Scientific Definition
Giving up after repeated exposure to uncontrollable negative events.
Plain-English Definition
Giving up after repeated exposure to uncontrollable negative events.
Feynman Explanation
Failure teaches some people to try harder. Others, to stop trying.
Core Principle
Giving up after repeated exposure to uncontrollable negative events.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Giving up after repeated exposure to uncontrollable negative events.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Culture can train people to feel powerless.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Failure teaches some people to try harder. Others, to stop trying.
Examples
- A team stops proposing improvements because past suggestions were ignored.
- Culture can train people to feel powerless.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Celebrate small wins and respond visibly to feedback.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Celebrate small wins and respond visibly to feedback.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Daily one-line capture of the single most important thing you learned that day.
Learners build knowledge by integrating new experience with existing mental structures — not by passive reception.
Targeted reps at the edge of your ability, with fast feedback, on a specific weakness.
Four dimensions of learner preference: Active/Reflective, Sensing/Intuitive, Visual/Verbal, Sequential/Global.
Four learner preferences derived from Kolb: Activist, Reflector, Theorist, Pragmatist.
Four-stage cycle: Concrete Experience → Reflective Observation → Abstract Conceptualization → Active Experimentation.
Performance improves with practice, but gains slow over time.
A deliberately curated set of people, sources, and feedback loops you draw on to learn faster than alone.
Default identity shift: you read, watch, and listen as a future teacher, not a passive consumer.
Preparing to teach a concept forces deeper encoding than passively studying it.
Pulling information out of memory cements it better than passively re-reading it.
Bloom-stacked curriculum that pairs passive online content with facilitated, experiential, and implementation phases.