Burnout research: Adding an off-work and day-level perspective

This commentary argues that future burnout research will benefit from adding two perspectives. First, as depersonalization may result from insufficient recovery during off job time, it will be fruitful to include the investigation of off work experiences into burnout research. Second, adding a day level perspective will shed more light on the burnout phenomenon. Burnout has attracted much research attention in the fields of health psychology, work and organizational psychology and beyond. Fortunately, during the past few decades we have been witnessing progress in burnout research. Two trends stand out: first, the continuous search for improved burnout measures, as reflected among others in the development of the MBI-General Survey version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Schaufeli, Leiter, Maslach, & Jackson, 1996), the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI; Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001; Halbesleben and Demerouti, 2005, this issue), and as a more recent one the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI; Kristensen, Borritz, Villadsen, & Christensen, 2005, this issue). One common assumption underlying the development of the MBI-GS, the OLBI, and the CBI is that burnout occurs not only in the human service professions such as teaching or nursing, but also in other areas. In addition, at least some of these newly developed instruments challenged the assumption that the burnout concept comprises all three sub-constructs included in the Maslach Burnout Inventory, namely emotional exhaustion, depersonalization (cynicism in the MBI-GS, and disengagement in the OLBI, respectively), and reduced personal accomplishment. The second major trend in burnout research is the increased use of longitudinal designs (e.g., Bakker, Schaufeli, Sixma, Bosveld, & van Dierendonck, 2000; Taris, Van Horn, Schaufeli, & Schreurs, 2004; Toppinen-Tanner, Kalimo, & Mutanen, 2002). Longitudinal studies have the potential to overcome many of the pitfalls of cross-sectional research and The views expressed in Work & Stress Commentaries are those of the author(s), and do not necessarily represent those of any other person or organization, or of the journal. Correspondence: Sabine Sonnentag, Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, PO D42, D 78457 Konstanz, Germany, Tel: 49 7531 88 3742. Email: sabine.sonnentag@uni konstanz.de may shed light more onto the causal processes associated with burnout although longitudinal designs cannot show causality in a strict sense. In their article in this issue of Work & Stress , Kristensen et al.(2005) address some important issues that go beyond the specific purpose of the development of their new burnout measure and the properties of this new instrument (for a critical discussion of these aspects, see the commentary by Schaufeli & Taris, 2005, this issue). In my view, at least two of these issues could be of interest for the broader burnout research community: First, the question whether depersonalization or, more generally, mental distancing constitutes a core aspect of burnout. Second, the suggestion to examine the experience of burnout in everyday situations. Mental distancing as a core aspect of burnout The burnout concept as measured with the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach & Jackson, 1981) comprises emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment as the core aspects of burnout. In more recent developments, the depersonalization component has been replaced by ‘‘cynicism’’ (Schaufeli et al., 1996) or ‘‘disengagement’’ (Demerouti et al., 2001), reflecting the view that burnout can occur outside human service work. The new burnout measure proposed by Kristensen et al. (2005) focuses on exhaustion and excludes depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment from their conceptualization of burnout. I do not agree with the approach suggested by Kristensen et al., but feel that their perspective might stimulate a new and fresh discussion about what constitutes burnout and the specific role of depersonalization. In my view, the interpretation that depersonalization (and related constructs such as cynicism and disengagement) can be regarded as a coping strategy is not a sufficient argument for excluding depersonalization (and related constructs) from the burnout concept. Rather, it seems that this specific ‘‘coping strategy’’ is a key feature of burnout in addition to the experience of emotional exhaustion. Otherwise, it would be also very difficult to differentiate burnout from fatigue and exhaustion. The article by Taris et al. (2005, this issue) nicely illustrates the interplay between emotional exhaustion and depersonalization in the burnout process. Besides the answer to the question of whether depersonalization should be conceptualized as a component of burnout, the discussion of the depersonalization experience addresses an important issue in occupational health psychology, namely the role of creating mental distance between oneself and the (emotional) requirements of one’s job. Depersonalization is such a distance-creating strategy that can be used when working with people. In other work areas, mental distance may be created by cynicism or disengagement. Depersonalization, cynicism, and disengagement have in common that the process of mentally distancing oneself from one’s job primarily occurs during work and with respect to the specific work requirements: For example, the client is seen in a depersonalized way and one’s tasks are accomplished ‘‘mechanically’’. I would like to argue that mentally distancing oneself from one’s work from time to time is not a problem per se. When task requirements become overwhelming, creating distance between oneself and these demands might be even a necessity. The problem arises when creating mental distance becomes a chronic approach towards one’s work and most importantly when mentally distancing oneself takes place during the actual work. Then, resources needed to accomplish the task are not mobilized (or maybe even used to increase 272