Objectives:The main goal of the present study was to analyze the burnout syndrome due to selected personality traits (based on the Cloninger's psychobiological personality model and positive and negative affectivity) and the degree of mismatch between teachers and their work environment (described in terms of the Model of Worklife Areas). The 2nd goal was to determine if the participants could be classified into different burnout profile groups (clusters) based on their burnout dimension (exhaustion, cynicism and efficacy) scores and whether those groups differed significantly with regard to their personality traits and levels of mismatch between them and the workplace. Material and Methods: Individual and contextual factors responsible for burnout were analyzed in a group of 205 Polish teachers who completed a set of questionnaires: Maslach Burnout Inventory -General Scale, Areas of Worklife Scale, Temperament and Character Inventory, and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. Results: The hierarchical regression analysis revealed that teachers' efficacy is determined only by personality factors, while exhaustion and cynicism are determined by both individual and organizational variables. The cluster analysis revealed 3 groups (burnout, engaged, ineffective) that varied in the level of all burnout dimensions. Teachers experiencing burnout perceived a higher level of mismatch between themselves and the work environment, compared to the engaged teachers demonstrating better alignment. The engaged teachers were lower on negative affectivity and higher on self-directedness as compared to the burnout group. Conclusions: The study provided insight into the role of individual factors in the development of teacher burnout and engagement. Negative affectivity could be considered as a predisposing risk factor and self-directedness as a protective factor for burnout.

Objectives: The problem of defining burnout concerns its overlapping effect with other syndromes and disorders, such as depression and anxiety. Additionally, some individual characteristics influence susceptibility to burnout (e.g., neuroticism). Therefore, the question arises whether burnout is or is not a distinct syndrome. The aim of the study is to compare 2 distinct burnout measures by analyzing their connections with organizational and individual variables. Material and Methods: The study was conducted in the Institute of Applied Psychology at the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland on a group of employees (N = 100; 40 men; mean age 36.03 years). All participants completed 2 burnout scales: the Maslach Burnout Inventory -General Survey (MBI-GS) and the Link Burnout Questionnaire (LBQ). Organizational and individual factors were controlled with Areas of Worklife Survey, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, NEO Five-Factor Inventory and Beck's Depression Inventory scales. A structural equation path model was created to quantify the relations between organizational factors and burnout, as well as to control the individual factors of anxiety, neuroticism and depression. Results: The results indicate high compatibility between MBI-GS and LBQ on burnout diagnosis. The MBI-GS and LBQ revealed stronger connections with organizational context and individual characteristics, respectively. Depression explains dimensions of exhaustion (MBI-GS, LBQ), sense of disillusion (LBQ), neuroticism-exhaustion (MBI-GS); anxiety explains sense of professional inefficacy (LBQ). Conclusions: Besides organizational variables, individual characteristics also play an important role in explaining burnout syndrome. Exploring the 2 burnout models has revealed that depression is an important determinant of exhaustion. Cynicism and relationship deterioration have consistently been explained only by organizational context. Int J Occup Med Environ Health. 2019;32(2):229 -44

The purpose of the study is to analyze the importance of individual resources in firefighting, one of the highest risk professions. Firefighters from 12 different Polish provinces (N = 580; men; M (mean age) = 35.26 year, SD = 6.74) were analyzed regarding the perceived stress at work, burnout, self-efficacy, and a broad range of sociodemographic variables. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), the Link Burnout Questionnaire (LBQ), and the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES) were used in the study. To explore the relationships between work-related stress, burnout, and self-efficacy, separate regression models for each burnout dimension were analyzed. The results revealed that self-efficacy is a significant moderator that changes the direction and strength of the relationships between perceived stress and psychophysical exhaustion, sense of professional inefficacy, and disillusion. However, self-efficacy did not moderate the relationship between stress and lack of engagement in relationships (relationship deterioration). The results indicate that self-efficacy in firefighters is a crucial personal resource that buffers the impact of perceived stress on most burnout symptoms. It may be concluded that in high risk professions, special attention should be paid to developing self-efficacy as an important part of burnout prevention programs, pro-health activities, and psychoeducation.

Attentional processes are fundamental to good cognitive functioning of human operators. The purpose of this study was to analyze the activity of neuronal networks involved in the orienting attention and executive control processes from the perspective of diurnal variability. Twenty-three healthy male volunteers meeting magnetic resonance (MR) inclusion criteria performed the Stroop Color-Word task (block design) in the MR scanner five times/day (06:00, 10:00, 14:00, 18:00, 22:00 h). The first scanning session was scheduled 1-1.5 h after waking. Between MR sessions, subjects performed simulated driving tasks in stable environmental conditions, with controlled physical activity and diet. Significant activation was found in brain regions related to the orienting attentional system: the parietal lobe (BA40) and frontal eye-fields (FEFs). There were also activations in areas of the executive control system: the fronto-insular cortex (FIC), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), presupplementary motor area (preSMA), supplementary motor area (SMA), basal ganglia, middle temporal (MT; BA21), and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), as a part of the central executive network. Significant deactivations were observed in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), superior frontal gyrus (SF), parietal lobe (BA39), and parahippocampal that are thought to comprise the default mode network (DMN). Additionally, the activated regions included bilaterally lingual gyrus and fusiform gyrus. The insula was bilaterally deactivated. Visual attention controlled by the goal-oriented attention system and comprising top-down and bottom-up mechanisms, activated by Stroop-like task, turned out to be prone to diurnal changes. The study results show the occurrence of time-of-day-related variations in neural activity of brain regions linked to the orienting attentional system (left parietal lobe-BA40, left and right FEFs), simultaneously providing arguments for temporal stability of the executive system and default mode network. These results also seem to suggest that the involuntary, exogenous (bottom-up) mechanism of attention is more vulnerable to circadian and fatigue factors than the voluntary (top-down) mechanism, which appear to be maintained at the same functional level during the day. The above phenomena were observed at the neural level.

The presented study refers to cognitive aspects of burnout as the effects of long-term work-related stress. The purpose of the study was to investigate electrophysiological correlates of burnout to explain the mechanisms of the core burnout symptoms: exhaustion and depersonalization/cynicism. The analyzed errorrelated electrophysiological markers shed light on impaired cognitive mechanisms and the specific changes in information-processing in burnout. In the EEG study design (N = 80), two components of error-related potential (ERP), error-related negativity (ERN), and error positivity (Pe), were analyzed. In the non-clinical burnout group (N = 40), a significant increase in ERN amplitude and a decrease in Pe amplitude were observed compared to controls (N = 40). Enhanced error detection, indexed by increased ERN amplitude, and diminished response monitoring, indexed by decreased Pe amplitude, reveal emerging cognitive problems in the non-clinical burnout group. Cognitive impairments in burnout subjects relate to both reactive and unconscious (ERN) and proactive and conscious (Pe) aspects of error processing. The results indicate a stronger 'reactive control mode' that can deplete resources for proactive control and the ability to actively maintain goals. The analysis refers to error processing and specific task demands, thus should not be extended to cognitive processes in general. The characteristics of ERP patterns in burnout resemble psychophysiological indexes of anxiety (increased ERN) and depressive symptoms (decreased Pe), showing to some extent an overlapping effect of burnout and related symptoms and disorders. The results support the scarce existing data on the psychobiological nature of burnout, while extending and specifying its cognitive characteristics.