TOEFL Speaking Task 3

In psychology, the concept of 'learned helplessness' refers to a condition in which an individual, after experiencing repeated failures or uncontrollable negative events, begins to believe that they have no control over their environment. As a result, they stop trying to change their situation, even when opportunities for success become available. This learned passivity can generalize across different contexts, leading to decreased motivation, problem-solving deficits, and emotional distress.

Professor: Let me illustrate this with a classic experiment. Researchers placed dogs in a chamber with two compartments separated by a low barrier. In the first phase, the dogs were harnessed and given electric shocks that they could not avoid—no matter what they did, the shocks came. After several trials, they stopped resisting. In the second phase, the same dogs were placed in the shuttle box where they could easily jump over the barrier to escape the shock. However, most of them simply lay down and whined, making no attempt to jump. They had learned that their actions were futile, even though the situation had changed. In contrast, a control group of dogs that had never experienced unavoidable shocks quickly learned to jump over the barrier to escape. This demonstrates how past uncontrollable experiences can inhibit future learning and action.