Final answer:
Learned helplessness describes the phenomenon where individuals experience a sense of powerlessness over negative life events, leading to passivity and potential depressive states. It has significant implications for understanding mental health, particularly depression, and has also been misused in unethical ways, demonstrating the need for ethical considerations in psychological research and applications.
Step-by-step explanation:
Individuals who exhibit marked dependency and helplessness are thought to have learned helplessness, a concept that psychologist Martin Seligman and colleagues developed. Learned helplessness occurs when individuals experience negative life events that they believe they have no control over, which can lead to passivity and a lack of initiative similar to what is observed in depression. The seminal experiment by Seligman involved dogs that were subjected to electric shocks with no escape; later, even when they could escape, they did not try. This principle can apply to human behavior in various situations, such as relationship dynamics, where dependence and a subordinate attitude can lead to feelings of helplessness and perpetuate a cycle of dependency. Over time, Seligman's model evolved into the hopelessness theory of depression, which provides an explanation for the onset of depressive disorders based on attributions that reinforce feelings of helplessness.
Learned helplessness has significant implications for mental health and is considered an important cause of depression. Sociologist Ronald Glassman also notes that individuals may seek out charismatic leaders during times of despair, anxiety about danger, or prolonged dependency periods from childhood, which can cause them to assume a dependent and helpless attitude in the face of perceived challenges.
Furthermore, the model has been applied in unethical ways, such as in the torture of prisoners, to engender passivity and compliance. However, this application of learned helplessness to force interrogation results is now widely condemned as unethical. It's essential for research on psychology and its applications to always consider ethical standards to avoid facilitating or endorsing harmful practices.