What Is Learned Helplessness?

Learned helplessness is a disruption of motivation that occurs when a person experiences a situation they cannot control. The benefits of feeling in control have been proven in animal studies. For example, dogs that were conditioned to believe they could not escape electric shocks while in a cage developed a sense of helplessness. Later, even when escape was possible, these dogs remained passive. In contrast, dogs that learned to “control their fate” by successfully avoiding initial shocks adapted easily to new situations.

Researcher Martin Seligman noticed that this phenomenon of learned helplessness also applies to humans. People who are depressed or in a low mood often become passive, convinced that any effort is pointless. Both helpless dogs and people suffering from depression experience what can be called a “paralysis of will,” passive submission, and even a reluctance to move.

The Impact of Learned Helplessness

The phenomenon of learned helplessness helps explain how various institutions—whether as horrific as concentration camps or as humane as hospitals—can dehumanize people. In hospitals, “good” patients are often those who do not bother the staff, ask questions, or try to influence events. While this passivity may be convenient for medical staff, it is harmful to patients’ health and survival. Losing control over one’s actions and over what others do for you can turn unpleasant events into sources of severe stress. Some illnesses are a result of feeling helpless and losing the ability to make choices. This also explains why people in concentration camps and nursing homes often deteriorate and die quickly.

Hospital patients who are taught to believe in their ability to control stress require fewer painkillers and sedatives and behave more calmly.

The Importance of Personal Control

The importance of personal control was demonstrated in a study by Ellen Langer and Judith Rodin (1976) at one of the best nursing homes in Connecticut. One group of residents was told by friendly staff that it was their duty to make the home a place residents could be proud of and happy in. The staff cared for passive patients with attention and concern. After three weeks, most of these patients were found by themselves, interviewers, and nurses to be continuing to deteriorate.

With the second group, Langer and Rodin encouraged personal control, emphasizing choices, the ability to influence administration policies, and personal responsibility for living as they wished. These patients were given the right to make minor decisions and some responsibility. Three weeks later, 93% of them were more lively, active, and happy.

The Origins of Learned Helplessness

Research on learned helplessness began in 1964 with American scientist Martin Seligman. As a young graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, he made observations that laid the foundation for one of the most well-known and interesting psychological theories, now thoroughly substantiated and tested in numerous experiments.

Psychologists define helplessness as a state that arises when a person feels that external events are beyond their control and that nothing they do can prevent or change them. If this state and its associated motivational features carry over into other situations, learned helplessness is present. According to Russian psychologist V. G. Romek, even a brief experience of an uncontrollable world is enough for learned helplessness to take on a life of its own and begin to govern our behavior.

Consequences of Learned Helplessness

Expecting that outcomes do not depend on one’s actions and experiencing uncontrollable events leads to several consequences:

• Motivational: Uncontrollable events reduce motivation to seek responses that could regain control, leading to less effort to prevent or master difficult situations.
• Cognitive: People have trouble learning that their actions can affect situations, resulting in pessimism.
• Emotional: Repeated experiences with uncontrollable events gradually lead to an emotional state resembling depression.

It is not so much the unpleasant or painful events themselves that cause helplessness, but the experience of being unable to control them.

External Factors Leading to Learned Helplessness

Researchers identify several external circumstances that lead to learned helplessness:

• Total lack of consequences for active behavior (deprivation): For example, if employees regularly make suggestions at meetings but management never responds, suggestions will eventually stop.
• Uniformity of consequences: If an employee receives constant criticism from a supervisor regardless of their actions and cannot leave the job, they eventually give up and become passive. The same can happen with consistently positive consequences; an employee with a powerful protector who is shielded from all consequences may also become helpless.
• Asynchrony or lack of visible connection between actions and consequences: If a person cannot determine why their efforts are sometimes effective and sometimes not, or if there is a long delay between actions and feedback, helplessness can develop. For example, random bonuses or delayed feedback from management reinforce the belief that nothing depends on the employee.

Experiments show that if employees are given tasks that are too difficult, they begin to doubt their abilities, and each failure is seen as uncontrollable, leading to helplessness. However, if they realize a task is unsolvable, they attribute failure to external factors, and helplessness does not develop. If they believe a task is solvable but requires special training they lack, helplessness also does not occur.

Internal Factors Contributing to Helplessness

• Previous experience of uncontrollability: Past failures where one could not influence the outcome increase the risk of helplessness.
• Belief that success depends on luck: People who think outcomes are due to chance are less active and effective than those who believe in their own efforts and abilities.
• Locus of control: This refers to whether a person feels they can influence others and their own life. Those with an internal locus of control believe in their ability to control situations, while those with an external locus attribute control to outside circumstances. Studies show that people with an external locus develop helplessness faster than those with an internal locus.

The relationship is more complex, however. If a failure is significant for someone with an external locus, the feeling of helplessness can be acute but may not generalize to other situations. If a person blames themselves (internal locus), they may explain failure in two ways:

• By negative personal qualities (e.g., lack of ability), seen as stable and universal. This leads to giving up after the first failures and a generalization of helplessness to other situations.
• By insufficient effort: “I failed because I didn’t work hard enough.” In this case, the person believes that with more effort, they can succeed.

Understanding these personality traits in job candidates can help predict their activity levels, especially when facing difficulties and failures.

Prevention and Change

Psychologists agree that it is easier to prevent learned helplessness than to change it. However, the theory suggests ways to both prevent and alter this state. To protect people from expecting uncontrollable events, they should be given experiences of complete control. Organizations should create a corporate culture and management style that demonstrate the possibility of control over the environment, providing timely and varied feedback. This helps develop proactive and competent—not helpless—employees.