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Fatalism has been tricky to define. It’s generally thought of as a belief that outcomes cannot be changed and are determined by outside forces. For Oscar Esparza-Del Villar, a professor of psychology at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, what some people call fatalism can be separated out from related factors like helplessness and a belief in divine control. The researchers found that of fatalism and these related factors, it’s the helplessness that influences health behaviours the most.