#theories #healthpsychology #learning
Based on: Sarafino, Smith. “Health psychology” Biopsychosocial interactions, Wiley, 2022. pp. 90
Used image from: [ Ссылка ]
Transcript:
Hey today we will talk about learned helplessness theory. Learned helplessness is a psychological event where an individual, after repeated exposure to uncontrollable and negative situations, begins to believe that they have no control over their circumstances. This belief can lead to a sense of powerlessness and can have a profound impact on one's mental health.
The concept of learned helplessness was first studied by psychologist Martin Seligman through experiments involving dogs. In these experiments, dogs were exposed to electric shocks they couldn't escape. It's basically classical conditioning, a tone would be presented and the dogs would get electric shock. Later, the dogs were placed in a shuttlebox that contained two chambers separated by a low barrier. The floor was electrified on one side, and not on the other. The dogs previously subjected to the classical conditioning made no attempts to escape, even though avoiding the shock simply involved jumping over a small barrier.
In the 1970s, Seligman extended the concept of learned helplessness from dogs research to clinical depression in humans and proposed a learned helplessness theory to explain how people become vulnerable to depression. There are some issues with the learned helplessness theory. We will talk about it in another video.
