While learning about self fulfilled expectations I can’t help but relate the idea to the psychological concept of learned helplessness. In learned helplessness, a person (or animal) comes to believe that he or she has no control in a situation and any energy expended on escaping that situation is futile.

Research on learned helplessness began with Martin Seligman’s research with three groups of dogs. One group of dogs was attached to a leash. Another group was given electric shocks which could be stopped with the push of a lever. The last group was also given shock and a lever but the lever only worked randomly. The dogs in the third group learned that pushing the lever did not help and that stopping the shocks was out of their control and therefore stopped pushing the level.

Dogs were then given a mode of escape by jumping over a small wall. Dogs from the first two groups escaped while dogs in the third shocked group simply lay down and accepted the shocks. These dogs had developed a sense of learned helplessness.

Unfortunately, learned helplessness has begun to show up in other situations as well. Children at school drop out because they believe they are “stupid” and can not do anything to change. Battered women also remain in abusive relationships because they feel that there is no point of escaping. When a person believes that there is nothing he can do to control a situation, even when a chance to escape arises, this person will continue to helplessly endure the pain.

This concept also applies to economic Self Fulfilling Expectations. If an employer believes that all green workers are not good workers, then green workers may internalize this idea and truly start to believe that they are not good workers. Eventually, green workers will give up working at all because they will feel that any work they do is futile. The key to solving this learned helplessness is education. If green workers are taught from the beginning that they will not succeed, then they probably won’t. However, if green workers are taught that with hard work and determination, they can succeed, then they will. In the end, this can change asymmetric outcomes of employment to unexpected symmetric outcomes.

http://www.noogenesis.com/malama/discouragement/helplessness.html