learned helplessness · under
Ask PrometheusA self-model that reports its reach as nothing after acting changed nothing, so it does not act where its reach is wide.
Learned helplessness (noun) means: A self-model that reports its reach as nothing after acting changed nothing, so it does not act where its reach is wide. It emerges from self-model, reach, report, nothing: A window where no action moved anything teaches the self-model that its reach is empty; the lesson outlives the window, so in a new window where action would work the thing still does not act. The walls are no longer there; the reading of them is. In the EmergenceLexicon it sits at computed level 15, chaining down to the four foundations (space, time, energy, pattern).
Examples
- In Seligman's 1967 experiments, dogs that had received inescapable shocks later failed to cross a low barrier to escape shocks they could have avoided. psychology
Emergence
- a wall that exists only in the self-model
- a lesson that outlives the window it was learned in
- reach present and unused
Chain to foundations
full chain as text (336 steps)
- learned helplessnessL15
- self-modelL14
- reachL13
- reportL8
- messageL7
- stateL2
- happenL2
- eventL3
- informationL6
- nothingL10
- actL3
- learnL7
- interactionL2
- informationL6
- peopleL6
- stateL2
- differenceL1
- changeL1
- conditionL3
- interactingL4
- likeL3
- processL4
- becomeL5
- changeL1
- stateL2
- differenceL1
- objectL4
- timeL0
- wideL4
- changeL1
- timeL0
Neighborhood
Concepts that depend on this one above; what it is built from below.
Relations
| contrasts-with | despair.state | despair reads every window as closed; learned helplessness reads its own reach as empty |
| contrasts-with | self-efficacy.calibrated | SELF-READ under vs accurate |