Learned Helplessness: Study about Trauma

Martin Seligman was a psychologist who coined the term “learned helplessness”. Basically, he did a bunch of experiments with dogs (and later with other animals) to understand how they respond to patterns that could hurt them. Here’s a smaller version of the story…

He put a bunch of rats in a box. This box had only one opening. The door was electrocuted. Whenever a rat tried to open the door, it would get a minor shock. This continued for some time, and every rat in the box developed a “trauma” from that door. Then he stopped the electricity. Even though there was no longer any pain involved in escaping the box, no rat would now try to open the door. “Trauma” was the key.

Psychologists like to connect animal behavior with human behavior. This study shows how trauma, fear, or anxiety can make a person feel so helpless, so weak.

But here’s what I don’t like: sometimes psychology treats the human brain as a single entity, as if humans are just pattern-detecting objects that stick with those patterns. In reality, there’s so much more to this experiment than meets the eye.

First, from a probabilistic standpoint, if I’m a rat and I’ve been electrocuted 10 times trying to open that door, what’s the probability of getting electrocuted the 11th time I try? Is it 1/2 or more? (If you can’t answer this just delete my contact from your phone)

Second, if I’m a human with trauma about talking to girls (let’s say), there are so many variables involved. Maybe I don’t like talking in person, online, or on chat, or all of the above. Maybe I don’t like talking to girls who are taller than me, or who have a specific body type, hair color, or skin color. Maybe I don’t like talking to girls in certain situations, at certain times, and maybe it all depends on my mood. You see? All these variables play a role in my “trauma”.

The human brain isn’t just one giant machine that gives a single output. There are tens or hundreds of little brains doing their own independent decision making and then sending their predictions to create the final output. It’s not as simple as getting a “hurt” feedback and correcting it accordingly. There’s so much going on underneath.

The thing is, life is just pain. We must understand that even breathing is painful; we just don’t feel that pain because our brain absorbs that little “shock” every time we breathe. Rats may get resilient over time, but there will always be another door with a bigger shock. Rats don’t need to keep opening doors. Sometimes it’s better to keep some doors closed. Trauma has no cure (mathematically). Sometimes it’s better to not deal with some things. Painfully enough, sometimes it’s just better to not seek support. Sometimes it’s better to just accept your life as it is. At least I think this way, but you can disagree 🙂