Learning

Learned helplessness also serves as a laboratory model for certain forms of depression, anxiety disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Although these disorders are clearly more complex than the animal model, many such individuals complain of feeling helpless and hopeless, and they often experience negative events as uncontrollable.

Animal research shows that the social and biological effects of learned helplessness can be profound. Because animals exposed to uncontrollable shocks become less aggressive and competitive in a variety of situations, they lose rank in their social group's dominance hierarchy. Loss of appetite or weight is also common, as is loss of the ability to feel pleasure. Physiologically, exposure to uncontrollable shocks affects levels of the stress hormone cortisol and several neurotransmitters and increases susceptibility to ulcers, hypertension, and certain kinds of cancer. Further, prolonged exposure increases pain tolerance by increasing the secretion of natural opiates.

Earlier studies of learned helplessness used shock as the uncontrollable aversive event. In recent extensions of this work with primates, researchers have used social defeat (in competition for mates or territory) as the aversive event and found similar effects. Interestingly, the effects of learned helplessness are more strongly related to how long the losing animal spends in submissive postures (indicating that it has given up) than to how many bites it receives from a competitor. In addition, the adverse effects of social defeat are strongest in animals who were formerly the most dominant.

Such findings are important in showing that learned helplessness is not simply a response to major physical stressors such as electric shock. Moreover, the finding that dominant animals are most adversely affected by helplessness experiences raises important questions and suggests that losing a position of social control may be even more stressful than never having had it. This issue is an important topic for future research.

Modulating and Preserving Behavior

New behaviors are constantly being learned in response to new situations. But learning new behaviors does not necessarily eradicate old behaviors, even when deliberate attempts are made to erase the old. The details of new situations determine which particular behavior old or new will be evoked. Experiments have shown that people's behavior is exquisitely sensitive to such situational cues, which affect many behaviors such as eating, smoking, or experiencing fear.

These findings have important applications in treating various forms of psychopathology and in correcting maladaptive behavior. People learn to use certain stimuli to help them maintain desired behaviors or to suppress unwanted behaviors in situations that would normally elicit them. For example, patients with phobias can be taught to use the self-guidance talk they learned in therapy to help them cope with fear-evoking situations outside the clinic. Thus, progress is being made in meeting one of the major challenges for therapy: assuring that desired changes are maintained outside the treatment context.