American teacher’s anagram experiment shows how students 'learn helplessness'—just by watching others

Have you ever wondered if there is a deep underlying cause behind failure? A cause that works the same for everyone, irrespective of individual differences. Over a decade ago, a teacher decided to show a class how they were limiting themselves more than society could. Delving into mental conditioning, she demonstrated why some performed better than others despite having the same resources.

Shot by Mark Steensland, this video shows Charisse Nixon, a Ph.D. holder in developmental psychology, administering an impromptu quiz in class. “The biggest fear for an adolescent is written all throughout this test,” she began. “Jessie?” “Not fitting in,” Jessie responded, to which Nixon gave an affirming nod. “You talked about acceptance. Now, to understand how this happens and how this looks and what this feels like, I’m gonna have you do an activity.” In the video, Nixon mentions that the test was 9 years old (but its application holds relevance even today). 

As Nixon began the experiment, she mentally divided the class into 2 sides — left and right. Everyone was asked to take out a small piece of paper and keep it on their desk. Next, the teacher passed down one sheet each, which was to be kept facing down until Nixon signaled otherwise. There were only 3 questions on the paper, so she requested the students to focus on and solve for “one at a time," emphasizing the "one" repeatedly.

“This isn’t meant to be hard,” she said, gesturing for them to turn the paper over and see the questions. “These are anagrams; rearrange the letters to form a word." As the sound of papers rustling commenced, it was immediately visible that some were dawdling while others quickly scribbled in their answer. With time, the same would come to pass for the 2nd and 3rd questions as well.

“When you’re done, I need to see your hand raised… keep your hands up, please,” Nixon announces as tens of palms shot up quickly. However, this was mainly seen on one side of the room — the right side, whereas the left looked on in confusion and embarrassment, with their hands placed firmly on their desk or lap.

Once a significant number of students had solved all 3 questions, Nixon terminated the quiz. Picking up a question paper from the right side, she showed it to the left, revealing that both sides had received two different sets of questions. “They were easy,” Nixon commented. In fact, when asked the same questions as the right, the left side got both numbers 1 and 2 correct. Bat? Tab. Lemon? Melon. Now, what about the first 2 questions given to the left side of the classroom? They were unsolvable —a deliberate trick to confuse the students.

“Both of you were given the 3rd word, which was the same,” Nixon revealed. It could be seen that the process repeated all 3 times, which meant that the left side hadn't answered the 3rd question either — despite it being solvable. When the experiment came to light, however, someone from the left side chirped, "America," thereby solving the anagram 'Cinerama' given under question 3.

“I was able to induce something called ‘learned helplessness’ in the left side of the room very easily, within about 5 minutes,” Nixon admitted. When the students saw their counterparts quickly solve questions they were really struggling with, it led to them viewing themselves as smaller, less worthy, and less intelligent. Nixon clarified that the other side wasn't “significantly more intelligent” than they were, so what happened? “I want you to think about what happened to you when you saw the right side of the room raising their hands because they already had the task done?”

“Felt stupid,” said one. “Felt rushed,” said another. Confusion, frustration, a sense of giving up — these were the standard responses. So, what happened when they got to the 3rd question? A belief system had set in, pushing them to feel burdened by their inability to solve the previous questions. In doing so, they lost out on what could have been solved. This reflects larger life decisions in the grand scheme of things. If you’re bullied once in school, then are you more or less likely to stand up for yourself?

As Nixon further explained the concept of ‘learned helplessness, a student added, “Basically, they fail once or can’t do something one time and they apply that to everything in the future, so all future applications become skewed by that.” Bullseye! “Think about friendships,” Nixon prompted, asking them to apply this to the social scene. “Jean?” “If a girl sacrifices her morals once to gain the approval of her friends or a guy, she is more likely to do it over and over,” Jean responded. That’s when Nixon dropped the real bombshell: “Girls have a cultural pressure to be quiet… not to be angry, not to use their voices, and so if someone is victimised once, we can take the same [route].”

Learned helplessness is a thorn in the side of creativity and any active growth. It manipulates people into punishing themselves for perceived failures. “[It’s] because our gut response is to shut down. Once you close down, you do not open yourself up for any new ways for relationships.”

At this point, the test is roughly 27 years old, yet it stands the brutal test of time without losing any value. It is relevant today as much as it was 3 decades ago. This highlights how human civilization is entangled in a sense of shame. People on the internet also resonated with the video, with @danieldiorio1830 pointing out, "As a musician I will testify that this is a very real phenomenon as it does happen in music often. I could play the majority of a song just fine, and then as soon as I play one wrong note then suddenly I start to play more wrong notes and mess the song up further." 

@peppermint23 said, "What an amazing teacher. God I love psychology. I knew all of this already, but she still made it so interesting." @dec23 also recalled, "I love this. I remember learning this for my psych degree. Another experiment I remember seeing was of a few people in the group were in on the experiment and the teacher or host would hold up an image asked the group what it was. The people that were in on the test would say the image was something that it clearly was not. The people that were being studied quickly started to agree what those people were saying the image was, even though it CLEARLY was not right. Psychology is super interesting."

This user shows how the concept isn’t bound to a particular field, but affects us all: