Social comparison and burnout: The role of relative burnout and received social support

Abstract

Although there has been a great deal of research concerning myriad aspects of burnout, relatively little of that work has concerned the influence of social comparison processes in the etiology of burnout. We argue that social comparisons, in the form of perceptions of burnout relative to others, can influence the development of burnout, particularly when interacting with social support. A longitudinal study was designed to investigate the role that perceptions of relative burnout play in the development of future burnout. Downward comparison led to decreased levels of burnout and upward comparison led to increased levels of burnout, after a 2-month interval. We find support for the interactive effect of relative burnout and received social support (in the form of supportive conversations with coworkers) in predicting later emotional exhaustion and cynicism. We discuss the implications of this research for burnout theory and reduction and conclude with suggested directions for the future of research on the influence of social comparison on burnout.

Keywords:

• Burnout
• relative burnout
• social comparison
• social support

The authors would like to thank Jenn Becker for her comments on an earlier draft of this work and Nicole Salamon, Nicole Sauer, Tony Wheeler, and Dan O'Hair for their assistance with data collection.

Notes

1. Note that the terms downward and upward comparison typically refer to the choice of a social comparison target. In the present paper, we use those terms to refer to the outcome of the comparison; we are not assessing who the individual has chosen to compare himself or herself with.

2. Note that in the analyses reported above, these scores were not dichotomized but instead treated as continuous variables; dichotomization was only done for explanatory purposes and the cut-off point of 3 on the relative burnout scale was arbitrarily chosen to reflect the nature of the scaling of the measure.