What is learned helplessness, according to Martin Seligman on Hidden Brain?

Martin Seligman told Hidden Brain that learned helplessness starts with an event a person or animal cannot escape. They learn that nothing they do matters, which makes them passive in later, similar situations, makes it hard to learn that action now works, and brings sadness and anxiety. He stresses the cause was the lack of control over the trauma, not the trauma itself, which his experiments controlled for.

• The idea came from dogs in Richard Solomon's lab that took inescapable shocks and then failed to cross a shuttle box to escape.
• Donald Hiroto repeated the result with people using loud noise, launching a field that reached into human trauma and depression.

▸In their words

“It was a result of not having any control over trauma.” Martin Seligman · at 18:39 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Hidden Brain (2026-09-21). Read the whole episode summary →

▸More from this episode