Learned Helplessness

December 12, 2024 Jeremiah Hendren

Learned Helplessness

Seligman, Martin
Annual Review of Medicine 23, no. 1 (1972): 407-412.
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.me.23.020172.002203

Experimental psychologists interested in learning have traditionally studied the behavior of animals and men faced with rewards and punishments that the subject could control. So, in a typical instrumental learning experiment, the subject can either make some response or refrain from making it and thereby influence the events around him. Nature, however, is not always so benign in its arrangement of the contingencies. Not only do we face events that we can control by our actions, but we also face many events about which we can do nothing at all. Such uncontrollable events can significantly debilitate organisms: they produce passivity in the face of trauma, inability to learn that responding is effective, and emotional stress in animals, and possibly depression in man. This review is concerned with the behavioral and psychological impact of uncontrollable traumatic events.

Martin Seligman

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