Psychological and Social Correlates of Social Helplessness

• Authors: Wysocka E.
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The core aim of the article is to present fundamental theoretical issues concerning the mechanisms of social helplessness. These mechanisms are assumed to be a source for atypical social functioning in young people whose social as well as occupational situation varies. The research project focused on students and other young people who continuously experience everyday frustration within the realisation of their occupational role. The source of frustration appears to be their inability to procure any occupation within a couple of years after graduation and particularly not one in the field of their specialisation, or one to suit their personal preferences. The research verifies a few hypotheses concerning variation of functioning of both groups mentioned earlier within the following areas: level and dimension of crisis of valuation, strategies in shaping up in everyday situations (passive strategies without control and with learned helplessness vs. active strategies concerning wielding control and the feeling of perpetration), and the attitude towards oneself and the surrounding world as a consequence of varied life experiences. The results achieved from this research allow the following conclusion to be reached: unstabilised occupational situation highly influences a much stronger feeling of crisis in valuation (the feeling of lack of self-realisation as well as lost of the feeling of high self-esteem) and a choice of destructive strategies of shaping up with life problems, which in consequence forms those life style approaches which disintegrate one's growth of personality.

Keywords

EN

LEARNED HELPLESSNESS; MECHANISMS OF SOCIAL PASSIVITY; SOCIAL HELPLESSNESS

Discipline

• ECONOMICS: ECONOMICS

• Publisher: Institute of Labor and Social Studies, Warsaw
• Journal: Polityka Społeczna
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 35
• Issue: 4(409)
• Pages: 1-9
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Wysocka E.

• E. Wysocka, Uniwersytet Slaski w Katowicach, ul. Bankowa 12, 40-007 Katowice, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

08PLAAAA04378491