190 - Learned Helplessness (rebroadcast)

You Are Not So Smart

Science, Psychology, Brain, Business, Mental Health, Culture, Neuroscience, Mind, Health

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2020

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Stuck in a bad situation, even when the prison doors are left wide open, we sometimes refuse to attempt escape. Why is that? In this episode learn all about the strange phenomenon of learned helplessness and how it keeps people in bad jobs, poor health, terrible relationships, and awful circumstances despite how easy it might be to escape any one of those scenarios with just one more effort. In the episode, you'll learn how to defeat this psychological trap with advice from psychologists Jennifer Welbourne, who studies attributional styles in the workplace, and Kym Bennett who studies the effects of pessimism on health.Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart

Transcript

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0:00.0	Me. Welcome to the You Are Not So Smart Podcast. episode.
0:27.0	190. Oh, oh, oh, oh, and you can do.
0:34.0	Oh, do you, Hey everybody. The episode you're about to hear is from five years ago and it's just one of my favorite episodes I've ever done.
0:55.0	I'm a lot better at making this show than I was back when I made this but the
1:00.0	message of this show the content of this show is one of those things where I feel like this is the episode that showed me exactly how I wanted to make this podcast going forward.
1:11.0	And I'm working on a couple of really big episodes right now and I just
1:15.3	needed a little more space to finish them and I thought I would re-release this one to you. So
1:20.8	strangely enough, it's applicable today, even in these strange times, and it will be applicable every time you listen to it, and I hope you enjoy it.
1:30.0	It means a lot to me.
1:32.0	All right, all the way back from five years ago, learned helplessness.
1:37.0	The biggest fear of an adolescent, Jesse, not fitting in, is not fitting in.
1:45.6	You talked about acceptance.
1:48.0	Now to understand how this happens and how this looks and what this feels like, I'm going to have to do an activity.
1:55.0	This is Penn State Psychology Professor Sharis Nixon speaking to a classroom of students
2:00.0	recorded for a video produced by the Ophelia Project, which is an effort by scientists
2:05.8	and education professionals to provide resources and awareness to combat bullying and other
2:11.6	forms of relational aggression, especially the kind that's often directed at young women.
2:18.0	I'm going to pass out these papers and just keep them face down and if you would
2:24.0	no one write on these write on your own papers.
2:27.0	So in this exercise all the students tear out a blank piece of paper that's the one they're
2:31.4	going to write on and then
2:32.6	Nixon places face down on each desk another sheet of paper with three words
	...

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