Assignment 4-1 Norman 1 Blog Entry

Helplessness: Learned vs. Taught?

okay first, the concept of learned OR taught helplessness sounds ludicrous to begin with. I mean, shouldn't we be avoiding helplessness altogether? BUT after reading through the text about it, I realized that whoa, guess what? I have experienced both. I have come across an impossible task or two. I have tried and tried to get into coding as a means of programming and you know what? Its freakin' impossible! (Well obviously its not because someone had to create this blog space using CSS, HTML & Javascript which came from BASIC, Livescript etc. But I have learned, through MANY failures that I just can't code. I like my Visual Studio. I'm a point n click girl! And then there's the Dad syndrome. Bill Cosby talks about it. If dad messes up enough things around the house, he is labeled as helpless (and hopeless) and is no longer asked to do these things. Frankly, we're scared to ask because last time he blew up something in the basement. And that was his goal in the first place - just to be left alone.

"Do the common technology and mathematics phobias result from a kind of learned helplessness?" asks the Design of Everyday Things. The text shows that a few failures in mathematics (and boy have I had those too) can create a phobia. And a few failures with poorly designed systems can cause the same kind of phobias. "The vicious cycle starts: if you fail at something, you think its your fault. Therefore you think you can't do the task. As a result, next time you have to do the task, you believe you can't so you don't even try. The result is that you can't, just as you thought. you're trapped in a self-fulfilling prophecy." (Norman, 1988) The Rubik's cube was my technological version of learned helplessness. I still won't even touch one to this day. But what about the people who still don't use e-mail because they can't figure it out? Trust me, they're out there. I have a friend who has DVR with her cable and hasn't used it because she tried to record a show once, failed to do so, and won't try again. Not having cable, I haven't experienced this issue, but just hearing about other people who are frustrated by the set-up, I'm a little intimidated. But then, I'm too cheap to get cable anyway...

Norman, D. A. (1988). The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Doubleday.