learned helplessness

British  

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

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Example Sentences

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

From Salon

Such learned helplessness would be a serious mistake.

From Slate

Learned helplessness becomes a survival mode.

From Salon

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s documentation of Stalinism strikes the same note: the elimination of a private existence away from politics, with the regime constantly forcing itself upon one’s attention, feeding each individual’s growing atomization and learned helplessness.

From Salon

The American people appear to be vacillating between learned helplessness and mass disinhibition.

From Salon