Learned helplessness

Today I will focus on one section of the book “Essentialism” of Greg McKeown.

He smartly says that the:

"The ability to choose can neither be taken away nor given, it can only be forgotten.”

How to forget that we have the choice?

Experiences led by Martin Seligman and Steve Maier bring light on this question. By observing German shepherds, they have discovered a mechanism, that they named “learned helplessness”.

THE EXPERIMENT

PART 1

Three groups of dogs were placed in harnesses.

° Group 1 dogs were simply put in a harness for a period of time and were later released.

° Dogs in Group 2 were given electric shocks at random times, which the dog could end by pressing a lever.

° Thus, for Group 3 dogs, the shock was "inescapable".

PART 2

In Part 2 of the experiment the same three groups of dogs were tested in a shuttle-box apparatus (a chamber containing two rectangular compartments divided by a barrier a few inches high). All of the dogs could escape shocks on one side of the box by jumping over a low partition to th other side.

° The dogs in Groups 1 and 2 quickly learned this task and escaped the shock.

° Most of the Group 3 dogs – which had previously learned that nothing they did had any effect on shocks – simply lay down passively and whined when they were shocked.

This experiment exhibits that we can change the behaviour of a subject “after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control.” It has been showed that humans learn the ame way. One meaningful example is the student that met difficulties to learn mathematics from his earliest childhood. HE will try to learn and to progress, et end up by giving up because he sees that this is useless. Then, he will thinking that his efforts will be pointless.

It can be extended to organizations (companies). When people think that their efforts are pointless, they usually don’t try anymore.

On the reverse side of such topic are the people who will accept anything within their corporate circle. They don’t think that they are under the learned helplessness but they are precisely: they think they don’t have the choice to accept these missions and tasks.

We could go deeper throughout this study as there is much more to say, but for today we will remain there.

SOURCES

- Essentialism | Greg McKeown

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

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Thanks for reading :)

Valentin