Organisms who develop learned helplessness are less capable of perceiving the effectiveness of their coping strategies
Not only do People who develop learned helplessness lack the motivation to apply coping strategies in adverse situations, animals with learned helplessness also have a cognitive problemāsomething is awry with how they perceive and think about the world. When they do make the rare coping response, they canāt tell whether it works or not. For example, if you tighten the association between a coping response and a reward, a normal ratās response rate increases (in other words, if the coping response works for the rat, it persists in that response). In contrast, linking rewards more closely to the rare coping responses of a helpless rat has little effect on its response rate.
Psychologist Martin Seligman believes that this is not a consequence of helpless animals somehow missing the rules of the task; instead, he thinks, they have actually learned not to bother paying attention. By all logic, that rat should have learned, āWhen I am getting shocked, there is absolutely nothing I can do, and that feels terrible, but it isnāt the whole world; it isnāt true for everything.ā Instead, it has learned, āThere is nothing I can do. Ever.ā Even when control and mastery are potentially made available to it, the rat cannot perceive them. If Our left hemisphere unconsciously focuses on only a select few of the sensory signals it receives that it considers important, then their brains are tuning out the possibility of control before theyāre even conscious of the situation. This is very similar to the depressed human who always sees glasses half empty. As many cognitive therapists have emphasized, much of what constitutes a depression is centered around responding to one awful thing and overgeneralizing from itācognitively distorting how the world works.
References
- Sapolsky, Robert. (2004). Why Zebras Donāt Get Ulcers Chapter 14. Stress and Depression (p. 429). New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company.
Metadata
Type:š“ Tags: Psychology / Psychiatry Status:āļø