, 2017)

*Two New Views of Learned Helplessness*
by Dwayne Thomas, _Positive Psychology News_[/URL]
June 28, 2017

Fifty years ago, Steven Maier and Martin Seligman introduced _learned helplessness_,  theorizing that animals could learn that their actions do not affect  outcomes. Once they learned that nothing they did mattered, animals  stopped trying to escape. This held true even when escape was possible. 

*The Theory was Backwards*
 Today, Maier and Seligman say they got it backwards. Animals do not  learn to be passive. Rather, passivity is an unlearned, default response  to extended aversive events. Animals overcome this passivity by  learning control, and the expectation of control mediates future  responses to aversive events.

Their  revised opinion results from neuro-scientific research. In the 1990s,  Maier, now a neuroscientist, noted that helplessness deficits expressed  themselves as either inhibited fight or flight, or exaggerated fear and  anxiety responses. Starting there, he and his colleagues began to  investigate some of the neural circuitry that regulates our fight/flight  and fear/anxiety responses.  Maier and colleagues learned that both escapable and inescapable  shocks activate the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN), a part of the brain  connected to both fight/flight and fear/anxiety circuitry. However, when  the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), a part of the brain  associated with risk processing, detects escapable shocks, it inhibits  the DRN and turns off the effects of the shock. Maier and Seligman  dubbed the circuit created between the DRN and vmPFC the _hope circuit_,  noting that hope is likely the best defense against helplessness. Hope  is defined in attribution theory as the expectation that future bad  events will be temporary, local, and controllable.

 There is, of course, more work to be done, but Maier and Seligman are  hopeful that these new insights will prove useful to researchers and  practitioners.

*The Theory was Incomplete*
 Meanwhile, the summer Maier and Seligman published their findings, I  was writing my capstone. There, I theorized that Abramson, Seligman, and  Teasdale?s attribution theory was incomplete. Attribution theory  considers helplessness in humans. It posits that when we humans realize  we are helpless, we try to ascribe it to a cause. Our automatic answers  determine whether we experience helplessness deficits, how strong they  are, and how long they last.

I  posited that at least some of these answers are not automatic. Instead  they are learned through cultural transmission. To anthropologists,  culture is information acquired consciously and unconsciously from  others that can affect our behavior. We learn this information through  teaching, imitation, and other forms of social transmission. Over time,  learned behavior becomes automatic as it passes into our long-term  memory. This allows us to behave more easily in ways valued by our  society.  I contend that at least some of our attribution explanations are not  automatic but instead learned through this mechanism. Thus significant  portions of a population are likely to experience helplessness deficits  if subjected to aversive stimuli that do not cause similar deficits in  others. These findings hold interesting possibilities for the future of  helplessness research. Expectation of control is a key ingredient in  whether a person experiences helplessness deficits. 

 Various populations, such as those experiencing poverty, are marked  by expectations that they do not control their futures. Helping people  in these populations to see they have more control than they believe may  be the first step in helping them achieve better outcomes.

*References* 

Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2016). Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience. Psychological Review, 123(4), 349-367. doi: 10.1037/rev0000033 
 Peterson, C. & Seligman, M. (2004). _Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification_. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
 Seligman, M. E. P. (2006). _Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life_. 2nd Edition. New York: Vintage. 
 Thomas, D. (2016). Channeling the River: Using Positive Psychology to Prevent Cultural Helplessness, as Applied to African-American Law Students. MAPP Capstone.


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## GDPR (Jun 30, 2017)

I have read this 3 times yet I am having a hard time absorbing it for some reason(maybe it's because reading it gives me anxiety,I don't know).Can someone please explain this in simple language for me?

I don't get it.Learned helplessness was a huge thing I worked on in therapy so I want to understand this article and how it applies to me.

---------- Post Merged at 09:24 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 09:07 AM ----------

Ah,I realize now that it's the word "escape" that's causing the anxiety when I read it.


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## David Baxter PhD (Jun 30, 2017)

Martin Seligman and his colleague coined the term "learned helplessness" in the 60s to describe a phenomena where organisms seem to give up in certain circumstances, and later the term Seligman coined the term "learned resilience" as a strategy for combating learned helplessness and did a lot of work in how to train children and adults to become resilient.

All this article is saying is that perhaps one doesn't have to _learn_ helplessness, that perhaps that is the natural reaction to certain trauma, that in the context of certain situations people (and animals) give up hope believing that they are helpless.

So the question in this article is this: Is helplessness learned or not?

My question on behalf of those surviving would be: Does it matter?

Either way, what you learned in therapy is something you needed to learn. In certain situations, particularly where there is a big difference in power, an individual likely is helpless. We learn to understand that. And in therapy, we learn that whether or not that was true when you were little and in imminent or continuous danger, it does not stay true when you are bigger and no longer in imminent danger. Therapy helps you to learn that now you do have power, you are no longer weak and small, you have a voice now, you have strength now, you have power now.

Does that help, LIT?


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## GDPR (Jun 30, 2017)

Yes,that does help.Thanks for taking the time to explain.

Yeah,whether it's learned or a natural reaction isn't as important as becoming empowered and changing things after the fact.


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## gooblax (Jun 30, 2017)

LIT said:


> I have read this 3 times yet I am having a hard time absorbing it for some reason


Honestly I had the same problem trying to read it. Thanks for asking the question LIT, and thanks for explaining Dr B


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## forgetmenot (Jul 5, 2017)

Thanks LIT for having courage to ask the question  i too struggled with reading and understanding .
Thanks Dr. Baxter for clarifying what was being said.  I think anyone that has experience trauma and are still here is resilient in that they never stop fighting to live.   
Learned helplessness as a child  takes so long it seems to erase  those fears and emotions seem to stay in the inner core i wish they didn't .


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