Learned helplessness as a
technical term in animal psychology and related human psychology
means a condition of a human being or an animal in which it has
learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored
for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful
circumstance to which it has been subjected. Learned helplessness
theory is the view that
clinical depression and related
mental illnesses result from a perceived absence of control over
the outcome of a situation (Seligman, 1975).
The American psychologist
Martin Seligman's foundational experiments and
theory of learned helplessness began at
University of Pennsylvania in 1967, as an
extension of his interest in depression. Quite by
accident, Seligman and colleagues discovered that
the
conditioning of dogs led to outcomes that
opposed the predictions of
B.F. Skinner's
behaviorism, then a leading psychological theory
(Seligman & Maier, 1967; Overmier & Seligman, 1967)
In part one of Seligman and
Steve Maier's experiment, three groups of dogs
were placed in harnesses. Group One dogs were simply
put in the harnesses for a period of time and later
released. Groups Two and Three consisted of "yoked
pairs." A dog in Group 2 would be intentionally
subjected to pain by being given electric shocks,
which the dog could end by pressing a lever. A Group
3 dog was wired in parallel with a Group 2 dog,
receiving shocks of identical intensity and
duration, but his lever didn't stop the electric
shocks. To a dog in Group 3, it seemed that the
shock ended at random, because it was his paired dog
in Group 2 that was causing it to stop. For Group 3
dogs, the shock was apparently "inescapable." Group
1 and Group 2 dogs quickly recovered from the
experience, but Group 3 dogs learned to be helpless,
and exhibited symptoms similar to chronic
clinical depression.
In part two of the Seligman and Maier experiment,
these three groups of dogs were tested in a
shuttle-box apparatus, in which the dogs could
escape electric shocks by jumping over a low
partition. For the most part, the Group 3 dogs, who
had previously "learned" that nothing they did had
any effect on the shocks, simply lay down passively
and whined. Even though they could have easily
escaped the shocks, the dogs didn't try.
In a second experiment later that year, Overmier
and Seligman ruled out the possibility that the
Group 3 dogs learned some behavior in part one of
the experiment, while they were struggling in the
harnesses against the "inescapable shocks," that
somehow interfered with what would have been their
normal, successful behavior of escaping from the
shocks in part two. The Group 3 dogs were
immobilized with a paralyzing drug (Curare),
and underwent a procedure similar to that in part
one of the Seligman and Maier experiment. A similar
part two in the shuttle-box was also undertaken in
this experiment, and the Group 3 dogs exhibited the
same "helpless" response.
However, not all of the dogs in Seligman's
experiments became helpless. Of the roughly 150 dogs
in experiments in the latter half of the 1960s,
about one-third did not become helpless, but
instead managed to find a way out of the unpleasant
situation despite their past experience with it. The
corresponding characteristic in humans has been
found to correlate highly with
optimism; however, not a naïve
Polyannaish optimism, but an
explanatory style that views the situation as
other than personal, pervasive, or permanent.
This distinction between people who adapt and those
who break down under long-term psychological
pressure was also studied in the 1950s in the
context of
brainwashing.
Other experiments were performed with different
animals with similar results. In all cases, the
strongest predictor of a depressive response was
lack of control over the negative stimulus. One such
later experiment, presented by Finkelstein and Ramey
(1977), consisted of two groups of human babies. One
group was placed into a crib with a sensory pillow,
designed so that the movement of the baby’s head
could control the rotation of a mobile. The other
group had no control over the movement of the mobile
and could only enjoy looking at it. Later, both
groups of babies were tested in cribs that allowed
the babies to control the mobile. Although all the
babies now had the power to control the mobile, only
the group that had already learned about the sensory
pillow bothered to use it (Finkelstein & Ramey,
1977).
A similar experiment was done with people who
performed mental tasks in the presence of
distracting noise. If the person could use a switch
to turn off the noise, his performance improved,
even though he rarely bothered to turn off the
noise. Simply being aware of this option was enough
to substantially counteract its distracting effect
(Hiroto and Seligman, 1975).
Abstract: Recently, a leading sociologist claimed
that the phrase “trained incapacity” does not appear in the works of
Thorstein Veblen. Kenneth Burke, who attributed the phrase to Veblen
in Permanence and Change, was later unsure of its origins.
This essay shows that, indeed, Veblen did coin the term, using it particularly
in reference to problematic tendencies in business. Burke, on the other
hand, gave the term an expansive application to human symbol-using generally.
IN A 2003 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS to the American Sociological Association,
Robert Stallings challenged conventional wisdom and charged that the
widespread attribution of the term "trained incapacity" to Thorstein
Veblen is erroneous. Stallings reported that he himself had spent a
significant amount of time searching for the term in Veblen's works,
to no avail; thus, he was comfortable in challenging anyone to "find
the term 'trained incapacity' in any of the published works of Thorstein
Veblen." Given his certainty that the term could not be located, he
suggested that the connection of "trained incapacity" with Veblen was
an example of misattribution in sociology (Stallings 1).
Kenneth Burke made good use of the term "trained incapacity," devoting
an entire section to it in his book Permanence and Change.
Here he typically attributed the phrase to Veblen, although he later
admitted uncertainty as to its origins. As early as a 1946 letter to
David Cox, Burke noted that he had tried to remember where he had first
heard the phrase "trained incapacity," and even returned to Veblen's
books, but was unable to determine where he had originally found the
term (“Letter to David Cox” 1). Asked in the 1983 "Counter-Gridlock"
interview about the term, Burke stated that he either took the term
from Veblen or from Randolph Bourne, who Burke states he was reading
at the time he was also reading Veblen (Burke, On Human Nature
336).
Veblen did in fact coin the phrase "trained incapacity."1
In this essay, I clarify its genealogy and explain Veblen's particular
use of the phrase. I then compare Veblen's use of the phrase in discussing
problems in business and organizations with Burke’s own use, which explored
the concept within the broader context of symbol using generally. I
argue that Burke drew upon Veblen’s initial idea, but teased out its
larger implications for human symbol users much more thoroughly than
Veblen.
Veblen’s Use of Trained Incapacity
Despite Stallings’ assurance that the term “trained incapacity” cannot
be found in any of Veblen’s published works, Veblen did indeed coin
the phrase. It appears first in his 1914 book, The Instinct of Workmanship
and the Industrial Arts (IWIA), though the roots of the
concept in Veblen’s thinking go back at least as far as his 1898 essay
in the American Journal of Sociology. This essay, with the
similar title of “The Instinct of Workmanship and The Irksomeness of
Labor” (“IWIL”), was largely incorporated into his 1914 book. The essay
considers whether humans are predisposed to loathe or to enjoy work.
Veblen notes that most economists of his time assumed the former (187),
while his essay makes a case for the latter.
Veblen’s argument draws upon evolution theory to suggest that it
would hurt the survival of the species if humans loathed and avoided
work. He attempts to explain how purposes of survival, goal-directed
behavior supporting that survival, and habits of mind and thought have
shaped humans as creatures with an “instinct of workmanship.” One of
the consequences of this shaping is that humans have evolved to think
easily and habitually about things that support this instinct of workmanship
(and, thereby, our survival). The implications of this evolutionary
imperative, Veblen argues, are significant for human action, thought,
and social judgment:
What men can do easily is what they do habitually, and this decides
what they can think and know easily. They feel at home in the range
of ideas which is familiar through their everyday line of action.
A habitual line of action constitutes a habitual line of thought,
and gives the point of view from which facts and events are apprehended
and reduced to a body of knowledge. What is consistent with the
habitual course of action is consistent with the habitual line of
thought, and gives the definitive ground of knowledge as well as
the conventional standard of complacency or approval in any community.
(“IWIL” 195)
On this last point, Veblen makes ethical judgment a product of this
evolutionary process, insisting that “[w]hat is apprehended with facility
and is consistent with the process of life and knowledge is thereby
apprehended as right and good” (195).
Business people develop their own particular habitual lines of thought
and action, leading to problems in their focus on business purposes,
as Veblen shows sixteen years later in The Instinct of Workmanship
and the Industrial Arts. He notes: “It is but a slight exaggeration
to say that [business] transactions, which govern the course of industry,
are carried out with an eye single to pecuniary gain,—the industrial
consequences, and their bearing on the community's welfare, being matters
incidental to the transaction of business” (351). Veblen insists that
“an eye single to pecuniary gain” puts workers, the community, and business
people at cross purposes. It is not simply that different interests
are at stake; it is that businesspeople are trained to ignore larger
concerns associated with “the industrial situation.” As Veblen explains
it, coining the new phrase:
Of course, all this working at cross purposes is not altogether
due to trained incapacity on the part of the several contestants
to appreciate the large and general requirements of the industrial
situation; perhaps it is not even chiefly due to such inability,
but rather to an habitual, and conventionally righteous disregard
of other than pecuniary considerations. (IWIA 347)
Here “trained incapacity” is distinguished from the “righteous disregard
of other than pecuniary considerations,” but they actually function
as two sides of the same coin, as the focus on pecuniary interests leads
business people to ignore other concerns, such as “the large and general
requirements of the industrial situation.”
That the singular focus on pecuniary interest is a type of trained
incapacity is confirmed in the comments that follow this passage, where
Veblen insists that even workers who are employed in modern factories
may suffer from this pecuniary “blindness”—which he also calls “a trained
inability”—though not quite as badly as their bosses:
It would doubtless appear that a trained inability to apprehend
any other than the immediate pecuniary bearing of their manoeuvres
accounts for a larger share in the conduct of the businessmen who
control industrial affairs than it does in that of their workmen,
since the habitual employment of the former holds them more rigorously
and consistently to the pecuniary valuation of whatever passes,
under their hands; and the like should be true only in a higher
degree of those who have to do exclusively with the financial side
of business. (347-48)
Four years later, in Higher Learning in America (HLA),
Veblen complains about one kind of training that leads to blindnesses
through the overall focus and specialization of business schools:
[These schools’] specialization on commerce is like other specializations
in that it draws off attention and interest from other lines than
those in which the specialization falls, thereby widening the candidate's
field of ignorance while it intensifies his effectiveness within
his specialty. The effect, as touches the community's interest in
the matter, should be an enhancement of the candidate's proficiency
in all the futile ways and means of salesmanship and "conspiracy
in restraint of trade" together with a heightened incapacity and
ignorance bearing on such work as is of material use. (HLA
152)
This concern over business students’ “widening…field of ignorance”
is discussed in a footnote in a chapter concerning the larger, inherent
problems with business schools being housed in universities. Although
Veblen does not use the phrase that he coined four years earlier, he
appears to be dealing with the same problem as the trend toward specialization
in business schools sacrifices the breadth of knowledge that more traditional
colleges attempt to impart, creating a kind of blindness in business
school graduates that has negative consequences.
Although Veblen discusses trained incapacity as a way to account
for problems in the modern industrial organization, Veblen’s concerns
point beyond an interest in business. In part, this is because he perceives
the impact of business practices as wide-ranging, since he holds that
business is “a modern force upon cultural growth” (Theory of Business
Enterprise vii). Additionally, Veblen’s sociological and cultural
investigations led him to explore concepts related to or drawing upon
trained incapacity. For example, Veblen’s discussion of human nature
in The Theory of the Leisure Class (TLC) offers a
broader theoretical backdrop for understanding how business people’s
focus on pecuniary interests becomes a kind of trained incapacity. He
argues that humans are agents “seeking in every act the accomplishment
of some concrete, objective, impersonal end” (TLC 15). Veblen
describes this need for accomplishment as a driving force underlying
trained incapacity. It is the focus on a specific goal or end that causes
the worker to perceive only what directly affects the specific goal.
It is this “end focused” part of every human psyche that allows for
humans to have goals, and also makes it possible for such a focus to
become an incapacitation. More simply, if a population did not have
a specific end to be trained to accomplish, it could not suffer from
trained incapacity.
In addition to this need to work toward a goal, Veblen asserts that
such goals are parts of a larger complex present in humans. The need
for an end to work toward is not socially constructed or culturally
imposed; a need for a goal is part of the human need for a “sense of
purpose,” which Veblen highlights in Instinct of Workmanship.
This sense of purpose is the part of the human condition that Veblen
refers to as the “instinct of workmanship” (IWIA 27). This
sense of purpose, which underlies human goal seeking, provides the impetus
for “trained incapacity.” Because Veblen establishes purpose as something
that is innately part of the human condition, he implies that incapacity,
which is attendant to that sense of purpose, is also something tied
to being human.
Veblen further attaches action (behavior) to instinct (thought) by
stating that man has a purpose that is innate, and that this purpose
is reflected in man’s behavior. For Veblen, recurring instinctual thoughts
are reflected in recurring or habitual actions. This link between thought
and action is key to “trained incapacity”; humans may be trained to
value certain ideas which are then acted upon. As I noted earlier, Veblen’s
“Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labor” argues that “a
line of action constitutes a line of thought” (195). Frequent repetition
of an action leads to a lack of thought in undertaking that action—a
kind of incapacitation. A worker’s training includes ensuring his or
her acceptance of preferred goals, leading that worker to take action
in support of those preferred goals. It is those actions (and therefore
those thoughts), to the exclusion of others, that causes incapacitation.
Thus, for Veblen, human nature provides an impetus toward goal-seeking
behavior, while specific training regimens (as in business schools)
can build on those impulses to make particular goals and values preeminent
in guiding human action. Such training, in turn, is the root of trained
incapacity.
This thought-behavior link highlights the place of habit in trained
incapacity. Without the initial thoughts, the behavior would never take
place, but once these thoughts have been ingrained, behavior can cease
being the result of a carefully considered process and instead occur
automatically. Veblen states that “man is a creature of habits and propensities”
(IWIA 193). Since a habitual action is easier and faster, it
is preferred by both the trainer and the trainee, but, in switching
from thoughtful action to action out of habit, incapacitation may insinuate
itself. Action prompted by habit may be faster, but it does not take
into consideration other incidents or actions that are not allowed for
in the training.
A move away from habit is a move toward inefficiency. Once a regimen
is learned, less thought is required to perform the task and less time
is required to complete the task. The more thought that goes into an
action, the more time the action will take. Whereas efficiency increases
as the amount of thought and questioning decreases, there is also a
concomitant increase in rate of incapacitation. Not only is inefficiency
bad for assembly line work, for example, it is also “innately distasteful”
according to Veblen (HLA 197). In fact, inefficiency goes against
what it means to be human; according to Veblen, humans recoil from inefficiency.
Thus, Veblen asserts, humans both seek accomplishment and shun inefficiency.
As humans and human organizations become more successful at achieving
efficiency, they become less aware of the unintended and unsought consequences
of their actions. To the extent that “training” (e.g., education, work
experience, socialization) supports this efficiency, it supports a blindness
to broader concerns, a “trained incapacity.” Veblen, offers no solution
to this problem, but he notes how it influences modern culture (Spindler
49). In fact, in keeping with his typical worldview, Veblen seems resigned
to the fact that this training phenomenon is a problem that will always
plague humankind.
The next section considers Burke’s references to “trained incapacity”
and to Veblen, establishing how and when Burke gives Veblen credit for
his ideas, and discussing how Burke works to take Veblen’s initial concept
and to extend and adapt it to his own sociological theory.
Burke’s Extension of Trained Incapacity
Kenneth Burke speaks about trained incapacity in an entire section
in Permanence and Change appropriately titled “Veblen’s Concept
of ‘Trained Incapacity’” (7). While the phrase trained incapacity
is mentioned only in Burke’s Permanence and Change, references
to its author, Thorstein Veblen, occur throughout Burke’s many texts.
Permanence and Change is the first place Burke refers to Veblen.
Here Burke speaks of “trained incapacity” as a phrase he believes was
coined by Veblen (7). Burke does not give a specific source or page
citation, but instead simply attributes the phrase to Veblen. Burke
defines the phrase as “that state of affairs whereby one’s very abilities
can function as blindnesses” (7). Burke illustrates this concept with
a modified Pavlovian example of training chickens, showing how training
can “work against” any trainable animal. He notes that chickens trained
to come for food upon hearing a bell may suffer trained incapacity when
the same bell is used to call them for punishment (7).
Burke notes that Veblen “generally restricts the concept to the care
of business men who, through long training in competitive finance, have
so built their scheme of orientation . . . they cannot see serious possibilities
in any other system of production and distribution” (7). Because he
is exploring the concept, rather than simply deploying it to explain
one aspect of business culture, Burke is more explicit than Veblen in
asserting that trained incapacity “properly applies to all men,” not
just those in business. Burke notes that this phenomenon is so predictable
and evident throughout the population that it even “seems to be experimentally
verifiable” (10).
Burke argues that trained incapacity is also a way to discuss “matters
of orientation” without using the terms escape and avoidance
(9). That is, Burke says that there is no need to assume that the chickens
in his example “refuse to face reality” or that they are using an “escape
mechanism,” if their illogical behavior can be explained as a form of
trained incapacity (10). Finally, Burke notes that trained incapacity
is identical to John Dewey’s notion of “occupational psychosis,” insisting
that the terms are “interchangeable” (48-49).
While the term trained incapacity is only cited in Permanence
and Change, Veblen and his philosophy appear in two other texts
of Burke’s—Philosophy of Literary Form (PLF) and
Rhetoric of Motives (RM). Burke refers to Veblen in
his book, Philosophy of Literary Form, urging that Veblen,
along with Marx and Bentham, consider “material interests” of both “private
and class structure” (111). Burke notes that such interests are a part
of the “contexts of situation.” These contexts significantly shape action,
yet they are constantly in flux, giving rise to paradoxes. Thus, following
Veblen, Burke asserts that contexts are “opportunities to get ahead
[and] are also opportunities to fall behind” (PLF 247). Burke
suggests adopting different perspectives on a situation to see the opportunities
and pitfalls that various contexts offer.
By the time a more mature Burke wrote Rhetoric of Motives
in 1950, he had moved beyond Veblen’s observations and was looking to
construct a more comprehensive theory. At this point Burke insists that
Veblen’s “terminology of motives” is too limited in scope, and that
his tendency to rationalize wide areas of human relationships is a mistake
(RM 127). More specific to our concerns here, Burke insists
that Veblen’s distinction between pecuniary motive and instinct of workmanship
is “neither pliant nor comprehensive enough” (RM 127). Burke
sees Veblen’s “pecuniary motive” not as dramatistic, but instead as
a “special case of linguistic motive” (RM 129). He also describes
Veblen’s work as “a superficial rhetoric in human relations” (RM
129). Veblen’s psychology, according to Burke, is “not so much dramatistic,
as dramatized” (RM 127). Finally, Burke urges that Veblen is
“rhetorically bland,” using “satire masked as science.” Veblen uses
partisan words, according to Burke, but then wants there to be “no partisan
connotations,” something that Burke finds ludicrous (RM 132).
If Veblen failed to develop a comprehensive theory of human culture,
he nonetheless laid important groundwork for Burke’s own work. And Burke
gives him credit, though he is vague (and later, forgetful) about the
sources from which “trained incapacity” was drawn. Specifically, Burke
gives authorial credit to Veblen throughout the “trained incapacity”
section in Permanence and Change. Not only does the title of
the section indicate Veblen is the source of the idea of trained incapacity;
the section begins with the statement “Veblen had a concept of ‘trained
incapacity’” (7). However, since Burke failed to cite any specific page
number or even a particular text of Veblen’s, we must reconstruct his
sources.
When Burke discussed the concept of trained incapacity in his “Counter-Gridlock”
interview, he obviously had in mind Veblen’s discussion of the concept
in HigherLearning in America. As I noted above, Veblen discusses
the situation of the education of business students in America in a
footnote in Higher Learning. Veblen urges that because these
students are taught business methods and are taught to be exclusively
economically motivated, the students are unable to see larger social
concerns (HLA 152). Veblen sees these students as unable to
think beyond their training as business people.
Burke is also discussing Veblen’s Higher Learning example
when he writes about “business men” in Permanence and Change
(7). Burke’s reference to Veblen is not specific, but the content he
discusses is unique to a footnote in Veblen’s Higher Learning.
Additionally, Burke must have either read or been exposed to The
Instinct of Workmanship and the Industrial Arts, where Veblen first
used the phrase trained incapacity in 1914. Again, Veblen was
describing the behaviors of those operating in the business community
and industry, noting their failure “to appreciate the large and general
requirements of the industrial situation” (IWIA 347).
One reason Burke might have been unclear about the origins of the term
is that the source of Burke’s own notion of the meaning of trained incapacity
is derived from Higher Learning, where Veblen does not use
the phrase, but discusses the concept. It is likely then that after
reading the Higher Learning passage Burke connected it with
the phrase that he had read earlier in Instinct of Workmanship
and the Industrial Arts.
In any case, Burke quickly leaves Veblen’s narrow use of the phrase
behind, expanding it to include broad sociological and cultural implications.
Veblen’s singular use of the phrase trained incapacity in
The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts
did not indicate that it carried more than a concern for business, business
students, and a culture that relies on them. Likewise, his reference
to the concept of trained incapacity in Higher Learning in America
also appears to restrict the term to businesses and business students.
Veblen’s larger body of work, however, while not using the term
trained incapacity specifically, does support a broader application
of the term. What is of value here to Burke scholars is that Burke manages
to take this one phrase and one description and understand it in terms
of Veblen’s larger sociological research, drawing his own conclusions
about the broad potential for the concept.
Burke’s reference to chickens suffering from trained incapacity may
sound absurd, but it clearly makes the point that trained incapacity
is not restricted to business students, industrial workers, or even
humans in general. Indeed, it follows on Burke’s opening example of
a trout that learns a valuable distinction between “food” and “bait,”
examining critical distinctions at the most basic level of meaning.
Burke’s use of trained incapacity not only expands Veblen’s use of that
term, but provides a fecund concept that probably contributed to Burke’s
thinking about orientation, perspective by incongruity, terministic
screens, and other concepts that make up Burke’s theory of the symbol-using
animal.
The article is one of the results of a master's thesis completed
at the University Of Minnesota Department Of Rhetoric under the advisement
of Dr. Art Walzer. A related paper was presented at the Triennial Kenneth
Burke Conference in 2005. The author would like to thank the editors
and reviewers of KB Journal—particularly Clarke Rountree—for their aid
in taking this manuscript from a bulky thesis to its present state.
Note
1 That Veblen did indeed use this phrase was verified
by John Gagnon, who successfully tracked it down in The Instinct
of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts after its "absence"
was discussed on the Kenneth Burke discussion list.
Works Cited
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http://www.lib.siu.edu/spcol/inventory/part1.htm
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