learned helplessness
LERND HELP-lis-nes
lɜːrnd ˈhɛlplɪsnəsListen
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Dictionary meaning
a psychological state in which a person or animal that has repeatedly experienced uncontrollable aversive events comes to believe that their actions have no effect on outcomes, leading to passive acceptance of negative situations even when escape or improvement has become possible; first demonstrated experimentally by Martin Seligman and Steven Maier in dogs exposed to inescapable electric shocks in the 1960s; Seligman later proposed learned helplessness as a model for human depression; the concept has been applied to educational underachievement, workplace disengagement, and the psychology of abuse victims who do not leave their situations
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