Derek Thompson

It was called Learned Helplessness, and this was a study done by Seligman and Meyer.

Everybody knew the story of learned helplessness.

It kind of explained why generational poverty exists, that people kind of learn over time that there's no use in trying.

They kind of learn to be helpless.

Unfortunately, even though this was kind of widely known and a lot of people outside the psychology community have heard about learned helplessness, what many people don't know is that that exact research a few years ago was completely overturned.

Not only did the researchers find that the results were flawed, but that in fact, their conclusion was 180 degrees the opposite of learned helplessness.

That helplessness is our default state.

If you think about a baby is born completely helpless, a baby doesn't learn helpless.

It is helpless when it's first born.

It has to learn agency.

Exactly.

You got it.

And so I think this has profound implications because it tells us that our default state

is helplessness.

So that whispering voice telling us about our limitations, that culture that perpetuates do less, it's not gonna work, you've got no control, the things are controlling you, this leads us to what we call an external locus of control.

An external locus of control is when you believe that events happen to you based on outside circumstances.

versus an internal locus of control says that things that happen to me are because I do them.

Now, here's the kicker.

We know that people with an internal locus of control do better in almost every conceivable metric.

They make more money, they have more friends, they contribute more to the community.