Job satisfaction, and burnout as mediators of trait anger, work stress, positive and negative affect in a sample of Turkish correctional officers

ABSTRACT

Studies testing the Person-Environment Fit Theory and the top-down approach in the subjective well-being literature have highlighted a gap in the effect of personal fit variables or traits and their relationships with environmental variables. The current study aims to examine the role of trait anger, stress, and burn-out on job satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect within the framework of Person-Environment Fit Theory and the top-down approach by using structural equation modeling. The study was conducted on 588 Turkish correctional officers working in low-, medium-, or maximum-security prisons. Similar to previous findings, a direct positive relationship was found between trait anger and negative affect. Similarly, work stress, burnout, and job satisfaction were positively and directly associated with each other. Besides, the mediating role of burnout and job satisfaction in the relationship among trait anger, work stress, and negative affect/positive affect was statistically significant. Moreover, the relationship between trait anger and negative affect/positive affect, as well as the relationship between work stress and positive affect, was mediated by burnout, while job satisfaction only mediated the relationship between work stress and positive affect. Implications are presented to improve the subjective well-being of correctional officers.

KEYWORDS:

• Correctional officers
• subjective well-being
• person-environment fit theory
• trait anger
• work stress
• burnout
• job satisfaction
• positive
• negative affect

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a grant from The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK-SOBAG 105K155). We would like to express our gratitude to Emek Yuce Zeyrek-Rios for the proofreading of the article.

Conflict of Interest

Authors do not have any conflict of interest.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) [Project no: SOBAG 105K155].