“Learned helplessness is a state that occurs after a person has experienced a stressful situation repeatedly. They come to believe that they are unable to control or change the situation, so they do not try — even when opportunities for change become available.”
Medical News Today
Learned helplessness was first discovered by Martin Seligman (the experiments of whom I will not be mentioning because I consider them to be unethical and cruel to animals). Seligman discovered that, when a subject experiences failure several times in a row, they will accept defeat, often even refusing to try when presented with a chance to succeed. For example, if you’ve ever met someone who refuses to vote during an election, it’s usually because they believe that their voice does not have the ability to make a difference. Seligman concluded that if you feel like you aren’t in control of your destiny, or when you are unable to succeed at easy tasks, you will give up and accept whatever situation you are in.
I believe that Seligman’s theory allows us to understand a lot about success and failure. If it claims that many small failures leads to a person feeling helpless and incapable, then doesn’t many small successes lead to a person feeling self-sufficient and independant? The following video is an expeiment conducted by Charisse Nixon, Ph.D and developmental psychologist at Penn State Erie. Charisse puts the theory of learned helplessness to test in a classroom setting with a very simple exercise.
Charisse hands out a quiz to every student in the class containing 3 words. She instructs the students to unscramble the words, to make a new word, and to raise their hand when they have completed the task. After the first word, only half the students raise their hands while the other half look on in confusion. Charisse does not wait for everyone to finish, but instructs the students to move on to the second word. Again, only half the students raise their hands and the class is instructed to move on to the final word. At the end of the test, half of the students have succeeded and the other half have failed. Charisse informs all of the students that they have been given two distinct quizzes, one that was easy and one that was impossible. What’s more, both quizzes contained the same final word: cinerama. Those who were given the accomplishable test were able to unscramble the final word and those who were given the impossible test were not.
The impossible quiz made the students feel confused, frustrated, and unintelligent. As they saw the other half of the room raise their hands, they felt insecure about their own abilities. This decline in self-confidence forced them to give up on the quiz and stop trying, even when they had the ability to succeed and unscramble the final word. This concept is important because, as Charisse explains, it can be applied to the social setting. An extended period of negative emotions or interaction, depression, abuse, etc. can lead to feelings of dispair, hopelessness and excepting a certain fate. Learned helplessness allows us to understand the psychological processes that work to keep people from achieving their full potential; therefor, I believe that it is an important theory to consider in the classroom setting. Through this study, were shown that if a student is able to succeed at a series of small tasks, they will be more likely to have the confidence to take on bigger tasks and succeed. In that way, learned helplessness can inform educators on how to foster confidence in the classroom.