Learned helplessness

What Hacker News says

1. daft_pinkApr 2025
   Learned Helplessness - Martin Seligman A Random Walk Down Wall Street - Malkiel The Millionaire Next Door - Stanley Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

   Second the Incerto series by Nassim Taleb

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2. haswellDec 2023
   > Isn't that a manifestation of risk aversion? If you're risk-averse, you tend to play it safe. If you're not, you're eager to try risky things for the possibility of big rewards.

   The point is that pessimism directly leads to behavior that looks like risk aversion, regardless of whether or not there is actual risk to avert. Risk aversion by itself is typically associated with decisions that can be made based on actual data about risk. The pessimistic person defaults to the "risk averse" stance without even understanding the risk (regardless of whether the risk is even calculable or worthy of considering).

   > Pessimism might be a more successful strategy for those wanting that middle class lifestyle.

   I'm not following the logic here. Someone can be optimistic about life, and still prefer a middle class lifestyle. You can also be optimistic and risk averse.

   Setting that aside, there are some interesting papers that explore this [0], and I'd strongly recommend looking at Martin Seligman's original research in the 70s about Learned Helplessness [1], which has a close connection with pessimism, or conversely, a lack of optimism.

   Interestingly, optimism is a skill that can be learned/conditioned much like pessimism, which points at their function as default orientations vs. neutral tools to be applied. In other words, if you're a pessimistic person, you will make decisions based on that orientation, often without even having any awareness of the impact of your pessimistic defaults.

   This is quite different from a data-driven risk averse decision.

   - [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3807005/

   - [1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/163862/learned-opti...

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3. hyperpalliumOct 2019
   A connection with Seligman's https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness experiment

   Two dogs in separate rooms with floors that can give them a mild shock. Arranged so they get exactly the same shock. One dog can turn off the shock by performing an action; the other has no control.

   This experiment turns the second dog into a shivering nervous wreck... but the first is fine. Same shocks; only difference was control.

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4. braythwaytMay 2015
   Author here.

   This is a funny area. I feel quite confident giving prescriptive advice about strategies for software development, but not so much about strategies for dealing with psychological issues like depression and helplessness.

   What I can do is share my own experience, and tell you where to find the resources that helped me. Thus... I would say that if anything in the post feels like something that is bothering you or has bothered you in the past, go and read about Learned Optimism, the rough opposite of Learned Helplessness:

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_optimism

   And especially Seligman’s self-help book on the subject: http://amzn.to/1zFQXcr

   The book claims that “optimism” can be measured, and that there are strategies for improving it, and discusses those strategies. I personally found that they did help me, and further that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) under the supervision of a professional helped me even more.

   I also wrote a post directly about Optimism a while back, it outlines Seligman’s strategies:

   http://braythwayt.com/homoiconic/2009/05/01/optimism.html

   There was lively HN discussion at the time, you may find it informative:

   https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=589200

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