Learned Helplessness in Public Administration: The Cases of Samsun Metropolitan Municipality and San Diego City

Abstract: Learned helplessness is a psychological and cognitive process and state of mind that an individual remains unresponsive to new stimuli due to past experiences of (perceived) failure, which subsequently prevents the learning. This situation can be observed in many environments; hence, it is possible to ebserve learned helplessness in the working life. In this context, the aim of the study is to identify factors that lead to learned helplessness among public sector employees. Specifically this article examines the relationship between the San Diego City and Samsun Metropolitan Muncipality employees' seniority level, position and demographic characteristics and their levels of learned helplessness. The survey results indicate that learned helplessness is correlated with the position, seniority, education and age of public sector employees; however gender was not correlated with helplessness.