Advertisement

Advertisement

learned helplessness

noun

  1. the act of giving up trying as a result of consistent failure to be rewarded in life, thought to be a cause of depression

“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


Discover More

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

But this is not a call to despair, or to embrace the comfort of learned helplessness or to take poison of hopium.

Read more on Salon

Such learned helplessness would be a serious mistake.

Read more on Slate

We keep talking about an imperial court that is slowly but certainly constructing an imperial executive, but none of that can happen without the learned helplessness of an American public that was intended to be sovereign.

Read more on Slate

Learned helplessness becomes a survival mode.

Read more on Salon

Can you explain what you call the “bipartisan acceptance of judicial supremacy” and the passivity and the learned helplessness that comes with it, and how that has delivered us into what you say is actually a decades-long constitutional crisis?

Read more on Slate

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement


learned borrowinglearned profession