Sustaining Agency

—You’ve got this!

Agency—the capacity to act independently, make choices, and influence one’s environment—is a fundamental aspect of human experience.

Introduction

Agency—the capacity to act independently, make choices, and influence one’s environment—is a fundamental aspect of human experience. Sustaining agency is vital for personal growth, motivation, and well-being. However, agency often stands in contrast with learned helplessness, a state in which individuals perceive themselves as lacking control over their circumstances. This course explores the concept of sustaining agency, contrasts it with learned helplessness, and discusses the implications of internal and external locus of control. Additionally, it examines how individuals define their perceived helplessness in terms of pervasiveness and temporality, as well as the benefits and disadvantages of adopting optimistic versus pessimistic viewpoints.

Objectives

The objective of this course is to help students act constructively, despite encountering discouraging circumstances.

Agency vs. Learned Helplessness

Agency is characterized by the belief in one’s ability to affect change, take responsibility, and act with purpose. It is a driving force behind human ambition and achievement. In contrast, learned helplessness arises when individuals repeatedly experience uncontrollable situations and subsequently stop trying to change their circumstances, even when opportunities for control arise. This concept, introduced by Martin Seligman in the 1960s, has been extensively studied in psychology. People who develop learned helplessness often exhibit passivity, decreased motivation, and even depression.

Learned helplessness undermines agency by fostering a belief that efforts are futile. It can develop in various domains, including education, work, and personal relationships. For example, a student who repeatedly fails math tests despite studying may come to believe that they are inherently incapable of succeeding in math, leading to disengagement and withdrawal. Conversely, those who sustain agency are more likely to persist, seeking alternative strategies or assistance to improve their outcomes.

Internal vs. External Locus of Control

A key factor in sustaining agency is one’s locus of control—the degree to which individuals attribute events in their lives to their own actions versus external forces. This concept, developed by Julian Rotter, differentiates between an internal and external locus of control.

• Internal locus of control: Individuals with an internal locus of control believe that their actions significantly influence outcomes. They tend to take responsibility for their successes and failures, viewing challenges as opportunities to learn and improve. For instance, a job seeker with an internal locus of control might attribute an unsuccessful interview to a lack of preparation and commit to refining their approach for future opportunities.
• External locus of control: Individuals with an external locus of control believe that external forces, such as luck, fate, or other people’s decisions, primarily determine their outcomes. These individuals may feel powerless in the face of adversity, which can contribute to learned helplessness. For example, a job seeker who repeatedly fails to secure employment might blame the economy or bias in hiring rather than focusing on ways to improve their applications and interviews.

Sustaining agency requires fostering an internal locus of control while acknowledging that external factors can influence outcomes. A balance between recognizing personal agency and adapting to uncontrollable circumstances can promote resilience and proactive behavior.

The Perceived Extent of Helplessness

When individuals experience setbacks, they tend to define their lack of control in terms of pervasiveness (extent) and temporality (time duration):

• Pervasiveness: People may perceive helplessness as either domain-specific (narrow) or universal (pervasive). For instance, someone who fails at public speaking may believe they are bad at all forms of communication (pervasive) or that they just need more practice in public speaking specifically (narrow). The broader the perception of helplessness, the greater its detrimental impact on motivation and agency.
• Temporality: Helplessness may be seen as either temporary or permanent. If a person believes their incompetence in a skill is a permanent condition, they are less likely to attempt improvement. In contrast, viewing struggles as temporary can encourage persistence and growth.

Encouraging a perspective that frames challenges as narrow and temporary can help sustain agency, enabling individuals to see difficulties as opportunities for learning rather than indicators of personal deficiency.

Assignment

1. Complete the Wikiversity course What you can change and what you cannot.
2. Generate possibilities for taking constructive action.
3. Learn to accept the things you cannot change; gain the courage to change the things you can; and gain the wisdom to know the difference.
4. Carefully consider the question What ought we do?
5. Focus on what matters.

Optimism vs. Pessimism

The perspective individuals adopt—whether optimistic or pessimistic—greatly influences their ability to sustain agency.

• Optimism: An optimistic outlook fosters resilience and sustained effort. Optimists tend to attribute setbacks to temporary, specific, and external causes while seeing successes as permanent and personally driven. This mindset encourages persistence, exploration of new strategies, and a willingness to take risks. However, excessive optimism can lead to unrealistic expectations and a failure to prepare for potential difficulties.
• Pessimism: A pessimistic perspective, while often associated with negative outcomes, can serve a functional role when applied judiciously. Pessimists tend to prepare for potential failures by considering risks and developing contingency plans. However, chronic pessimism can lead to avoidance behavior, disengagement, and the reinforcement of learned helplessness.

A balanced approach—termed “realistic optimism”—combines the motivational benefits of optimism with the caution and preparedness of pessimism. This approach sustains agency by fostering a belief in one’s capacity to improve while remaining pragmatic about challenges.

Both Views are Important:

Optimism and pessimism describe two extremes of a continuum of viewpoints used for assessing and extending uncertain, ambiguous, or conflicting information and making estimates, forecasts, and decisions. Some situations are best met by optimism, others by pessimism. This table characterizes the differences:

Optimist	Pessimist
Takes broad personal credit for good outcomes. Personalizes and adopts an internal locus of control when things go well.	Attributes good outcomes to external factors or luck. Adopts an external locus of control when things go well.
Attributes bad outcomes to external factors and rare circumstances, or to narrowly isolated mistakes. Adopts an external locus of control when things go bad.	Blames himself broadly for bad outcomes. Personalizes and adopts an internal locus of control when things go bad.
Fuels the aspirations of hope. Sustains the effort and persistence required to overcome obstacles. Inspires others. Allows us to dream and see possibilities. Seeks to advance. Bold.	Promotes caution, critical thinking, skepticism, and defensive measures. Sustains a keen sense of reality. Highlights problems. Seeks to protect. Timid.
Expansive; seize the possibilities. Exploration, adventure, discovery. Discounts or dismisses risks. The engine that moves us forward.	Conservative; protect what we have. Concerned with safety. Highlights and emphasizes risks. The brakes that keep us from crashing.
Recover quickly from setbacks. Undaunted by defeat.	Recover slowly, if at all, from setbacks. Wallow in defeat.
Unlikely to suffer from depression.	Likely to suffer from depression.
Unwarranted or excessive optimism can result in unrealistic plans, recklessness, risk taking, egotism, aggrandizing, and avoiding responsibility. It can also result in an unearned or undeserved sense of pride.	Unwarranted or excessive pessimism can result in inaction, depression, or other inappropriate passive behavior. It can also result in unwarranted fear, anxiety, guilt or shame.
Optimists landed a man on the moon . . .	. . . and also insisted on launching the space shuttle challenger the day it exploded.

Assignment

Avoid the polarization and false dichotomy of arguing optimism vs. pessimism. Instead choose realism; the viewpoint that is supported by the best available information, estimation, and judgment.

Explanatory Styles are Learned

Research shows that explanatory style is primarily learned rather than inherited. Children learn how to explain bad things from three main sources. The first source a child uses for learning how to explain adversity is to model how their mothers (or other primary caregivers) explain adverse events. If the mother blames herself or the child broadly when bad things happen, the child will notice and learn this pessimistic style. The second source a child uses to learn their own explanatory style are the adults that care for, discipline, teach, and criticize the child. These people include teachers, parents, and other authority figures. When these adults blame the child's character, personality, or self whenever bad things happen, the child quickly learns to blame themselves using personal, permanent, and pervasive explanations for why things go wrong. The final powerful teacher is tragic life crises. If children experience a crisis, such as a house fire, divorced parents, abuse, or extreme poverty, they notice if these tragedies get resolved after a period of time or if they persist forever. If the crisis gets resolved quickly, then the child learns to believe that adversity is specific, temporary, and can be overcome. If the crisis expands and never ends, the child learns to believe that adversity is permanent and pervasive.

The style children learn for explaining adversity typically persists throughout their adult life. However, we can learn to dispute our pessimistic explanations.

Dispute Pessimistic Explanations

If you tend toward pessimistic explanations for adverse events, you can learn to dispute your own reasoning and adopt more objective, accurate, and optimistic explanations. Recognize that in blaming yourself for a bad outcome you are accepting a fallacy of disproportionate responsibility. Imagine becoming your own defense attorney, reexamining the evidence, challenging assumptions, casting doubt, considering other possibilities, and offering alternative explanations. Here is an example:

You have failed a test and you automatically blame yourself, believing “I am just not any good a studying anything”. As a result you feel ashamed of yourself and you may even feel mildly depressed, discouraged, or overwhelmed. Now it is time to recognize you are not helpless; it is time to dispute your hasty, inaccurate, and pessimistic conclusion. What does the evidence say? Certainly, you have passed many difficult tests in your lifetime to get to where you are now. You have passed several tests recently in other subjects and even did OK in this subject. This evidence clearly disputes your pessimistic belief that you are not any good at studying anything. What additional contributing causes are there? Perhaps you did not get a good night's sleep, you were under unusual stress, you may not have mastered the prerequisites for this subject, you may not have had time to study or get extra help, you may be taking a heavy course load or work load, you may be upset about some recent problem, perhaps you had a fight with your lover, or your car broke down, or the test was not fair, or instructor does not communicate well. With so many factors at work, it is inaccurate to attribute blame entirely to yourself, and it is certainly an overgeneralization fallacy to extrapolate from this one occurrence to a general, pervasive, and persistent conclusion.  So, a more accurate explanation is that you did poorly on this test for some isolated reason, such as poor preparation for this particular test. This isolated problem can certainly be overcome, and there is no need to feel ashamed or helpless. Put this setback into the past, address any specific issues, and go about studying as you have done successfully so many times before.

Take responsibility only for what you did and what you can change. Choose to forgive yourself. Move forward with your life and return to feeling OK with yourself.

Dr. Albert Ellis describes a technique for disputing pessimistic beliefs that can be recalled using the mnemonic ABCDEF:

• Adversity happens and you begin to think about what caused it.
• You form a Belief to explain the failure to yourself. This may be unrealistically negative.
• Your negative beliefs have Consequences, such as feeling shame, becoming depressed, or feeling overwhelmed.
• Dispute these negative beliefs, and create more objective, accurate, and objective beliefs.
• Energize yourself through this optimistic outlook.
• Attain new Feelings

Depression

There are important relationships between learned helplessness and depression. First, the symptoms are quite similar, including passivity, cognitive deficits, decreased self-esteem, sadness, hostility, anxiety, loss of appetite, reduced aggression, sleep loss, and depletion of the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and serotonin.  Second, depressed people are more likely to offer internal and general explanations for bad events and tend to make external and specific explanations for good events. Cognitive therapy that provides relief from unipolar depression also results in a more optimistic explanatory style.

Studies show that depressive symptoms are associated with a pessimistic explanatory style.

Assignment

1. Seek competent professional help if you are suffering from depression.
2. Find equanimity.
3. Take care. Give care.

Stress  and Control

There is considerable evidence that the uncontrollable adverse events that characterize learned helplessness cause stress, while similar but controlled adverse events do not. Several neural and neurochemical changes occur in animals exposed to uncontrollable shocks that do not occur when the animal can control the shocks. Levels of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine are reduced in rats subjected to inescapable electric shocks but not in rats exposed to shock that could be avoided or escaped. Rats exposed to inescapable shock show decreased brain levels of Gamma-amino butyric Acid (GABA) while rats exposed to escapable shock do not. The analgesic state—such as the response to morphine where the organism is less responsive to painful stimulus—is induced in rats by uncontrollable, but not controllable shock.

Studies of helplessness in people show changes in biological markers that usually indicate increased arousal, consistent with increased fear or anxiety.

The conclusion is that these uncontrollable adverse events result in considerable stress, however similar controllable events do not. Learning that the stressor is uncontrollable may increase fear, or learning that it is controllable may reduce fear. Control is a form of coping that prevents some forms of stress.

Hope Is Earned

Hope is often treated as a feeling—something you either have or you don’t. In difficult times, it can seem like a passive wish or a fragile thread barely holding us up. But for those who have dedicated their lives to creating meaningful change, hope is not a fleeting sentiment. It’s something far more powerful—and far more demanding. As conservationist Kristine Tompkins once said, “You have to earn hope.”’”.

Assignment:

1. Read the essay Hope Is Earned.
2. Action becomes the antidote to hopelessness. And as you act, hope begins to take root. Do what you can.

Relevance to Social Problems

Learned helplessness theory has been studied as a model for a wide range of social problems. Here are examples where research shows it to be an especially good fit.

• Depression can be largely explained by the learned helplessness theory, as described above.
• Academic achievement fits the theory well; optimistic explanatory style predicts better academic achievement than does pessimistic explanatory style. For example, in one study habitual explanations of bad events in terms of internal general causes predicted poor academic performance, even when SAT scores were held constant.
• Burnout describes exhaustion and passive responses within a work environment. It occurs after prolonged uncontrollable events cause the worker to think more narrowly about the options they have for responding. This fits the learned helplessness theory.
• Crowding can lead to reduced perseverance and social withdrawal. The crowding itself is an uncontrollable condition and leads people to report having little control over events in their life. This fits the model.
• Uncontrollable noise interferes with performance. Studies have shown that uncontrollable noise interferes with problem solving, but the identical noise does not when it is interpreted as controllable. The effects of noise pollution is an example of learned helplessness.

Learned helpless is also pertinent to our health. Several studies show that optimistic explanatory style is linked to good health and pessimistic explanatory style predicts poor health. Mechanisms probably include biological, emotional, behavioral, and interpersonal factors.

Incomplete research also suggests that learned helplessness is an important mechanism contributing to passive behavior in aging, athletic performance, chronic pain, sales, and unemployment.

Conclusion

Sustaining agency is essential for personal growth, motivation, and well-being. It stands in opposition to learned helplessness, which diminishes motivation and fosters passivity. The locus of control plays a crucial role in determining whether individuals sustain agency or succumb to helplessness, with an internal locus promoting greater personal responsibility. Additionally, the way individuals define their helplessness—whether as pervasive or narrow, temporary or permanent—affects their ability to overcome obstacles. While optimism generally supports agency by promoting resilience, a measure of pessimism can help individuals prepare for difficulties. Ultimately, cultivating a mindset that embraces agency, resilience, and adaptability can empower individuals to navigate life’s challenges with confidence and persistence.

Recommended Reading

• Peterson, Christopher; Maier, Steven F.; Seligman, Martin E. P. (1995). Learned helplessness: a theory for the age of personal control (1st issued as an Oxford Univ. Press Paperback ed.). New York, NY: Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-19-504467-6. 
• Seligman, Martin E. P. (2006). Learned optimism: how to change your mind and your life (1st Vintage Books ed ed.). New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-1-4000-7839-4. OCLC ocm62793275. https://www.worldcat.org/title/ocm62793275. 
• Kidder, Tracy (August 25, 2009). Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World. Random House. pp. 332. ISBN 978-0812980554.

• Kidder, Tracy (August 25, 2009). Strength in What Remains. Random House. pp. 304. ISBN 978-1400066216.

References

• Learned Helplessness Research, a listing of Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman’s books and other publications on the topic of Learned Helplessness