Mar 25, 2022 05:47 PM
(This post was last modified: Mar 25, 2022 06:33 PM by C C.)
https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/learned-...maginable/
EXCERPT: . . . The researchers observed that the two groups of dogs—those who in the hammock the day before had been able to stop the shocks by nudging a lever, and those who had no way to stop the shocks—reacted very differently to the second trial. The first group of dogs all figured out how to jump over the barrier and escape the shocks quickly. But most of the dogs in the second group didn’t even try to escape the shocks. They simply lay down and endured them until the researchers ended the experiment.
Today, this kind of cruel animal research would be forbidden. But it yielded an important theory that became a cornerstone of animal and human psychology: the theory of 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 take actions to better our circumstances.
This theory held up for decades, through repeated experiments with mice, monkeys, and people. The same helpless behavior appeared again and again, in animals and humans alike.
It became one of the most cited explanations for clinical depression: if we experience an inability to control outcomes in multiple areas of our lives—at home, at school, at work, in our health, in our finances, in our love lives—then we learn to stop trying. Our brains tell us, “Don’t bother.” We get depressed and turn inward; we become passive, just like the dogs in the shuttle box.
But then, something unexpected happened in the field of psychology. One of the original researchers on the University of Pennsylvania experiment, Steven F. Maier, then a graduate student, switched fields and became a neuroscientist. He decided to revisit the theory he helped establish, but this time from a neurological perspective. He started investigating which circuits, receptors, and neurotransmitters were involved with learning helplessness.
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.
This newer research is complicated, but the most important thing to understand is that psychologists now know that a passive, defensive strategy—or simply trying to endure the worst until it ends—is actually the most hardwired, instinctive biological response we have to bad experiences.
You’ve probably heard of the “fight or flight” reaction to stress, and that’s real too. (Psychologists have updated the theory recently to include a third instinctive reaction to stress: “tend and befriend,” in which we seek and give social support.) But before fight or flight, before tend and befriend, “freeze” is actually the most primal response, the reaction that evolution initially favored.
If we don’t want to freeze, we have to learn that we can fight back. We have to learn that we can take flight. We have to learn that we can ask for and give others support... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPT: . . . The researchers observed that the two groups of dogs—those who in the hammock the day before had been able to stop the shocks by nudging a lever, and those who had no way to stop the shocks—reacted very differently to the second trial. The first group of dogs all figured out how to jump over the barrier and escape the shocks quickly. But most of the dogs in the second group didn’t even try to escape the shocks. They simply lay down and endured them until the researchers ended the experiment.
Today, this kind of cruel animal research would be forbidden. But it yielded an important theory that became a cornerstone of animal and human psychology: the theory of 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 take actions to better our circumstances.
This theory held up for decades, through repeated experiments with mice, monkeys, and people. The same helpless behavior appeared again and again, in animals and humans alike.
It became one of the most cited explanations for clinical depression: if we experience an inability to control outcomes in multiple areas of our lives—at home, at school, at work, in our health, in our finances, in our love lives—then we learn to stop trying. Our brains tell us, “Don’t bother.” We get depressed and turn inward; we become passive, just like the dogs in the shuttle box.
But then, something unexpected happened in the field of psychology. One of the original researchers on the University of Pennsylvania experiment, Steven F. Maier, then a graduate student, switched fields and became a neuroscientist. He decided to revisit the theory he helped establish, but this time from a neurological perspective. He started investigating which circuits, receptors, and neurotransmitters were involved with learning helplessness.
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.
This newer research is complicated, but the most important thing to understand is that psychologists now know that a passive, defensive strategy—or simply trying to endure the worst until it ends—is actually the most hardwired, instinctive biological response we have to bad experiences.
You’ve probably heard of the “fight or flight” reaction to stress, and that’s real too. (Psychologists have updated the theory recently to include a third instinctive reaction to stress: “tend and befriend,” in which we seek and give social support.) But before fight or flight, before tend and befriend, “freeze” is actually the most primal response, the reaction that evolution initially favored.
If we don’t want to freeze, we have to learn that we can fight back. We have to learn that we can take flight. We have to learn that we can ask for and give others support... (MORE - missing details)