Personality and Job Burnout: Can Coping Skills Reduce Job Burnout

摘要

A before and after study design was employed to examine the effects of personality and coping training on job burnout. One hundred and one students completed the project. There were no significant differences between before/ after measures of job burnout, thus, coping training did not reduce burnout. The failure of stress coping training to have an effect may be due to one or more of the following: (a) poor design of the stress-coping instruction procedure, (b) part time employed students generally do not experience high levels of stress, and (c), stress coping training has no effect on how people habitually respond to stress. Additional research is needed to explore these possibilities. The personality measure, core self-evaluation (CSE), indicated a positive predisposition toward burnout and significantly predicted two of the three burnout measures: lower CSE students showed lower professional efficacy and higher cynicism. Results demonstrate that measurable personality attributes are associated with the tendency for people to experience job burnout. This suggests that in order to minimize the likelihood of burnout, a personality assessment procedure should be employed with individuals in stressful positions. Further research with individuals facing job stress is needed to design potentially more effective stress coping training.