Cito di Pense wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:It's caused by being placed in a situation where there is no escape, demonstrated through numerous yoked experiments that produce the exact same results time after time, with the only variable that predicts this result being the history of inescape.

Well, then the "anagrams" video doesn't take place in that context. What interests us is "not trying" or "giving up" when the opportunity to extract oneself from a situation is present and identified. If CBT can do that, so much the better. One does not "escape" from a pencil-and-paper exercise; we see that someone has already played a trick on us as soon as we see the word "whirl" at the top of the list. What is the "cost" of "inescape" in that case? What's the payoff for proceeding to the third one and solving it? What that video example attempts is a very crude analogy, and does not demonstrate anything related to "learned helplessness". You know, the kind with an etiology.

The use of the word "escape" was sloppy on my part, I was still discussing the initial experiments.

The common predictor among all the learned helplessness is lack of control over an aversive stimulus, so what happens follows the same learning processes that would normally occur but the causal relation that is learnt, is that there is no causal relation. For example, Watson and Ramey (1969) looked at babies with a mobile above their cots - one group were given control over the mobile by adjusting their head on the pillow, and the other group were not given this option. When placed in a situation where both had control of the mobile, only the first group controlled it whilst the others failed to learn this relationship.

Learned helplessness isn't a special case of learning though, it's just learning a specific characteristic of the environment.

Cito di Pense wrote:That's what we mean by not being permitted to do real experiments on people's lives. Lots of white lies get told in the classroom.

But we can do real experiments on people's lives (to some degree). When I said that we were limited in doing so above, I was referring to when somebody comes in with depression or some other problem - in that case we can't go back in time to experiment and discover the cause.

Cito di Pense wrote:I accept the conditioning examples illustrated by dogs and elephants. The examples of passivity cited by the classroom leader in the video are examples of passivity when the costs of passivity are not nearly as immediate and evident as receiving electric shocks and so on. People are not the same kinds of animals as dogs, and the etiology of the so-called "learned helplessness" cited in the classroom example (with the anagrams) is not really identified, yet the classroom leader is eager to slap that very crude label on the classroom situation, mainly as an object lesson for a much more subtle context.

Yeah the teacher's claims about what was causing the learned helplessness in that example was psychobabble. She was inferring feelings as causes which is wrong.

I don't understand why you see humans as different "kinds" to dogs and elephants. What is it that you think makes us immune to conditioning and basic laws of behavior?

Cito di Pense wrote:Help me out here with a clear example of "learned helplessness" that narrowly meets the criteria of the experiments with dogs. What the video represents is a very crude analogy, and that is why it looks like psychobabble so far.

The example in the video is fine. The students are given a basic task to rearrange the letters of words to make a new one - one half of the room is given solvable tasks and the other half isn't. The second half of the room learn that the words are unsolvable; that is, they learn that trying to solve them produces no results. So when both groups are given a solvable word, the second group still can't solve it. Both groups are approximately equal in every other factor; ages, genders, education level, etc etc, and the only separating factor is the history with the task.

Cito di Pense wrote:Empowerment is not the antithesis of "learned helplessness", since no one needs to consider herself learned-helpless when "ignorance" is the condition before she is empowered. Examples showing when empowerment is demonstrated by subjects in some circumstances and passively rejected in others would be very interesting studies. Had the anagrams example actually illustrated empowerment in that context (say, by allowing the whole classroom to succeed with all three anagrams before tossing a scam at them) then empowerment to reject scams would be illustrated, and people who refused that empowerment could be considered examples of learned helplessness. Of course we could call them "slow", but that kind of terminology is definite political incorrectness.

I'm not sure what you mean by empowerment. If that's what the woman in the example said then yes, it's most likely psychobabble. If by "empowerment" she (or you) mean re-training the subjects so they can identify the causal relation in the environment, and essentially "re-write" their prior training, then yes "empowerment" works. It's a shit word to use though due to all the touchy-feely connotations, and if you didn't choose it then I'd wager that it was proposed by Seligman and his "Positive Psychology" movement - otherwise known as the "be happy and you won't go crazy" movement.

Cito di Pense wrote:Did the anagrams example really illustrate learned helplessness in the presence of a recognised scam?

If they recognised it was a scam then it wouldn't have been learned helplessness, in the same way putting someone in an unopenable box isn't learned helplessness - it's just regular helplessness.

Cito di Pense wrote:The crudity with which the classroom leader attempted to indoctrinate the classroom about awareness of a very complex kind of passivity and naming it "learned helplessness" is precisely the kind of psychobabble we are talking about, here.

I'm not sure what you mean by "indoctrinating the classroom about awareness of a kind of passivity"? Are you suggesting that the reason the two groups differed in solving the last task was because some were "passive" or just lazy or something?

Cito di Pense wrote:Strategies for reducing passivity in human beings (not the same as the learned helplessness of those crudely-conditioned dogs) would be a powder keg in a society that depends on maintaining a lot of passivity.

Learned helplessness would mean something if a risk-reward analysis was also present. Not everybody violates traffic signals and signs late at night at deserted intersections, but lots of people do, given a risk-reward analysis. If you happen to be caught, explaining the logic of the situation to the policeman is of no avail, however.

That has nothing to do with learned helplessness though.

The only way I could think it would be learned helplessness, is if we had two cars and every time Car A came to a set of traffic lights we would clamp their tires when the lights are red and release them when it turns green, whilst placing no restriction on Car B. Now, when both cars approach lights at an empty intersection, if people in Car A were less likely to run the red, or had significant delays before running the red, then we would label that learned helplessness.

They've learnt that red lights mean you can't move, and this learning interferes with their current conditions (that is, red lights don't affect the movement of your car).

Cito di Pense wrote:If I were really curious to document people's behavior, I would do so, and refrain from slapping fancy labels on it before I had an etiology in hand that really applied to human beings in context. I'll say this, though: I might use the term if I suspected that someone was "playing dumb" and pretending to be helpless, more or less to embarrass him or her into taking some responsibility. More or less what I do when I tell someone "RTFM". Without the etiology, "learned helplessness" is hyperbolic jargon, and "intimidated" is more straightforward.

So it's the label you have a problem with? Sure, I can agree with that - Seligman comes up with shit names for everything he proposes.

How about this then: instead of labeling it "learned helplessness", we'll say "that knowledge of global contingencies interferes with the acquisition of local contingencies". Any better?

Cito di Pense wrote:Life. What a situation to be in. Don't talk to me about life.

Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. Call that "job satisfaction"? 'Cos I don't.

What I mean by "etiology" is to make a start on defining the circumstances under which one will use the term "learned helplessness". "Escape" is not a word used by dogs. In fact, its implications are cognitive. Unless, of course we are referring to fluid "escaping" from a nozzle. Sure, if you talked about "conditioned helplessness", you could just refer to it as "conditioning", with no connotations. "Helplessness" is simply dripping with emoticons.

The common predictor among all the learned helplessness is lack of control over an aversive stimulus

So, that separates the subjects from simple conformity? Or is conformity something that is learned by the imposition of an aversive stimulus? How do people become immune to that aversive stimulus, and yet not become sociopathic? I have my own ideas about this, and will give you a shot at guessing what I mean.

In the case of dogs, I can understand this. With humans, lack of control may be lodged in social relations. Perhaps that's what you mean by "learned". Yoda sez, "You must unlearn what you have learned."

Lots of unfortunate people "learn" that they are "incapable" of learning, and that's all they ever learn, in that context. I can go with "helplessness" as "learning impairment", sure, and there is an element of conditioning there, so I do not dismiss the idea completely.

I don't understand why you see humans as different "kinds" to dogs and elephants.

Language mitigates against pure conditioning. Can one dog say to another, "I think they're trying to trick us"? Do dogs learn from watching other dogs? Maybe a little, but not much. Monkey see, monkey do.

If by "empowerment" she (or you) mean re-training the subjects so they can identify the causal relation in the environment, and essentially "re-write" their prior training, then yes "empowerment" works.

Exactly. It's another invented term. One feature of "existential therapy" is the notion of making choices and decisions. A sense of helplessness is a counterweight to that. If I were a therapist, I would be very authoritarian, since I believe I know what is good for people with these sorts of problems. They wouldn't see it the same way, and go elsewhere looking for a therapist who would tell them what they want to hear. Who's helpless in that situation?

Inducing a client to adopt techniques from CBT depends either on the client having invested a large measure of authority in the counselor from the beginning, or in making a cognitive breakthrough at the outset about the initial purpose and motivation for seeking therapy in the first place. Pity the client who thinks the reason she is seeking therapy is because her husband asked her to do it.

I'm not sure what you mean by "indoctrinating the classroom about awareness of a kind of passivity"? Are you suggesting that the reason the two groups differed in solving the last task was because some were "passive" or just lazy or something?

It's actually my experience that there are aspects of the classroom environment that induce passivity in some people, and boredom in others. And brown-nosing in others. So many factors, so little time. The greatest good for the greatest number.

It's my opinion that teacher's colleges are broken. They're chock full of "classrooms".

Cito di Pense wrote:What I mean by "etiology" is to make a start on defining the circumstances under which one will use the term "learned helplessness". "Escape" is not a word used by dogs. In fact, its implications are cognitive. Unless, of course we are referring to fluid "escaping" from a nozzle.

What does it matter if the dog uses the word escape or not? It doesn't use the word "electricity" either but that doesn't mean it's immune to electric shocks. "Escape" in science refers to a response which leads to a termination of an aversive stimulus - so there's no "cognition" needed, nor any understanding of the English language. (The term "escape" is used to distinguish it from "avoidance", where a response is emitted in order to prevent the presentation of an aversive stimulus).

It seems to me that your issue with this topic is not the science behind it, but the labels used. Am I correct in thinking that you accept the validity of scientific concepts such as "black holes" and "the selfish gene", even though black holes aren't actually black holes and genes aren't actually selfish? Scientists like to give comprehensible names to their ideas - it doesn't make the idea wrong even if we conclude that the label is misleading.

Curiouser and curiouser..

Cito di Pense wrote:Sure, if you talked about "conditioned helplessness", you could just refer to it as "conditioning", with no connotations. "Helplessness" is simply dripping with emoticons.

You seem to be assuming that humans behaviors are 'cognitive' and that they are fundamentally different from animals. I can't understand why you would think that. What difference does changing "learned" to "conditioned" do? They mean the exact same thing. You can't "learn" something through any process other than classical or operant conditioning, so referring it to "conditioning" is not very useful since everything is "conditioning" - we need qualifiers to understand what type of situation we are talking about.

Cito di Pense wrote:

The common predictor among all the learned helplessness is lack of control over an aversive stimulus

So, that separates the subjects from simple conformity? Or is conformity something that is learned by the imposition of an aversive stimulus? How do people become immune to that aversive stimulus, and yet not become sociopathic? I have my own ideas about this, and will give you a shot at guessing what I mean.

What do you mean by conformity - I can't see how the two are linked? Are you suggesting that half of the classroom in that example stopped responding because society has trained them to be "passive" or something? Why did it only affect half of the class?

Cito di Pense wrote:In the case of dogs, I can understand this. With humans, lack of control may be lodged in social relations. Perhaps that's what you mean by "learned". Yoda sez, "You must unlearn what you have learned."

Whether control is lodged in social relations or in something else, the determining factor is whether they have any influence over the aversive stimulus. It's the same process that produces PTSD in people, and depression, where the biggest predictor of people developing these disorders is whether they can control the external aversive stimuli in certain situations. This is why PTSD commonly occurs after natural disasters, and yet less often in car crashes - in the latter case people can take precautions, they can drive safer, be more cautious or even not drive at all. With natural disasters though, there is nothing they can do to stop the ground from shaking at any given moment or to stop a tsunami wiping out the coastline.

"Learning" simply refers to a change in behavior as a result of experience with specific aspects of an environment. But that Yoda quote is actually quite applicable to this topic, as it's essentially the treatment for learned helplessness.

Cito di Pense wrote:Lots of unfortunate people "learn" that they are "incapable" of learning, and that's all they ever learn, in that context. I can go with "helplessness" as "learning impairment", sure, and there is an element of conditioning there, so I do not dismiss the idea completely.

That seems to be on a higher level than learned helplessness is applied to though, if you mean that people learn "learning impairments" etc. I suppose it could be applied to it, it would just get a little fuzzier at that level I think due to all the other factors that would have to be considered.

Cito di Pense wrote:

I don't understand why you see humans as different "kinds" to dogs and elephants.

Language mitigates against pure conditioning. Can one dog say to another, "I think they're trying to trick us"? Do dogs learn from watching other dogs? Maybe a little, but not much. Monkey see, monkey do.

No it doesn't - language is a result of conditioning and can be shaped or changed through further conditioning. It does give us the ability to perform more complicated actions, and to interact with more abstract contingencies that control behavior, but this does not mean that we have "transcended" the laws of behavior. It's like looking at a rock that's been thrown through the air and saying that it's movement is determined by the laws of physics, but the rocket ship blasting off into space isn't. It's an absurd idea that just because one is more complex and requires us to take into account more variables, more interactions and various other laws that impinge on the behavior of this "advanced thing" (whether it be a human or a rocket ship) then it must be fundamentally different to how the simpler objects respond to those laws.

Cito di Pense wrote:Exactly. It's another invented term. One feature of "existential therapy" is the notion of making choices and decisions. A sense of helplessness is a counterweight to that. If I were a therapist, I would be very authoritarian, since I believe I know what is good for people with these sorts of problems. They wouldn't see it the same way, and go elsewhere looking for a therapist who would tell them what they want to hear. Who's helpless in that situation?

The problem being that our choices are determined by environmental factors and conditioning So asking someone to "live in the moment" and change their life for the better, is absolutely useless if their environmental variables are acting against that ideal. I don't think this is relevant to learned helplessness though, I can't see how it relates to it at all.

Cito di Pense wrote:Inducing a client to adopt techniques from CBT depends either on the client having invested a large measure of authority in the counselor from the beginning, or in making a cognitive breakthrough at the outset about the initial purpose and motivation for seeking therapy in the first place. Pity the client who thinks the reason she is seeking therapy is because her husband asked her to do it.

The great part about CBT is that you don't need a relationship with the counselor, or to have any cognitive breakthroughs at all prior to the first session, or any major motivation to change. All you need is to be able to tolerate the counselor enough to sit in a room with them for an hour, and to follow a set of simple instructions. It's like baking a cake - you don't need to think that your teacher is Gordon Ramsey, or be a whizz in the kitchen before you pick up the recipe, you just need to be able to read.

That's why CBT is so successful - it makes no demands on the person like needing to build "interpersonal connections", or to have "an inner motivation", or anything. It identifies the environmental variables that produce a behavior, and they change those variables.

Cito di Pense wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean by "indoctrinating the classroom about awareness of a kind of passivity"? Are you suggesting that the reason the two groups differed in solving the last task was because some were "passive" or just lazy or something?

It's actually my experience that there are aspects of the classroom environment that induce passivity in some people, and boredom in others. And brown-nosing in others. So many factors, so little time. The greatest good for the greatest number. It removes all the psychobabble from approaches like psychoanalysis and existential therapy, and it replaces it with objective facts and observable causal relations. In other words, it replaces magical mumbo jumbo with science.

It's my opinion that teacher's colleges are broken. They're chock full of "classrooms".

Sure, I can't disagree there but again I don't see the relevance to learned helplessness?

Mr.Samsa wrote:All you need is to be able to tolerate the counselor enough to sit in a room with them for an hour, and to follow a set of simple instructions.

That's why CBT is so successful - it makes no demands on the person like needing to build "interpersonal connections", or to have "an inner motivation", or anything. It identifies the environmental variables that produce a behavior, and they change those variables.

Fair enough. The details are a bit fuzzy and some examples would be appropriate, now. I want to see how "simple" the instructions are.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:All you need is to be able to tolerate the counselor enough to sit in a room with them for an hour, and to follow a set of simple instructions.

That's why CBT is so successful - it makes no demands on the person like needing to build "interpersonal connections", or to have "an inner motivation", or anything. It identifies the environmental variables that produce a behavior, and they change those variables.

Fair enough. The details are a bit fuzzy and some examples would be appropriate, now. I want to see how "simple" the instructions are.

It changes depending on the person and the problem, but here's a basic overview of the process: http://www.rational.org.nz/prof/docs/Intro-CBT.pdf - I don't agree with all of the specifics, but the gist of it is sound.

Also, there are computerised CBT courses that you can do, like this one: MoodGym. Whilst I'd probably recommend people see a psychologist face to face, apparently this computerized version (and others like it) have been quite successful which just demonstrates that the degree of "authority" given to the counselor is irrelevant when we're discussing successful evidence based techniques.