Following on from the psychology of the Milgram Experiments (
Milgram Experiment 2020-22), Solomon Asch (
ASCH 2020-22) and Curt Richter (
Richter 2022), comes Martin Seligman's studies on 'learned helplessness' built on the work of Curt Richter. Martin Seligman, conducted a series of experiments in the 1960s and 1970s in which he subjected animals to inescapable shocks and found that they became less and less likely to try to escape similar situations in the future.
His experiments begin in the 1960's and built of the work of Curt Richter on behaviour modiication. His findings are now more relevant than ever...
When applied to today. this shows how deception and missinformation can lead to a false feeling of helplessness which prevents people from asking questions and standing up for themselves.
i.e. When going to Hospital you wear a mask even when the policy says you don't have to, just becasue 'whats the point"...
[Links to AHS Policy]
"Patients requiring health care shall not be refused care if their designated family/support person or visitor is unable or refuses to mask."
"No patient shall be denied service in AHS because they cannot or will not wear a mask."
Curt Richter's False Hope experiments showed how people would rather have a savior than save themselves. But what if that savior never comes, or is a false 'profit'?
Stanley Milgram's true message was subjects were not 'just following orders'. They were fully participating in Engaged Followship. Curt Richter demonstrated how False Hope can lead people to be apathetic to the point of helplessness and ultimately death. Soloman Asch showed how that behavior can become infectious with people 'fitting in' with the group think even when it went against all they knew and felt.
These all lead to a feeling of hopelessness in the face of what appears to be overwhelming odds. But what if, like Seligman, these feelings of helplessness were artificially induced by fear, misinformation and downright lies?
So, what is learned helplessness?
Learned helplessness is a psychological phenomenon in which an individual becomes passive and unable to cope with a challenging situation as a result of experiencing repeated failures or a lack of control over the outcomes of their efforts.
The concept of learned helplessness was first proposed by psychologist Martin Seligman, who conducted a series of experiments in the 1960s and 1970s in which he subjected animals to inescapable shocks and found that they became less and less likely to try to escape similar situations in the future.
Learned helplessness is thought to occur when an individual experiences a situation in which their efforts to influence the outcome are consistently unsuccessful, leading them to conclude that their actions have no effect on the situation and that they are helpless to control their environment.
This can lead to a sense of hopelessness and a reduction in effort to escape or cope with similar challenges in the future.
Research on learned helplessness showed the potential for negative consequences of manipulating individuals' sense of control.
In 2020 and beyond, that research was put into play on a global scale.
The ability of Big Tech to micro manage the information being presented to people at an individual level has been long known, along with its use of that technology to manipulate people, groups and populations for reasons from marketing to politics.
For a primer on this see
[LINK] Digital Soylent Green and
[LINK] Big Data, AI and Social Engineering.
Have you noticed how people on both sides of the COVID 19 argument seem to be seeing differing sets of information that re-inforce their own cognative bias?
Do you think that is an accident?
Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. have been tuned to provide information that 'best suits' the reader, with an underlying bias on the relative markleting, political or social naratives.
Watch this video on 'Learned Helplessness' now with a view that we all got different pieces of paper throughout COVID 19.
We all developed a 'Learned Helplessness' as a result. However, we also developed sense of 'Learned optimism' and even False Hope (
Richter 2022) that reinforces those cognative bias.
If you feel you have been manipulated, it is because you have, at all levels.
A 'trick' of the mind
When the information you have what you have been provided, not what you needed.
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The Psychology that has been used in the last two plus years, supported by big tech, is EVIL incarnate.
Stanley Milgram, Solomon Asch, Curt Richter and Martin Seligman.
From Engaged Followship (Milgram, 1961) to Social Conformity (ASCH,1951), to False Hope (Richter, 1951)...
All played to perfection on both sides of this manufactured crisis.
Now both sides are fully engaged in the works of Learned Helplessness... Accepting defeat when the battle has only just begun. Don't be helpless, be informed. Be strong. Stand up for yourself and those around you and end this insanity now!
Further reading:
The effects of choice and enhanced personal responsibility for the aged: a field experiment in an institutional setting. (E J Langer, J Rodin)."
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Frev0000033
• Seligman, M. E. P. (1975). Helplessness: On depression, development, and death. San Francisco: Freeman.
• Seligman, M. E. P., Maier, S. F., & Geer, J. H. (1968). Alleviation of learned helplessness in the dog. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13(2), 91-98.
• Seligman, M. E. P., & Maier, S. F. (1967). Failure to escape traumatic shock. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(1), 1-9.
• Seligman, M. E. P., & Schulman, P. (1986). Explanatory style as a predictor of productivity and quitting among life insurance sales agents. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(4), 832-838.
• Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55(1), 5-14.
