Learned Helplessness

Description of the Concept

Students who experience repeated failure in school may come to believe that no matter what they do, they will never learn. They begin to avoid doing their assignments, make little or no effort, and stop trying after only a few attempts. Such students are frustrating to teach because their behavior is difficult to understand, explain, and change. A common explanation is that these students “lack motivation” to learn. The learned helplessness model, developed in the late 1960s by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman and his colleagues, explains why some students develop a pattern of behaviors that interfere with learning, often labeled as “a lack of motivation.” Seligman defines learned helplessness as the giving up or quitting response—when individuals believe that no matter what they do, they will never have control over the outcome of a situation or an event.

Learned helplessness has three components: contingency, cognition, and behavior. Contingency refers to the relationship between what a student does and the effect the student's actions have on the outcome. For example, if a student studies very hard for math tests and continually receives grades of A, a positive relationship or contingency between studying (actions) and receiving good grades (outcomes) is established. In contrast, when a student receives failing grades whether or not he studies, no positive relationship or contingency between studying or not studying (actions) and receiving failing grades (outcomes) is developed. The student's actions (studying or not studying) do not exert any control over the outcome (failing).

Cognition refers to the way in which students perceive and explain the relationships or contingencies between their actions and the outcomes they experience. For example, for learned helplessness to occur, a student failing math must first become aware that his attempts to study or not study (actions) are having no effect on his grades (outcomes). Trying to explain his failure, the student might form the following hypothesis: “I'm really dumb in math.” Aware that his actions are not affecting his grades and believing he is failing because he is “dumb in math,” the student will expect to fail math in the future. When students experience repeated failure on academic tasks, they may come to believe that they have no control over present or future outcomes; they have learned to be “helpless.”

The power of learned helplessness in developing an expectancy for future failure is related to the nature of the student's explanatory style. Individuals develop habitual ways of thinking about and explaining the good and bad events in their lives, a so-called attributional or explanatory style. The causes individuals use to explain events occur on three dimensions: personalization (internal versus external causes), permanence (stable versus temporary causes), and pervasiveness (global versus specific causes). Students who consistently attribute school failure to internal, stable, and global causes, such as low intelligence or lack of ability, may display behaviors indicating damaged selfesteem and learned helplessness, which may persist over time. The student who has learned helplessness believes that failures result from a personal, unchangeable trait (stupidity), which will result in failure across [Page 1376]many academic areas. Conversely, students who attribute failure to external, temporary, and specific causes, such as an unfair exam or a particular teacher, may show no signs of self-esteem damage and no permanent effects of the failure experience. These students view failure as specific to the subject, teacher, or day, and will not expect to fail in other academic areas.

...