⊹ ⊹ ⊹ someone holds me safe and warm, horses prance through a silver storm, figures dancing gracefully across my memory. ⊹ ⊹ ⊹ In the late 20th century, a team of researchers were performing a series of experiments to study escape and avoidance learning. The researchers would take a group of dogs and expose them to a tone, followed by a painful electric shock. Originally, the dogs were restrained and were not able to escape the shock. Because they were researching classical conditioning at the time, the researchers assumed that once they had learned to associate the sound with pain, the dogs would attempt to escape the pain in the future. ⊹ ⊹ ⊹ far away, long ago, glowing dim as an ember, things my heart used to know, things it yearns to remember ⊹ ⊹ ⊹ The dogs were then placed into a box separated into two compartments. The structure of the box allowed the dogs to easily jump to safety over the segment separating the two sides. When the sound played, the researches expected that the dogs would move from one compartment to the other to escape the shock. But when it came time to conduct the experiment, the dogs would not move, even though they were exposed to something painful. The researches realized that the dogs originally had been conditioned in an environment where escape from the shock had not been possible. Because the dogs did not believe they could escape, they simply gave up and did not try. This led to the discovery of learned helplessness, or the tendency to fail to act to escape from a situation because of a history of repeated failures in the past. Individuals who have developed learned helplessness are prone to depression, especially if the person believes they have no control over their present self and situation. ⊹ ⊹ ⊹ and a song someone sings once upon a december ⊹ ⊹ ⊹ Artwork: @Nightwisker101 Character: @Nightwisker101 Roleplay: @Lunalas_Mask Music: Once Upon A December
