Learning Hopefulness

Recently we discussed Richter the Rat Torturer.  With that conversation behind us, now we can meet Seligman the Dog Depressor.  In 1965 Martin Seligman, Steve Maier, and Bruce Overmeier conducted an experiment in learned helplessness on the part of dogs.  When caged dogs were subjected to electric shock in such a way that the shocks came regardless of their responses, the dogs eventually gave up trying to change the situation.  Later, even when they could have escaped the shock box, they simply lay whimpering and passive.

"This finding captured the attention of researchers in learning theory," Seligman writes in his book Authentic Happiness, "because animals are not supposed to be able to learn that nothing they do matters--that there is a random relationship between their actions and what befalls them" (page 20).  You can read the article in which Seligman, Meyer and James Geer wrote up their experience and conclusions at http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/390/Seligman.pdf.  The experiment and others like it opened the door to exploring medical interventions into things like human depression.  And a whole new chapter in the practice of psychiatric medicine was born.

There was something in the experiments, however, that bothered Seligman over the years.  

"Not all of the rats and dogs become helpless after inescapable shock, nor do all of the people after being presented with insolvable problems or inescapable noise.  One out of three never gives up, no matter what we do.  Moreover, one out of eight is helpless to begin with--it does not take any experience with uncontrollability at all to make them give up...What is it about some people that imparts buffering strength, making them invulnerable to helplessness?  What is it about other people that makes them collapse at the first inkling of trouble?" (Authentic Happiness, page 23).

As I thought about my experiences of loss and grief, I was attracted to Seligman's questions.  I had been studying positive psychology in preparation for my work with Alzheimer's sufferers and families at Tabitha.  I was pursuing the idea of hope in the midst of that increasingly helpless situation.  Now I found that I was the one who experienced helplessness in the face of my spouse's death.  Was that helplessness the only option for my days of pain and loss?  I couldn't live with that conclusion.

If helplessness (indeed, hopelessness) can be learned, then what about hopefulness?  In fact, such an approach to life can be learned, practiced and enhanced--not indefinitely, perhaps, but noticeably.  "Learned hopefulness is the process whereby individuals learn and utilize skills that enable to develop a sense of psychological empowerment."  Marc Zimmerman writes these words in "Toward a Theory of Learned Hopefulness: A Structural Model Analysis of Participation and Empowerment.  You can find that article at http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/28690/1/0000510.pdf.

In particular, Zimmerman connected learned hopefulness to involvement in community organizations.  He distinguishes psychological empowerment from perceived control.  He suggests that participation in "mutual help groups" provides a natural setting for learned hopefulness "because they are connected to community life and are not deficit-oriented or dependent on processional expertise."  Such groups create a supportive community and provide opportunities to benefit from mutual helping.

Hopefulness is learned as we engage in helping one another.  One of the keys to hopeful living is "Help."  That help needs to flow in both directions.  When you are in distress, GET all the help you can (and don't be afraid to ask for it).  And when you are in distress, GIVE all the help you can.  "Help" helps the most when it is mutual.  Our brains are efficient processors.  If one neural pathway can be used for two processes, then the brain will do its work that way.  Help flows best when the pathway is open in both directions--in the getting and the giving directions.

Learned hopefulness happens best when we practice learned helpfulness.  Is it any wonder that the helpful people usually are the most hopeful and happy as well?