Professor Mark Berg
(History & Systems)
Chapter 11
This chapter is all about personality and the role it plays within psychology. One thing from Chapter 11 I am going to focus on is the phenomenon known as learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is a mental state in which when an individual is forced to endure an unpleasant stimulus, the individual becomes unable or unwilling to avoid encounters with said unpleasant stimulus even if the individual in reality is able to escape said unpleasant stimulus. Even when the individual is able to escape encounters with the unpleasant stimulus, their belief that they cannot is fueled by them learning that they are unable to. There are three components necessary inorder for someone to develop learned helplessness. Those components are contingency, cognition and behavior. Contingency is the identifiable relationship between an individual's actions and the environmental response. For example, playing a guitar and ensuing a tune. In learned helplessness, contingency is often operationalized as its converse so that when an agent acts, there is no identifiable relation with a specific response. Cognition is the way a person understands/explains the meaning of contingency. And the third component is how people understand/explain environmental contingencies. Learned helplessness is the product of a situation that has no clear contingency and is uncontrollable. This picture below helps depict the idea of learned helplessness.
This picture below also helps to understand learned helplessness. Learned helplessness as also been correlate with depression.
Elements of Thought:
Concepts are that if you are successful you cannot develop learned helplessness. That idea is incorrect. An honors student can develop learned helplessness just as much as a non-honors student.
Interpretations of solutions are things such as SMART goals. 
Information: Individuals who develop learned helplessness are able to overcome it. Treatments for learned helplessness are :
Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
This type of therapy really focuses on helping the individual overcome learned helplessness by creating associations with new ways of thinking and acting.
Source: http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/developmental-psychology/social-development/what-is-learned-helplessness/
Hi Sammy, I enjoyed your entire post, but the images you chose as visual aids really helped emphasize the points you were trying to make. I specifically liked your image regarding learned helplessness. That concept has always been interesting to me, and your flowchart you used to show two different paths that can either lead to learned helplessness or not was very intriguing.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your post. I like that you chose to focus on the learned helplessness. I love the image that you used the image because it really does help illustrate what it is. Great job!
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