LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

I just learned about a psychological effect called ‘learned helplessness’. It’s exactly what it sounds like, a sort of negative reinforcement of feeling stupid or inadequate at something based on evidence that’s induced that feeling.

The teacher gave a list of 3 anagrams to the class. She handed them out on paper and asked them all to solve the first anagram only.

WHIRL

After a few seconds, she asked the class to raise a hand when they’d solved it. About half the class threw eager hands into the air.

On to the second then, she continued. Same rules: put your hand up when you’ve solved the anagram.

SLAPSTICK

Again, half the class raised hands. The other half looked baffled. Anagram 3.

CINERAMA

Hands shot up. The rest of the class were stumped.

At this point, the teacher smiled and explained the ruse, which was of course, that not everyone had the same list of anagrams. In fact, the eager half had had the words BAT and LEMON as their first two, and yes, unfairly, the words WHIRL and SLAPSTICK are unsolvable anagrams. Sorry about that.

But they all had CINERAMA as anagram 3, and the interesting point was that after struggling with the first two, after seeing hands shoot up on the other side of the room, many of the students who couldn’t solve WHIRL or SLAPSTICK, also couldn’t now see that CINERAMA is an anagram of AMERICAN.

This is learned helplessness - an induced pattern that skews you into believing something about yourself and then closing down all the possibilities. It teaches you helplessness.

I recognised it. It felt as though a light had flicked on and all the corners of the room were suddenly visible. I’ve learned helplessness in so many areas, and so many times I’ve convinced myself I’m a failure at something, never stopping to wonder whether it had been a fair test. I’ve looked around and seen other people just get it and I’ve given up trying. I’ve spoken things out about myself that weren’t necessarily true and because I’ve declared them, I’ve believed them too.

There wasn’t much help on how to avoid learned helplessness. One thing I thought of though is to try to avoid absolutes like ‘never’ and ‘always’ when discussing yourself. I think I could replace those words with ‘rarely’ and ‘often’ - a subtle change I suppose, but it might leave the door open a chink for some self-improvement.

I also think there’s some mileage in just giving yourself a break every now and then. Perhaps even from the thorny problem in front of you that’s been driving you up the wall. I was always a person who tackled question 1 first in an exam, but now that I think about it, there was never any need to do that. Why not be strategic about what you deal with first? Who knows, maybe some of the smaller stones will teach you how to break up the boulder?

I also want to get much better at spotting learned-helplessness in other people. I feel like that could be a thing a lot of people have been restricted by. To be honest, I don’t even know where to start unpicking it, but I feel like it could be a really useful skill. And yes, if I do that well, it just might unlock a little more positive reinforcement for me too. And I do need that.