“Biden is trying to snap us out of learned helplessness over Trump,” read a New York Times headline op-ed in January, who argued that “[Donald] Trump’s exhausting provocations” were exhausting voters who saw opposition to the former president’s re-election as a “doomed project”.
Six months later, the mood was slightly more optimistic. Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Kamala Harris took his place as the Democratic nominee. “National Democrats seem to have shaken off their lingering sense of learned helplessness,” said a July opinion piece from the Charlotte Observer.
Feelings of political powerlessness are not new. People who feel like they’re on the “losing side of politics” — meaning their political opponents are in power — can feel a “loss of control,” says Dr. Christina Farhart, associate professor of political science at Carleton College.
What’s different now, she says, is that people across the political spectrum report feeling helpless. Neither “side” feels like they are winning. Farhart adds that part of this can be attributed to the chaotic, historical events of the past few years: the pandemic, the fallout of the 2020 presidential election and the January 6 uprising.
While Harris’ nomination has asked increased engagement of voters in recent months the national mood has been grim. According to a survey published this March by Fortune magazinealmost half of Americans did not feel hopeful about the future of the country. A 2022 NPR/Ipsos poll found that 64% of Americans believe that American democracy is “in crisis and at risk of failure”. And Gallup polls of the last two years found that public trust in American institutions is at an all-time low.
What does so-called learned helplessness really mean, and what does it look like in a political context – such as, for example, a controversial presidential election?
What is learned helplessness?
In the 1960s, back when animal testing laws were lax, to say the least, psychologist Martin Seligman and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania developed the theory of “learned helplessness”.
Scientists subjected dogs to electric shocks, and found that the dogs who were able to stop the shocks by pressing a panel with their nose were more likely to try to escape the shocks in the future. The dogs that could not stop the shocks – for them the pressure on the panel did nothing – were less likely to try to escape them.
Researchers have concluded that if a person is repeatedly subjected to aversive stimuli over which they have no control, they will feel powerless to effect change and will eventually stop trying to escape the painful situation altogether.
Learned helplessness soon became a popular psychological concept, often used to explain behaviors associated with depression, and why some victims of abuse or trauma may not leave their abuser when given the chance.
But it has also been used to describe the behavior of a wider population: the American voter.
How does learned helplessness affect people politically?
That citizens feel helpless has serious consequences – not only for individuals, who may feel more depressedbut for society as a whole.
Individuals who feel helpless may be less likely to participate in the political process, either by voting or getting involved in their community, says Dr. Sandra Bloom, an associate professor of health management and policy at Drexel University, and co-founder from the Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice.
Feeling helpless also makes individuals more susceptible to misinformation and conspiracy theories, Farhart’s research showed. “People want to make sense of the world around us,” she says. When people feel out of control, they look for explanations as to why. Engaging in conspiracies becomes a coping mechanism, a way of making sense of uncertainty.
Some of Americans’ favorite conspiracy theories relate to control, the electoral process and powerful people, according to a 2023 YouGov poll. For example, 41% of respondents believed that, regardless of who is in power, “there is a single group of people who secretly control events and together rule the world”; 31% believed Barack Obama was not born in the US; and 29% believed that voting machines were programmed to change votes in the 2020 election.
But it’s a vicious cycle. Engaging with misinformation “exacerbates feelings of loss of control, so feelings of learned helplessness compound over time,” says Farhart.
People deal with such feelings differently. Some respond by disengaging from certain parts of the political process, such as voting. This is more common among low-income communities and communities that have been historically or systematically marginalized by traditional institutions, says Farhart.
“This does not mean that they completely disconnect themselves from politics,” she explains. Individuals from these communities may be more likely to find ways to express their political voice outside the formal political system, she explains, “with protests or rallies”.
Is there a way to counteract learned helplessness?
On an individual level, people can overcome learned helplessness by reframing how they perceive events. As Seligman explained in s 2017 paper looking back at the impact of the theory he helped develop 50 years earlier, the “inevitability itself was not enough to produce anything more than momentary helplessness”.
What determined how long and how badly people felt helpless was the story they told themselves about the inescapability. Those who attributed their helplessness to “permanent causes,” meaning problems that will always be unsolvable, showed long-term helplessness, while those who attributed their helplessness to temporary causes overcame it more quickly.
People can work on this reframing using tools like therapy, says Seligman – specifically cognitive behavioral therapy, which provides individuals with tools to “reduce destructive negative thoughts and emotions.”
But experts emphasized that one of the most effective ways to overcome feelings of helplessness is for people to build community.
“We live in a very individualistic society,” said Andria Chatmon, a community organizer for the group Empower DC in Washington, DC. She says that individuals often feel that they have to work through issues themselves. But when they can see that other people from their community are facing the same issues, “it encourages more action”, she says.
“It really helps people to see that their voices matter when they are in a collective and that they are part of something. Especially if they are from groups that are typically excluded,” adds Chatmon.
Bloom says that our only hope is to work together in groups – attending protests, community organizing or participating in get-out-the-vote initiatives.
“We need to get together, have fun, enjoy each other’s company and try to get something done,” she says.
