Effect of learned helplessness on human behavior

The purpose of this study is to use survey research in conjunction with laboratory experiments to investigate the effect of learned helplessness on human behavior as demonstrated through the use of anagram solving to build and test the hypothesis that failure in difficult circumstances causes increasing frustration, which leads to learned helplessness, which leads to coping behavior even when the difficult situation can be avoided. The research questions addressed in this study are: does learned helplessness occur in the face of difficulty or negative circumstance, and in light of previous failure(s) during difficulty(ies), and does it act to diminish natural problem-solving capability in both animals and humans while creating increasing frustrations, which further reinforces learned helplessness and coping behavior? The study is derived both from review of available literature on case research as well as data collection and analysis drawn from a demographic survey based research which also has non demographic aspects because knowledge of the participants is also being tested. The participants are randomly selected caucasian individuals with at least high school education from ages 20 to 50 years old. They are select at random from randomly selected locations for example, university, shopping mall and finance firm office. The particular requirement of survey research intended to collect and synthesize data for testing of this theory is prompted by the necessity to validate the hypothesis that through learned helplessness, individuals attribute their internal negative outcomes to other external causes and effects and not causes and effects under their control. The method employed is a survey research together with a lab experiment. Some of the series of studies reviewed have also implemented this experimental approach. The experimental evidence demonstrates that negative stimuli and difficult circumstances are associated with greater normative constraints on the intelligence and problem solving capabilities in both humans and animals. We conclude that learned helplessness is present and modifies behavior and intelligent thinking in the representative population. It was also found that these negative effects of learned helplessness are consistent across participant ages, and do not seem to be in any way made better by education.

Key words: human behavior, learned helplessness, intelligence, intelligence testing, coping mechanism.

Thesis Statement: The factors that majorly promote learned helplessness are universal, internal and constant and learned helplessness is a present condition in both humans and animals cognitive responses to negative situations.

Literature Review

Learned helplessness and anagrams

Learned helplessness is a common concept in many circles today including both the experimental and clinical. It is a concept that has been used first to describe the failure by laboratory animals to avoid shock or escape when given a chance after a previous exposure to unavoidable shock. Learned helplessness is a psychological process that exhibits prevalently in animals, and it often brings about server stress and emotional torture. Being helpless means that there is the loss of control of the self or the possible outcomes and avoidance of the circumstance does not have an alternative. It is from several experiments on animals that researchers came up with learned helplessness. For psychologists learned helplessness is a state where one endures painful stimuli and the resultant consequences because he or she has learned that the encounter is unavoidable even when avoidance is possible.

Students in schools tend to exhibit some symptoms that show learned helplessness affects them. Gordon and Gordon (2006) affirm that just like in the animal’s experimentation, students develop certain tendencies from their past experiences in the learning. Through anagrams, many learners now and then fail to decipher the appropriate formatting of the words in question. After several attempts and failure, students begin feeling helpless and lose motivation and thereby develop a syndrome of learned helplessness. Abramson and Seligman (1978) learn that the only reason negative or uncomfortable conditions could prompt one to remain unchanged is that learned helplessness is combined with other conditions that include chronic failures, sadness, and a low self-esteem among other factors.

However, Cromby (2013) argues that learned helplessness makes animals attain a form of prejudgment to an event. Thereby prompt a change of behavior. As a psychologist, learned helplessness is often the past experiences, fear, and depression that one develops after an encounter with an event. Most students often become opinionated and form judgments from their past experiences (Kemp, 2016). Students that fall victims of learned helplessness often fail to peruse certain tasks with the belief that success is not dependent on their behavior. Students, hence, develop a tendency of using feeble attempts to solve problems or even desist from attending classes altogether.

Learned helplessness in anagrams stems from people attributing their internal negative products to lasting causes and effects. So, people often assume and cling to those future results will also be negative. Learned helplessness in anagrams solving, for instance, comes in the cognitive, behavioral and affective forms. In the cognitive form, it decreases the problem-solving ability. Since the classroom context is often accompanied by regulations in all activities, students develop prejudgments towards education for the rest of their lives. In “How psychology applies to everyday life,” (2008), Brooks and Church hold anagrams are an example of how most students give up during the learning and hence develop a form of learned helplessness. Since anagrams include the interchange of words to create new words by using the exact number of words, most people often have difficulties in making new words.

In the behavioral form, learned helplessness brings about a lower self-esteem and frustration, and in the effective form, it could make one plunge into a form of depression and helplessness (McLaughlin, 2010). Seligman brought the learned helplessness theory about in the mid-1960s. (Abramson & Seligman, 1978). A bell accompanied light electric shocks. After some time even after ringing the bell without the electric shock, the dogs still reacted to the shock (Koutstaal, 2012). In the next experiment, Seligman then decided to separate the cage with a low fence which the dogs could easily jump over. (Abramson & Seligman, 1978). However, after administering the electric shock, the dogs simply lay down as an indication that they were helpless in the situation. (Abramson & Seligman, 1978). Seligman then named the condition as learned helplessness brought about by negative past experiences that often change the perception of people in negative situations due to past experiences. (Abramson & Seligman, 1978).

After repeating the same experiment with other dogs that were not taken through the classical conditioning experiment, they jumped over to the other part of the fence. (Abramson & Seligman, 1978). A different experiment aimed at observing the effects of experimentally induced learned helplessness in elderly adolescents and younger adults with severe asthma was later conducted by Shirali to ascertain the findings of Seligman. The experiments involved nine participants between 18-24 years and matched their Healthy Cohort. They received either contingent or non-contingent reaction on an empirical task (Shirali, 2002). The researcher also assessed the participant’s anagrams following the experiment. More, tests of depression, pretest and pro-test measures of expectancy, mood, and attributions that are related to experimental task performance were also measured. A sample conducted an experiment of three people with different ages and sexes but the same race.

After filling in their demographics information, they were time to decipher three anagrams before proceeding to the feedback section. The first person, a 51-year-old of Caucasian origin got right all the three anagrams in 12.7 seconds, the second person a 26-year-old girl of Caucasian origin used 57.32 (Rowe, 2002) seconds and only completed one anagram of the possible three. The third case was an 11-year-old boy also of Caucasian origin who managed to get two out of the possible three anagrams after 30 seconds. In the third section, they gave their opinions on a scale of 1-9 on the easiness or complexity of the task. Seligman states that in his experiment, the dogs did not cross over to the other area because they thought that there was nothing they could do to stop the shock. (Abramson & Seligman, 1978).

The experimenters had to physically carry the dogs twice to the area that did not have a shock before the dogs finally decided to cross over willfully. Craighead and Nemeroff (2001) ascertain that threats, demonstrations, and rewards have no effect on learned helplessness as evidenced by the dog’s behavior. In the second experiment, people that have a long-standing asthma condition have difficulty in solving anagrams and have an increased rate of depression and learned helplessness (Rowe, 2002). Long standing asthma is directly linked to frustrations, environmental non-contingency and solving problems because it leads to learned helplessness. In the third experiment on anagrams and learned helplessness, gender relates to frustration. The 26-year-old Caucasian female found it difficult to complete the anagrams and took most time. Similarly, females often have emotional mood swings that result to frustrations which eventually hinder creativity that eventually results to learned helplessness (Blumberg, 2008). Timing the participants equally led to more frustration. Participants diverted their attention to the time, that’s seen as a barrier hindering them from giving their best performance. The frustration levels of the participants also differ. The participants’ level of frustrations in learned helplessness and anagrams is directly linked to the problem solution abilities. The attributions that mostly foster learned helplessness are global, internal and stable. An example of an internal attribute where one believes that he or she is stupid. Stupidity is an inbuilt function rather than an external attribute. Global attribution cuts across various dimensions.

Solving anagrams shows a situation that brings about learned helplessness in the academic domain. Many people who often develop fear and prejudgment are due to their past experiences and hence to them, failure in whatever they do is inevitable. The three experiments each came to a conclusion that, the experience is a significant influence in the development of learned helplessness. For instance believing that the cause of failure in class is a global aspect implies that one is stupid in other classes as well and that is why failure comes about. Stupidity as a stable attribute means that to be stupid does not change even over time. (Mikulincer, 2013). Learned helplessness is applicable and impaction on anagrams and their resultant outcomes. Learned helplessness is dependent on the environment because when one stays in the same environment, the mentality of helplessness builds and becomes a constraint.

However, if one can change the environment, he or she may be able to get free from learned helplessness. Anagrams, frustrations, moods and experience play a pivotal role in fostering learned helplessness. Fear often results in depression, and these are the two key ingredients that trigger learned helplessness. Since problem-solving requires flexibility and concentration, fear, frustrations, and depression often block the chances of solving anagrams. An experience that could include punishment or consequences by failing to solve an anagram might lead to a spillover effect on the current ability to solve problems. (Matute, 1994).

Methods

In this study, one independent variable which was Task Difficulty was manipulated at three levels, easy, moderate and hard. The dependent variables on the other hand were Frustration with the task, Time to complete, personal ease, and ease of others. These dependent variables could be measured and relied on the independent variables because their result could change depending on the independent variable, for example, the type of study the subject gets: easy, moderate or hard. The aim of the study was to measure an individual’s frustration depending on the ease or difficulty of the anagram task while gauging evidence of learned helplessness and its effects as the anagrams become impossible to solve. From the inception of this study, it was presumed on the basis of previous encounter with the literature that learned helplessness exists. It had also been expected that the condition of learned helplessness, which is demonstrated by failure of individuals to avoid negative situations or take appropriate action to escape even though there are given chances as a result of previous experience of seemingly unavoidable and insurmountable challenges. It was also predicted that learned helplessness, a psychological process, is not only exhibited prevalently both in humans and animals, but also often causes internally perceived stress and emotional pressure. Helplessness implies complete failure to have control of oneself or of the potential outcomes and escaping a situation. One does seem to have absolutely no alternative. It is from the highlighted premises that this experiment on a representative population was construed.

Results

Out of the three participants surveyed, two of these were male (66.7%) while one was female (33.3%). The age of the sample ranged from 11 to 51 (M=30.67, SD=22.37) and this included 100% Caucasian (N=3). Participants reported they were more frustrated in the hard condition (M=9) than the easy condition (M=1). The result of the conducted F-Test, F (2,0) = 16.333, p