The Learned Helplessness and Self-Efficacy in Everyday Life

Abstract

When people are faced with uncontrollable situations repeatedly and consistently, can produce a psychological phenomenon called learned helplessness, which causes them to stop to work to change the situation and may even have consequences for the physical health of individuals. In individual terms, this can cause depression and decreased of the cognitive ability; and in social terms, can cause social passivity and strengthening the established status. The way to deal with difficult and uncontrollable situations will depend of how much they think they are able to do it. Research on self- efficacy shows that achieve a goal successfully depends on how capable you feel yourself to achieve and not so much in terms of real skills you have, because the more capable you feel, you will make greater efforts and invest more time, which will take you to complete the task successfully. This article explains the relationship between the learned helplessness and self-efficacy, through the research that has been done on the subject and try to demonstrate the importance of these variables in daily life.