How Strongly Is Personality Associated With Burnout Among Teachers? A Meta-analysis

Abstract

Teachers’ burnout has severe consequences for themselves and their students. The identification of factors related to burnout can provide valuable information about the relevance of interindividual differences. Beyond work-related factors, burnout is assumed to be affected by individuals’ personality traits, and several empirical studies already exist that have investigated this association in teachers. However, a comprehensive meta-analytical examination is missing so far. The current meta-analysis, including 18 primary studies with 19 samples (total N = 4,724), aimed to examine the relation between burnout dimensions (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment) and the Big Five personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) in teachers. In addition, moderating effects of teachers’ professional level were investigated. In line with our expectations, neuroticism was positively related to all three burnout dimensions, with medium-sized effects found for emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and a small effect size found for reduced personal accomplishment. The other significant associations between personality traits and burnout dimensions were negative. Apart from a nonsignificant association between emotional exhaustion and openness, all associations were rated as small to medium. The moderator analyses did not show any support for moderating effects of teachers’ professional level concerning the associations between burnout dimensions and personality traits.

Teachers’ Emotional Exhaustion and Teaching Enthusiasm Before Versus During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Furthermore, our results suggest that teachers’ personality matters: Teachers with higher openness and lower extraversion were better able to adapt than teachers with lower openness and higher extraversion. The impact of teachers’ personality for teaching success and well-being in normal times is a vital area of research (e.g., Roloff et al, 2022). To date, however, little has been known about its importance for teachers’ successful adaptation to the challenges of the pandemic.…”

“…Interestingly, we found a buffering effect of openness to experiences. In normal prepandemic times, high openness is related to lower levels of well-being (Klusmann et al, 2012) or not associated with it (Roloff et al, 2022). However, our results suggest that openness is a significant resource when adapting to new and unpredictable challenges such as teaching under pandemic constraints.…”

Work overload, role conflict and emotional distress as predictors of burnout among police cadets in Nigeria

“…Cadets experiencing emotional distress, perhaps from academic work overload, role conflict and other stressors in the police academy, are likely to be high on burnout. In addition, different negative emotional dimensions such as psychological strains (Salvagion et al, 2017), emotional labour (Kwak et al, 2018;Schaible and Gecas, 2010) and neuroticism (Bianchi, 2018;Roloff et al, 2022;Yusoff et al, 2021) have been found to positively predict burnout. On this premise, I hypothesize: H6: Cadets high in academic-emotional distress will be high in burnout.…”

Structural impairment and conflict load as vulnerability factors for burnout – A cross-sectional study from the German working population

“…Moreover, the big-five personality dimensions of extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness (Swider and Zimmerman, 2010) as well as emotional intelligence (Mérida-López and Extremera, 2017), were found to be protective factors related to burnout. On the other hand, perfectionistic concerns (Hill and Curran, 2015), early maladaptive schemas (Simpson et al, 2019), high novelty seeking (Khosravi et al, 2020), and the big-five dimension neuroticism (Swider and Zimmerman, 2010;Roloff et al, 2022) were identified as vulnerability factors in relation to burnout.…”