Deconstructing

Another newspaper article caught my attention [link]. Dr. Ariely, a noted economist, cites a landmark study in behavioral science to support his call for more government regulation. While I’m neither for nor against regulation ~ he chose to misinterpret a study I’m familiar with ~ and I need something to write about ~ so bear with me ~ there's a point here somewhere. In 1965, researchers discovered that lab animals, who experience a sequence of uncontrollable events, do not learn future tasks as well as their peers with no such experience. They called this condition ‘learned helplessness’. So now, according to Dr. Ariely, learned helplessness is the reason why Americans are not responding realistically to current economic conditions. Over the last decade, we’ve experienced too many uncontrollable shocks ..things like the Internet crash and the housing collapse. What we need now are more ‘government planners’ to circumvent these things for us. I don’t know, for some reason this doesn’t sound like the proper antidote ~ and ~ pay attention ~ because here's where Dr. Ariely parts ways with the scientific community: the investigators originally working on learned helplessness, discovered that it mimics depression ..and began looking for ways to alleviate it. They found that it takes only a few successes, in situations that people previously considered insurmountable, to restore confidence ..and foster a sense of resilience to future setbacks. Since I don’t think we’re going to eliminate setbacks anytime soon, resilience seems like a far better antidote to feelings of helplessness than government regulation.