{
  "id": "learned-helplessness.under",
  "term": "learned helplessness",
  "sense": "under",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 15,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "window",
  "definition": "A self-model that reports its reach as nothing after acting changed nothing, so it does not act where its reach is wide.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "self-model.reflexive",
      "reach.action",
      "report.information",
      "nothing.absence",
      "act.deed",
      "learn.cognitive",
      "wide.spatial",
      "change.process",
      "time.dimension"
    ],
    "interaction": "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.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "a wall that exists only in the self-model",
      "a lesson that outlives the window it was learned in",
      "reach present and unused"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "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.",
      "domain": "psychology"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "despair.state",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "despair reads every window as closed; learned helplessness reads its own reach as empty"
    },
    {
      "id": "self-efficacy.calibrated",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "SELF-READ under vs accurate"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "learned helplessness"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-28",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-learned-helplessness.under"
}