The relationship between personality, work, and personal factors to burnout among clinical psychologists: exploring gender differences in Sweden

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of gender, personality (prosocialness, relational-interdependent self-construal, and brooding), job demands, affective work rumination, and personal-to-work conflict on burnout (exhaustion and disengagement), among clinical public-health psychologists in Sweden. The participants answered a self-report questionnaire (n = 828). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that affective work-rumination, brooding and personal-to-work conflict were most strongly associated with exhaustion, whereas affective work-rumination, brooding, role conflict, and prosocialness most strongly predicted disengagement. Furthermore, in the full models, quantitative job demands and relational-interdependent self-construal related to exhaustion, whereas emotional demands related to disengagement. Interestingly, role conflict had a positive relation and emotional demands a negative relation to disengagement. Women reported higher exhaustion, but not higher disengagement, than men. Women also reported higher levels on most of the independent variables. In sum, the results show that a broad range of factors influence burnout among clinical psychologists.