LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

A THEORETICAL REVIEW

Abstract

Learned helplessness is a very important concept in social psychology and
other related behavioural sciences. Although the initial studies which brought this concept to prominence were controversial largely for ethical reasons, other studies have been conducted more recently to aid our understanding of this concept in both humans and animals. The findings in these studies have turned up rather inconsistent results. In this paper, we take a more critical look at learned helplessness as a theoretical concept with a view to illuminating some of the gaps in the concept hitherto ignored by other researchers.
We examine personal versus universal helplessness on one hand and generality versus chronicity of helplessness on another. We further explore the social impact of learned helplessness, examine a possible intervention and suggest direction for further research in this area of social psychology