with TeachThought Staff
What is learning helplessness?
Explanation
Learning powerlessness is a state of mind in which a person, after repeated failures or bad experiences, believes that they cannot control the consequences of situations and stops trying to improve or change them.
Below is an example of Learned Helplessness in the classroom.
Instructor: The great fear of youth, written throughout this document, is not justified. Jesse, you talked about acceptance. Now, to understand how this happens, how it looks, and how it sounds, we will do the work. This is your personal work, and they are not meant to tax you—these are simple tasks. This is to give you a feel for what we will be going through.
Everyone, if you like, take out a short paper. I’m going to take these papers out—keep them face down. Please, no one writes on this; write on your paper.
Does everyone have one? Now, if you were going to do it, just do it one at a time. I’ll tell you when to do it.
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Instructor: Everyone, open a paper and do your own work. This does not mean it has to be difficult. These are anagrams – just do the first one. Go ahead and solve it. An anagram is when you rearrange the letters to form a word.
When you’re done, I need to see your hand raised. Go ahead, and we’ll wait.
Raise your hands, please. Just do number one. Do not continue.
Instructor: Okay, let’s move on to the second one. Don’t worry about the first number. Go to number two and solve it. And, when you’re done, raise your hand.
Okay, everyone’s hands are down. We will continue to do number three. For number three, rearrange the letters, and as soon as you’re done, raise your hand.
Here’s what you need to know: you’ve been given two different lists. This case of the room was given three names. The left side of the room was given these: “bat”—what would the word be? The second word was ‘lemon’—what’s the word, Brian?
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Brian: “A Melon.”
Instructor: That’s right. They were simple words. But here’s the trick: both sides of the room were given the same third word, ‘cinorama,’ an anagram of “American.” However, your first two words on this side of the room were unsolvable—they were impossible tasks.
I’m sorry about that, but here’s why I’m doing this. I was able to induce something called ‘learning powerlessness’ on the left side of the room, quite easily, within five minutes. I want you to imagine what happens to you on the left side of the room, when you see the right side raising their hands because the work is done.
What happened to you at that time? Jory?
Jory: I felt stupid.
Instructor: He felt stupid. That’s right. What else?
Joel: I felt a rush.
Instructor: You felt a rush. Joelle?
Joel: I was even more confused.
Instructor: You are even more confused because it has been resolved, and you are still struggling. Chelsea?
Chelsea: I was frustrated.
Instructor: Frustrated. What happens when you get to the third word? Because I’m here to tell you, this side of the room isn’t any smarter than this side. It was a random assignment. So why did you have such a hard time with the third name, which was the same name? Brian?
Brian: My confidence was shot.
Instructor: Of course. What he experienced was a term called ‘learning helplessness.’ How many of you have heard of that word before?
Instructor: ‘Learning disability’ is often used in academic literature. Jory, do you know what that means?
Jory: Basically, they fail once or can’t do something at one time, and then use it for everything to come. So all future jobs are affected by that.
Instructor: Of course. And this is what I want everyone to understand. It’s usually only used in academic research—you’ll see it in psychology textbooks, in textbooks. But I will challenge us to think about how educated helplessness can work on social media. Can someone give me an example of what that would look like? Tash?
Tasha: It’s like when a guy asks a girl out, he just gets rejected, he doesn’t try anymore. He just stopped asking.
Instructor: That’s right. Now, I want us to think about girls. We have talked about it Reviving Ophelia here. Consider how this applies to friendships. Can lack of education affect friendship? It’s hard to make and keep friendships—it’s a difficult process.
If a girl sacrifices her behavior once to gain the approval of her friends, or a guy, she’s more likely to keep doing it, right?
Instructor: And I’ll just make this clear: If Carl gets bullied once in grade school, is he likely to stand up for himself next time?
Students: No.
Instructor: And what happens next? And what’s next? What we know—and this is what we’ve been learning—is that girls are under cultural pressure to keep quiet. Girls are under cultural pressure not to get angry, not to use their voices. So if someone has been victimized once—if Alison has been victimized once—we can take that concept of learned helplessness and apply it to social relations.
So, the moral of the story is, it’s important for girls to learn to deal with failure. Because our gut response, when we fail, is to shut down. And when you hang up, you don’t open yourself up to learning new ways of relating.
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