LEARNED HELPLESSNESS
When Giving Up Is Learned The term learned helplessness was introduced in the late 1960s by psychologist Martin Seligman and his colleagues after a series of experiments exploring how living beings respond to situations beyond their control. Animals repeatedly exposed to unavoidable aversive events eventually stopped trying to escape—even when escape later became possible. The experience of uncontrollability had, in a sense, been learned. The idea quickly attracted attention beyond the laboratory. Researchers proposed that a similar process could help explain why some people, after repeated failures, losses, trauma, or chronic adversity, come to believe that their actions no longer matter. Rather than responding to each new situation on its own terms, the expectation of powerlessness becomes generalized. For a time, learned helplessness became one of the most influential psychological models of depression . The theory suggested that persistent exposure to uncontrollable events coul...