Is it used outside of depression? The people I know who do it seem very happy.

People here have given lots of other examples, but uses outside depression are more riffs on the name than they are a reflection of the original theory. The original theory was purely about learned apathy in the face of negative events. It wasn't about being manipulative or seductive or anything. Those behaviors are learned because they get you something positive (someone else does your work), not because the person doing them really feels helpless.

But there is no reason why the meaning of 'learned helplessness' couldn't change over time, especially since most researchers have abandoned it as a theory.

Allyson, that picture is funny as all get out.

you should at least go look at the apartment.

I'm thinking this is better than the obvious alternative. And it's a pretty top -- I'm very unclear on how a lot of tops I see in the stores are really meant to be worn.

Also, educators use learned helplessness to describe behaviors in LD students. The original studies weren't actually about depression per se at all. But they were a response to behaviorlism (which I loves me some BF Skinner) or to understand when and where and how behaviorlism breaks down.

It was then applied to depression, but the original term was not necessarily related just to depression.

You. Over there. That's not a work conversation. I don't care if I don't understand the language. You don't talk to co-workers in that wailing cooing sort of voice. And the convo is easily over half an hour long. But you do burp less when talking to your husband.

And you. On the other side. Please stop grunting. Sighing I can handle, but the grunting is driving me batshit.

Thanks!

Is he taking a hard crap in his cube? Whyfore the grunt?

Is he taking a hard crap in his cube? Whyfore the grunt?

Okay, ew. Thanks for visual. Also olfactoral.

I guess I should just be grateful that if he is crapping, his shit don't stink.

I used to work with an old guy who made many many noises as he went about his work. I was glad not to be the person in the next cube.

On the up side, I have Kid Creole And The Coconuts on the iPod.

Also, educators use learned helplessness to describe behaviors in LD students. The original studies weren't actually about depression per se at all.

Well, the original studies were done with dogs. The first application to humans was with regard to depression. But the example of LD kids is an exact fit to the original idea of learned helplessness, unlike the example of manipulative physicists or attractive women in offices or bosses or, God forbid that Allyson ever has to put up with this, attractive female physicist bosses. The LD kids are failing to make an effort even though making an effort might help them. That is learned helplessness. The bad boss/babe/scientist is making an effort to appear helpless because it does help them to manipulate other people.

Skinner hated the term 'helplessness' because it described a state of the organism rather than a state of the environment, but as Kat points out he studied very similar things. He just gave them different names. He (his students, actually) thought that depression was caused by inescapable punishment or the failure to earn rewards, but that there was no reason to assign an 'organism name' like helplessness to what was really a description of environmental events.