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wikipedia says 'People with pessimistic explanatory style—which sees negative events as permanent ("it will never change"), personal ("it's my fault"), and per
by AndyKelley 16y ago
wikipedia says 'People with pessimistic explanatory style—which sees negative events as permanent ("it will never change"), personal ("it's my fault"), and pervasive ("I can't do anything correctly")—are most likely to suffer from learned helplessness and depression.'
It seems to me that if you tended to believe "it's my fault" then you would have the opposite result - empowerment. When you admit that something is your fault, you now are responsible for overcoming/solving/fixing it, which is the opposite of helplessness.
- michael_dorfman 16y agoNot if it is combined with the other two (permanent and pervasive.) The idea is that if something is your fault, and cannot be changed, and in fact everything is your fault, then the conclusion is that you are hopelessly defective, and there is nothing to be done: learned helplessness.
- chc 16y agoI know a woman who was telling me about a cause she thought somebody should take up. I told her nobody else seemed to be interested in getting the ball rolling, so she should lead the charge. She looked like I'd suggested bending spoons with her mind. "A person like me can't do that," she explained. She didn't mean that it would be too draining or impractical for somebody in her situation. She just wasn't capable — it was an a priori fact.
- nerfhammer 16y agoIIRC that happier people tend to (unrealistically) personalize successes and externalize failures. I.e. if it worked it was because I did it, if it didn't work then everything else conspired against it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism