Learned Helplessness at Fifty: Insights from Neuroscience

Seligman and Maier stumbled upon a phenomenon they called learned helplessness. The dogs had learned that pain and suffering were outside of their control. They had no power over what was happening to them, so their only point of recourse was to sit there and take it.

And when he watched what was actually going on in the brain, he discovered that the original theory had it all backward: We don’t learn helplessness. The brain assumes helplessness when exposed to adverse conditions. If we want to feel that we have any control over our own outcomes, we have to learn that we have power.

learned helplessness. According to this theory, if we learn that outcomes are independent of our responses—that nothing we do matters—then we will internalize that lesson and carry it with us to other situations. Even if, objectively, we are not helpless, we will feel helpless. And so we will be less likely, whatever future problems we face, to tak

Based on the results, they proposed that the experience of being unable to control a stressful situation produces three “deficits”: motivational, cognitive, and emotional. In other words, when we experience repeated stress that we cannot control, it makes us feel less inclined to take action and less able to figure out solutions. It makes us feel w