Episode 9 – Learned helplessness

It’s a subject that’s quite close to my heart because it’s a problem that we come across time and time again when we don’t necessarily realise it. If you’ve ever seen or met a bird that didn’t want to get out of its cage even though the cage was open. If you’ve had the same experience, for example with a rabbit – this often happens with animals that we tend to keep in small, enclosed spaces in our usual captive living conditions, when these are not necessarily conditions that are adapted to the individual or to its needs as a species – then you may simply have witnessed learned helplessness. These are fairly obvious examples, but most of the time it’s not as obvious as that.

What exactly is learned helplessness? Ultimately, it’s when an animal, a living being of any kind – and this applies to humans too – experiences resignation in the face of an event or a repetitive event that is going to occur in its life. This is what happens when we, as living beings, lose control over the events that occur. When we are perpetually subjected to environmental pressure and we can’t escape it, then we are experiencing resignation. Quite simply because we don’t know how else to escape from this situation. There’s a study that’s rather questionable ethically, but it’s quite old now and it was done with dogs and electric shocks by Martin Seligman. Since then, the experiment has been verified, reproduced and replicated in other contexts, always with the same response. So we know that learned helplessness exists. We’ve verified it experimentally many times and we’ve also been able to experience it with humans. Unfortunately, it has been used in the context of torture of humans by certain governments.

To come back to the experiment that was initially carried out and which helped to highlight this state, Martin Seligman carried out an experiment in which he took three groups of dogs that were tied up with a harness. In the first group, the dogs were simply attached to their harness for a short period and then released. And in groups two and three, they remain tethered. Group 2 is intentionally given an electric shock which the dogs can stop by pressing a lever. So they have a means of stopping the electric shocks. Each dog in group 3 is attached in parallel to a dog in group 2 and receives a shock of the same intensity and duration. Except that the dogs in group 3 have no way of stopping the shock. The only way for a group 3 dog to escape a shock is for one of the group 2 dogs to activate its lever. The dogs in group 3 cannot therefore act on their own to escape the shock.

And in fact, in the end, the dogs in groups 1 and 2 recovered very quickly from their experiences, whereas the dogs in group 3 learned to be helpless and showed symptoms similar to the chronic depression that can be observed in humans. This is the first part of the experiment, where we finally see that in case 1, the dogs are very, very quickly relaxed about the situation and the harness is removed. In case two, they are subjected to the shocks, but they have a means of stopping them. In case three, they also remain attached and have no means of stopping the electric shocks. They have to wait for someone else to do it for them. They then repeated the experiment in a similar way with the same groups of dogs. This was the second part of the experiment and they were put in a new device with a small wall that they simply had to jump over to avoid the shock. For a very large part of the course, the dogs in group 3, who had previously learned that nothing could stop the shocks, remained passively motionless and whimpered, whereas it would have been easy in the end to escape the shocks by jumping the low wall, while groups 1 and 2 immediately tried to escape the situation, jumped the low wall and stopped the electric shocks, group 3 continued to suffer the situation because they had previously learned that everything they had tried to do to stop the situation was not working.

They didn’t even try to escape the situation. We’re really talking about resignation, and it’s at these moments that we see learned helplessness, which has symptoms totally similar to depression. This experiment was the first to highlight the state of learned helplessness. What we need to remember from this experiment is that an animal that is subjected to unavoidable stimuli gives up all avoidance behaviour. Basically, it resigns itself to the situation. And the resignation behaviour will persist even if the stimuli subsequently become avoidable. In spite of everything, what has also been shown is that if the experimenter intervenes with dogs that have become apathetic to pull them, to carry them, to put them on the other side of the wall when the electric shock is sent, the animal can sometimes relearn and take the initiative to get out of the state of learned helplessness. And we say sometimes, because this is not true for all individuals. And what Seligman concludes is that trauma reduces the motivation to respond to situations that are going to happen to us.

Traumatic experiences would prevent the learning of new responses and this state would be one of the factors in depression and/or anxiety. And do you see what I’m getting at? Repeated punishment, for example, can induce this state of learned helplessness. And punishment doesn’t necessarily mean hitting your pet, for example. It doesn’t always take that form. It could be putting your animal in living conditions that are not adapted to the species, to its needs. And what’s also quite notable is that, whatever their origins and basis, learned helplessness can occur at any time when the individual is repeatedly subjected to uncontrollable events. What has been observed in these individuals are emotional disorders, increased aggression and physiological problems. Yes, stress really does have an impact on health, and learned helplessness is often associated with weaker cognition. And you don’t have to wait years to get into this state. This state can occur within a few weeks, or even a few months, of uncontrollable situations that are repeated over and over again.

In other words, learned helplessness can happen very quickly. And while we may sometimes feel safe from this situation, we ourselves, as humans, are by no means safe. And we also come back to a notion that is very important in behaviour, which is the notion of control. The more control you give an individual, the more comfortable they’ll feel, the more motivated they’ll be to do something, the more they’ll know they have a choice when it comes to a situation, i.e. making the decision to engage in one activity or another. The more control you take over a situation, even if it’s for your own good, the more difficult it is likely to be for you. This is something you’ll find in a veterinary clinic, for example. When an animal has to undergo treatment because it’s absolutely compulsory, what it’s likely to do at first is to respond more and more in an attempt to escape the situation. Maybe at first he’ll just squeak, then he’ll turn around, then he’ll start biting or pinching if it’s a bird, for example. He’ll start to increase his strategies to make the situation stop and so, eventually, we’ll come into conflict with the animal.

Often, for example, when you have a small dog – I see this with very small Chihuahuas – you allow yourself to do things like that because you know that the consequences for you, as a human, will be minimal. Even if the dog tries to bite us, it’s cute. I mean, it’s not a Malinois. Thinking like that means we’re totally blind to the signals the dog is sending out. That’s often how and why we find small dogs who are more often in a state of learned helplessness because, in the end, they’ve learnt to put up with the situation because their means of action and the tools at their disposal aren’t enough to make themselves heard. It’s as if, no matter what they do, they can’t escape the situation. This is something we often find with small dogs, where, for example, we’re going to have to provide fairly regular care, whether in terms of brushing, nails or other tasks, or even just standard care at the vet’s, and where the dog has no way of escaping the situation because he’s simply not strong enough, because it is small, because the damage it could do is minimal and because, in the end, the human will keep up the pressure on the individual without taking any interest in the dog’s signals, because it has very little to lose.

It’s as if the animal has learned helplessness. Having to endure the event, having tried all the strategies at its disposal to get out of it without anything working, pushes it to stop trying anything. He will resign himself to the situation. I could also take the example of birds whose wings have been removed or who have been kept in a small cage for a very long time. Often, at times like this, I hear people say ‘He doesn’t like to fly’ or ‘He doesn’t fly, it’s his choice, he can do what he likes’. But has the bird really chosen not to fly? Is it really its choice in the first place? Is it a lack of desire? Or is it a more or less severe form of learned helplessness and chronic depression? For me, the answer is quite simple. From the moment we see a bird that is resigned and only carries out behaviours in cases, for example, with flight where the bird is going to leave completely unconscious of a situation, when we see this kind of thing and the bird never flies by itself to get from point A to point B, or even starts to display certain stereotypies in certain settings because, for example, it can’t manage to fly away. When you start to see this kind of thing or when you see total apathy, even though in the ethogram of the species, it’s supposed to be active. When you start to see this kind of thing, it may mean that the bird or animal, whatever it is, is in a state of learned helplessness. The problem is that we might say to ourselves ‘OK, he’s just apathetic’, but this has a real and concrete impact on the individual’s day-to-day well-being, because he’s no longer going to perform behaviours that are supposed to be natural and that are also supposed to meet his needs as an individual. There’s nothing worse than knowing there’s nothing you can do to escape a situation.

In the end, we come back to the notion of consent. For example, if I’m walking down the street and someone suddenly comes up behind me and hugs me, maybe with the best intentions in the world, that’s not a problem, but I’m going to take it as an attack because, from my point of view, it wasn’t by choice, so I’m going to be afraid, I’m going to try to get away, I’m going to react extremely badly to the situation. Maybe the person who came with the best intentions in the world won’t understand the situation, but if they insist, once again, from my point of view, I’m really going to see it as an attack.

Now we’re going to go back to the same situation. I’m walking down the street and there’s someone with their arms wide open with a sign saying ‘Free hugs’. What am I going to do in that kind of situation? I’m going to be able to choose whether I want to do that, I could, it’s going to depend on me, or whether I don’t want to, in which case I’ll just walk away. The simple fact of knowing that I have this choice, that I have the opportunity to decide whether I want to do this activity or not, will totally change my perception of the situation. If I go there and finally get a hug, it’s exactly the same situation, the same behaviour as in the previous situation. The only difference is that I’m the one who chose to engage in the activity.

That’s the only difference. And yet, in one case, I’m going to feel very, very, very bad because I’m going to take it as an attack. And in the second case, on the other hand, I’m going to feel really, really good. So, with just that difference, in one case it could almost be a traumatic event, whereas in the other case, and for the same situation, it will be a very positive event. Do you understand the difference? It’s fundamental to understand this notion. In this case, we’re talking about consent. We’re talking about choice and control over a situation. And learned helplessness can take different forms. It’s not as obvious as sending electric jets at your pet or hitting it every day or locking it in a tiny room every day. It’s not as obvious as that. Sometimes learned helplessness can be achieved simply by flooding. Flooding is French for immersion, and it’s characterised by the fact of being thrown, of being immersed, in short, in the thing that most frightens you, without having any way of escaping.

For example, if I’m extremely afraid, I don’t know, of other human beings, let’s say I’m very afraid, I’m not at all a social person, I really have trouble dealing with other human beings, and I’m thrown into a crowd with lots of people who are going to talk to me, with lots of people who are going to accost me every two minutes, and that scares me to death. This is no way to manage my initial fear. On the contrary, we’re in the process of creating even greater awareness of humans. We’re in the process of creating an even bigger problem where there may have been a sensitivity to begin with, there may have been something there, but now it’s getting worse because I’m being thrown into a situation that frightens me and I have no way of escaping. Let’s say I’m thrown into a room with humans and it’s locked behind me and I have no way of getting out, what’s likely to happen at that point is effectively learned helplessness. Just because I no longer emit symptoms, such as screaming, trying to get out, trying to escape, doesn’t mean I’m feeling well.

And that’s the nuance and subtlety of learned helplessness: you can feel extremely unwell with a huge number of health problems, a drop in cognition, we’re going to say extremely visible things that are going to happen because there’s chronic stress, with all the effects and impact that chronic stress can have on an individual: a drop in life expectancy, a drop in cognition, health problems and so on. And yet there are no visible symptoms. In other words, you might think you’re fine, but you’re not at all. It’s super pernicious, it’s super vicious as a problem because we don’t necessarily see it.

For example, when you have a dog who is sensitive to other dogs, who is perhaps afraid of them, perhaps he’s had bad experiences, perhaps he’s been attacked by a dog, whatever the reason, and to try and help him, if there’s a little discomfort or if there’s perhaps a tiny socialisation fault, you throw him in with lots of other dogs because you think it’s the right thing to do to socialise him. But if the situation is repeated over and over again, which is what’s likely to happen after a while, you could end up with an animal that no longer shows any symptoms of the situation and is simply resigned to putting up with what’s happening.

Now that we’ve said all that, it’s important to realise that even if it’s been years, even if you recover an animal that’s been mistreated, that’s been locked up for years in a tiny little thing, even if you have a bird that has been remigrated or has also been locked up and can’t fly, even if you have a rabbit that has been locked up in a tiny cage and has known nothing, it is still possible to try to help these animals as much as possible, but it must not be done just any old way. Because if we throw these individuals into a situation that is, let’s say, great for the species in general, but perhaps too much at once for that individual. Don’t forget that learned helplessness can lead to a drop in cognition. Your pet will find it much harder to find the right behavioural response to a situation. Maybe it’s because there are too many things to think about at once and he’s likely to be a little short-circuited by the intensity of the stimuli in front of him at the time.

So if, for example, you have a bird that no longer flies at all, the question of the benefit of flying shouldn’t even have to arise. I would strongly recommend that you train your bird to regain at least some of its flight. He may not regain the cognitive abilities of a bird that has never been deprived of flight. Maybe he’ll never perform exceptional maneuvers such as zigzagging in mid-air. Maybe that’s something we won’t see. On the other hand, the fact that it can have the basic mobility it’s supposed to have as a species, to go from one place to another to get food, to get away from something it’s uncomfortable with or whatever, the question of the benefit of mobility shouldn’t even arise.

So, training your bird to regain part of its flight is absolutely fundamental, but you can’t do it just any old way. If you immediately put a bird with two perches in a huge aviary, say 20 meters long, and put one perch on one side and another on the other 20 meters away, you can be sure that he won’t succeed because it’s too difficult all at once. The only other times in his life when he’s perhaps been put in that situation, if he’d had his wings remigrated, for example, he’d have scratched himself on the ground. If we put him in that situation again, he simply won’t even try to fly. In the end, you’ll have to create a situation where the bird will succeed in flapping its wings once or twice, and that will be very good indeed. You’re going to move the perch perhaps 50 centimetres closer to the bird, so that it simply starts to want to engage in this situation. So you have to create motivation. You need to create a situation of confidence and, above all, you need to create a situation of success, where you know that the bird will succeed in the situation where it has failed every other time in its life.

Because we remember that learned helplessness comes from repeated and repeated failures where he had to resign himself to the situation and where his behavior no longer had any impact on the situation. The idea here is to make him understand again, to teach him that his behavior will work. If you behave in this way, look at what you can achieve, look at what you can succeed in doing. And recreating these connections in the brain of any animal that has lost it is really difficult. It’s a real obstacle course, it’s not easy at all. Your aim is to create situations where the individual will succeed, will be in a position to succeed in relation to his own behavior. Your aim is to create situations that are as easy and accessible as possible for the individual and for his current level. Don’t throw him into the deep end just yet, because he won’t succeed, that’s for sure. All that will do is send him back to the fact that he can’t do it. It’ll start the resignation machine all over again. So manage to create just one tiny step. It’s just a start. It may be nothing for you, but maybe for the bird or the dog or the rabbit, it’ll be huge because it’s something he’s never been able to do before.

And this is also true if, for example, you have a dog who has been confined to a very small space all his life. If you take him outside right away, he may be completely dazed by the situation. Take it easy, perhaps take him out into an environment that’s certainly outside, but perhaps enclosed, perhaps small. To help him get used to the situation, gradually enrich this environment to help him see that there’s no danger, that everything’s fine. And it’s true, in the end, in any other situation and for any other animal, you have to go step by step. And that’s how you get the animal out of the situation. And above all, it’s a guarantee of well-being. It’s by doing this that you’ll be able to restore the animal’s relative well-being. You’ll be able to get him out of this state, out of this state of depression and resignation in which he’s trapped.
To conclude this episode, I’d say that with all this information, I hope you can see a little more clearly about learned helplessness, that you’ll know how to anticipate it, by giving your pet as many choices as possible in a situation, that you’ll perhaps also give him abilities in relation to his needs, that you’ll read his body language as best you can before he ends up shutting down if you subject him to a situation that’s too complicated for him. And even if you’ve recovered an animal that’s in this state with regard to certain situations, it’s still possible to try to help it as much as possible. It won’t be easy, that’s for sure. Because, once again, even if resignation occurs with regard to certain things, certain activities or certain contexts, stress doesn’t live in a bubble. And when it does, it’s quite possible that it will affect the rest of his day-to-day behavior, that it will affect his mood, that it will affect the way he behaves with you, and that it will be totally unpredictable. So getting him out of this situation is bound to improve his well-being and your relationship in general.

If you have any questions or comments about today’s episode, don’t hesitate to comment. By the way, in the comments section too, you can absolutely suggest a future topic that’s close to your heart. You can also join my Instagram or Facebook for more information, tips and free resources under the handle @animaletherapie. Do you have a behavioral issue with your animal or do you want to get ethical and professional guidance? You can contact me directly at contact@animaletherapie.com and I’ll see you very soon for a new episode.