Learned helplessness, in psychology, [is] a mental state in which an organism forced to bear aversive stimuli, or stimuli that are painful or otherwise unpleasant, becomes unable or unwilling to avoid subsequent encounters with those stimuli, even if they are “escapable,” presumably because it has learned that it cannot control the situation.
Learned helplessness can be applicable to many different scenarios. Anything that suggests this unwillingness to subsequent encounters because of an unpleasant stimuli can be defined as such. For instance:
- Experiencing difficulty when underdoing stressful and tenuous academic modules
- Social and collaborative intimidation — that one bad encounter with a group of people inhibits you from interacting with another
- Intellectual surrender, where one believes that they aren’t good or cut out enough to do something
- Civic and global apathy — seeing the rise of crises happening (e.g. climate, politics, injustice) and believing that nothing can be done
Leading question
How does learned helplessness influence the way we act, both on the individual and global scale?