It is always nice to take responsibility for our lives. When I write something on my blog, I like to stress that we are the only ones that are going to get us where we want to be in life. If we aren't there, I like to think it is because we aren't trying enough. This is my tendency to underestimate the power of social influence and control. In other words, some things beyond our control effect us, too. And even though in the end it is still the individual that has to make decisions, sometimes that individual is pushed to make those decisions.

When I talk to a person who is having a rough time and they feel helpless, it is hard to tell them that it does no good to sit around feeling that way. The truth is that things happen in life that really get us down and then when we try to stand up something else happens. Sometimes it is all we can do just to get out of bed, and then people want to blame you for feeling like there is no use in trying. And sometimes we fail in life so many times that we just don't feel there is any use to attempt to try again.

This is what learned helplessness boils down to. It can happen to any person given the right circumstances. All you need is to get knocked down one too many times, eventually you'll not feel like getting back on the horse, so to speak. If you felt like you couldn't affect the outcome of a situation, what would be the use in continuing to struggle with the situation? This sort of situation happens all the time. In drug addicts, you might see a person who is doing well with abstaining from drugs and then they give in. They feel bad. It happens this way a few time and they feel like it is no use even trying to quit.

A better example, perhaps, is with people who don't do very well in school for some reason. They may try and fail one too many times and feel like it is no use to even try any more. So they don't and they fail. They feel inadequate because of their inability to succeed where so many other people do, so they may rationalize it by appearing not to have ever been concerned. The labels placed on these people, stupid, ignorant, slow, etc... they carry with them. Homelessness is the same way. You have people who seem to not be trying to rise from their position, but in reality they may have tried one too many times and failed.

The classic experiment done by Siegman et al to illustrate learned helplessness was a series of experiments on dogs involving shocking the animals. In these experiments there were three sets of dogs. In the first set, one dog would receive a shock that it could stop. The other dog received the same shock as the first but, having no control over stopping the shock and therefore the shock appeared to stop at random. This dog received the inescapable shock. The other dogs in the experiment received no shock.

In the next phase of the experiment, the dogs were placed into a box that had a low partition that could be jumped over to avoid being shocked. The dogs in the first and third groups, the ones that received the shock that they could stop themselves or received no shock at all, jumped over the partition. The dogs that revied the inescapable shock didn't even try to jump over the partition to avoid the shock. In other words, the dogs became indifferent. In the uncontrollable environment, the dogs learned that there was no use in trying and when placed into a similar situation decided that it was still no use to try, even though there was now a way to avoid the unpleasant consequences of the situation.

This is very comparable to the mussulmen. In the holocaust, this term was used to describe people who had endured so much suffering that they became indifferent to it. You can read about them here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mussulmen

And to a lesser extent, it is easy to see how the same concept applies to many who people just consider apathetic or indifferent by choice. Instead of instantly blaming the victims, perhaps we should first ask ourselves how a person could end up where they are. Each one of us can probably think of someone, if we try hard enough, that has suffered learned helplessness to some degree. In realizing this it would seem that a lot of problems need to be approached differently. Instead of assuming that everyone can pick themselves, we need to also think about why they might need a hand and when.

Or at least I think so.