Learned helplessness

Animal experiments
In the 70’s, when the idea of burnout first was described, there was an american psychologist, Seligman, who did some experiments with animals, that would be strongly condemned today from an ethical viewpoint. The results did contribute in time a lot to the theory building about the possible cognitive background of burnout. In summary, those experiments went like this:

Learned helplessness
Dogs were locked in a cage and were exposed, in an unpredictable rhytm, to mild electric shocks. Of course they tried escaping frantically but as soon as they learnt the inescapable nature of their situation, their behavior adapted to it. They got apathic, laid themselves on the ground and started moaning. They deteriorated to a condition that we could call acquiescing, apathic, hopeless or even depressive. In a later stage, they did get options to escape by simply jumping a fence, which they never did anymore. Apparently they had learned very thoroughly that, whatever they did, it wouldn’t be of any use. Seligman called this condition “learned helplessness.

Optimistic dogs
Another group of dogs had also been exposed to the shock treatment but had the escaping option right from the beginning. Now these dogs managed to find escapes, all the time they received shocks. Apparently they had learned that initiatives will be rewarded and kept up, so to say, an optimistic attitude.

A clear parallel with burnout
The parallel with becoming burnout won’t escape you. People can, especially in their professional lives, live through a number of situations in which they find, however hard they try, that they cannot improve their situation. Depending on their fixed income they think that they are completely running out of options to organise things differently