Examples Of Learned Helplessness

Learned helplessness is a topic that has been researched by many and has been approached in different ways. There is even research that has found learned helplessness in other animals, and suggests that it is linked to survival and adaptability (Eisenstein & Carlson, 1997). What seems to set humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is that animals cannot generalize what they have learned to new situations (Vollmayr &Gass, 2013). Learned helplessness was originally researched by Seligman, Maier, and Geer (1968) as a part of their research on depression. Learned helplessness is defined as the discrepancy between the task at hand and the ability of the organism to complete that task (response and outcome are independent) (Boyd, 1982). We can see how uncontrollable situations can induce learned helplessness by focusing on two components: emotion/frustration and motivation. Learned helplessness is induced when an organism simply perceives a situation to be negative therefore, causing a negative emotion, even though the situation is not stressful perse (Vollmayr &Gass, 2013). For example, Boyes and French (2010) conducted an experiment where they looked

Finchma et. al. (1989) conducted a longitudinal study looking at how test anxiety can affect learned helplessness. They measured test anxiety and helplessness on 82 third graders and then again when they were in fifth grade. They found that test anxiety is linked to learned helplessness and it seems the relation increases with age. Finchma et. al. (1989) concludes this is due to children’s concept of ability. Attributing our failures to our ability increase from the third to the fifth grade. With this concept in mind and being unsuccessful in previous tasks it is easier to fall into learned