Learned helplessness

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Learned helplessness is the conviction developed as a result of negative experience that you have lost the ability to change your own life situation and that you are responsible for this state yourself. The term refers to a psychological concept used to explain depression . The term was coined in 1967 by the American psychologists Martin EP Seligman and Steven F. Maier, who carried out experiments with dogs and other animals. Seligman believed that people suffering from depression can also find themselves in a state of learned helplessness. Seligman concluded this from the observation that learned helplessness and depression show comparable symptoms (analogy argumentation).

Originally, the interpretation of the examinations was based on the assumption that there was no contingency between action and action result (operant conditioning). Later it was assumed that causal attributions (attributions) play a role (cognitive turn). Learned (also learned ) helplessness describes the expectation of an individual not to be able to control and influence certain situations or facts. It is assumed that individuals narrow their behavioral repertoire and no longer switch off states experienced as unpleasant, although they could (viewed from the outside). This self-limitation or passivity can be traced back to previous experiences of helplessness and powerlessness. The individual experiences a loss of control in that an action taken and the resulting consequence are perceived as independent of one another. This expectation influences the further experience and behavior of the individual and can manifest itself in motivational , cognitive and emotional deficits (Seligman, 1975). The results of the animal experiments were also confirmed in humans (cf. Hiroto, 1974).

Learned helplessness in people

The concept of learned helplessness is a model used to explain certain forms of human depression. These can be the result when circumstances lead a person to perceive personal decisions as irrelevant. Not all individuals respond to a helpless situation with depression. Abramson, Seligman and Teasdale (1978) assumed that people ask about the cause of unpleasant experiences and that this is how they differ from animals. They assumed that the answer to this question would depend on the attribution style . A pessimistic attribution style would trigger depression, on the basis of which the cause of a negative event is estimated as follows:

  • internal (personal): You see the problem in yourself and not in the external circumstances.
  • global (general): You see the problem as omnipresent and not limited to certain situations.
  • stable (permanent): You see the problem as immutable, not temporary.

In his Göttingen dissertation (with Arnd Krüger ), however, Stefan Krause showed that depressives are sadder but wiser . After extensive training, the self-assessment of clinically depressed people and athletes was compared. Depressed people were able to assess their progress in performance more realistically, while non-depressed people perceived themselves and their environment as positively distorted. His investigation thus contradicted the classic theories of depression, which associate the phenomenon of depression with a negative worldview or future expectation. Various studies in the areas of contingency estimation, expectation and prediction of events, attribution patterns, feedback and self-assessment subsequently supported these assumptions.

In 2016, the concept of learned helplessness was corrected by Steve F. Maier (University of Colorado) and Martin Seligman. Passivity in response to shock is therefore not learned, but is the standard, unskilled response to prolonged aversive events.

Experiment on learned helplessness in dogs

The experimental setup is also referred to as triadic design , as the experimental animals are divided into three groups. The experiment on learned helplessness in dogs has two phases.

  • Phase 1: During this phase will
a) Subjecting a group of dogs to brief electrical shocks, which they can prevent through a specific reaction . This reaction is usually to pull a small lever or turn a wheel. Over time, the dogs learn to show the terminating reaction immediately after the shock is applied - they demonstrate escape behavior .
b) A second group of dogs is in what is known as a yoked condition . They are in a similar environment at the same time as the first group and are also exposed to the shocks. However, this group cannot do anything about the aversive stimuli - their behavior has no influence on the shocks. Yoked means that this group is “tied” to the first group: you will also receive a shock every time the first group is shocked. This ensures that both groups experience the same number of shocks.
c) A third group of dogs is used as a control group. During the first phase she is in a similar apparatus to the other two groups, but she does not experience any shock.
  • Phase 2: During this phase, all three groups are trained in a shuttle box . A shuttle box consists of two identical boxes ( compartments ) that are connected to one another via a passage. The test animal is placed in one of the two boxes and subjected to a shock. It can now escape this shock simply by switching to the other box. In one-way shuttle experiments , the animal is placed in a specific box in each run. In two-way shuttle experiments , the animal always switches from one box to the other and the shocks are administered on alternate sides.
In the learned helplessness design, all three test groups are subjected to two-way shuttle training.
  • Result:
a) The first group, which was able to end the shock with their behavior in phase 1, learns very quickly to avoid the shock in shuttle box training. Over time, the animals learn not only to terminate the shock by switching to the other box, but also to avoid it entirely by switching prematurely ( avoidance learning ).
b) The second group, which had experienced shocks in phase 1 regardless of their behavior, learns (if at all) only very slow escape - avoidance behavior . The dogs often remain lethargic in a box and endure the shocks.
c) The control group, which experienced the first phase without shocks, demonstrates avoidance learning and only differs from the first group in the slower learning speed.

See also

literature

  • Martin EP Seligman: Helplessness. On Depression, Development and Death. Freeman and Comp, San Francisco 1975, ISBN 0-7167-0751-9 .
  • Martin EP Seligman: Learned helplessness. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Munich / Vienna / Baltimore 1979, ISBN 3-541-08931-8 , ISBN 3-407-22016-2 .
  • LY Abramson, MEP Seligman, JD Teasdale: Learned Helplessness in Humans: Critique and Reformulation. In: Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Vol. 87, No. 1, 1978, pp. 49-74.
  • Heinz Scheurer: On the psychotherapy of learned helplessness: A knowledge and treatment approach for despair. In: Hermes Andreas Kick, Günter Dietz (ed.): Despair as a creative challenge. Psychopathology, psychotherapy and artistic solution creation in literature, music and film . Lit, Münster 2008, ISBN 978-3-8258-0902-7 , pp. 41-57.
  • Richard J. Gerrig, Philip G. Zimbardo : Psychology. (= Pearson Studies - Psychology ). 18th updated edition. Addison-Wesley, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8273-7275-8 .

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard J. Gerrig, Philip G. Zimbardo: Psychology . 18th edition. Pearson Studium, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8273-7275-8 , pp. 568 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. Helplessness, learned. Spectrum of Science - Lexicon of Psychology ( archive ).
  3. a b c Jörg Richter, psychologue, Jörg Richter, Gabriele Richter: Complexity of Depressiveness . Waxmann Verlag, ISBN 978-3-8309-5327-2 , pp. 32–35 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  4. ^ Matthias Berking, Winfried Rief: Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy for Bachelor: Volume I: Basics and Disorder Knowledge. Read, listen, learn on the web . Springer-Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-642-16974-8 , pp. 37 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  5. James N. Butcher, Susan Mineka, Jill M. Hooley: Clinical Psychology . 13th edition. Pearson Studium, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-8273-7328-1 , pp. 302 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  6. ^ Stefan Krause: Sadder but wiser . On the realism of the self-assessment with regard to the perception of stress and the restoration of motor function after CNS damage depending on the degree of depression. Diss. Uni Göttingen 1997. http://ediss.uni-goettingen.de/bitstream/handle/11858/00-1735-0000-0022-5D46-C/krause_re.pdf?sequence=1
  7. Steven F. Maier, Martin EP Seligman: Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience. In: Psychological Review . tape 123 , no. 4 , p. 349-367 , doi : 10.1037 / rev0000033 ( apa.org [accessed April 2, 2018]).