Emotional contagion and burnout among nurses and doctors: Do joy and anger from different sources of stakeholders matter?

Abstract

The present study adds novel knowledge to the literature on emotional contagion (EC), discrete emotions, job burnout, and the management of healthcare professionals by simultaneously considering EC as both a job demand and a job resource with multiple social pathways. Integrating EC into the job demands-resource model, we develop and test a conceptual model wherein multiple stakeholder sources of emotional exchanges (i.e., leaders, colleagues, patients) play a differential role in predicting caregivers' absorption of positive (i.e., joy) and negative (i.e., anger) emotions, and in turn, burnout. We tested this nomological network using structural equation modeling and invariance analyses on a sample of 252 nurses and 102 doctors from diverse healthcare wards in three Italian hospitals. Our findings show that not all emotional exchange sources contribute to the EC experience or likelihood of burnout. Specifically, we found that doctors absorbed joy and anger from their colleagues but not from their leaders or patients. In contrast, nurses absorbed joy and anger from leaders, colleagues, and patients. Surprisingly, we found that joy-absorbed and anger-absorbed were related to doctors' exhaustion and cynicism, but only to nurses' cynicism. We conclude with suggestions for advancing research and practice in the management of emotions for preventing burnout.

Stress and occupational burnout in a population of Polish doctors – Organizational-professional and non-professional-social predictors

“…According to the literature, the most frequently mentioned risk factors of occupational burnout include personality traits, attitude to work and burden related to the doctor's satisfaction, organization and working conditions [1,2]. Attempts to observe the connections between socio-demographic and psychosocial determinants of burnout in contemporary doctors have frequently become the subject of research [3,4,5,6,7]. Occupational burnout is usually presented from the perspective of the theoretical model developed by Cristine Maslach (Maslach Burnout Inventory-MBI), describing three dimensions of professional burnout among medical staff: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and a sense of lack of personal achievement [8].…”

Burning out? Watch your own incivility and the emotions you spread

“…Previous research has documented that emotional contagion is a predictor of burnout. For example, consistent with the Job Demands-Resource (JD-R) model of work-related stress [34], a study by Petitta, Jiang, and Härtel [35] found that contagion of anger absorbed from others may serve as a job demand that is related to increased job burnout, whereas contagion of joy may serve as a job resource that is related to reduced burnout. Indeed, contagion of a positive emotion (i.e., joy) may facilitate social bonding, cooperation, and synchronization of opportunities [36].…”

“…Taking the perspective of the employee as perpetrator or initiator, the present study examined a model of antecedents and consequences of instigated incivility. Building on the JD-R model of etiology of burnout incorporating the contagion of positive/negative emotions infected into others as job resources/demands [34,35], a stressor-emotion model [40], and the "broaden and build" model [45], we tested a crosscountry model of employee instigated incivility as a mediator linking the contagion of one's own positive (joy) and negative (anger) emotions infected into others and one's burnout.…”

Yönetici ile Çalışan Duygusal Tükenmişliği Arasındaki İlişki: İşlemsel Adaletin Rolü

“…General findings of prior research indicate that emotional exhaustion is a widespread phenomenon with severe outcomes for employees and organizations (Alarcon, 2011;Cropanzano, Rupp, & Byrne, 2003). While there is extensive research on the antecedents and consequences of employee emotional exhaustion, there is limited research on how a supervisor's emotional exhaustion influences employees (Bakker, Westman, & Hetty van Emmerik, 2009;Hobfoll, Halbesleben, Neveu, & Westman, 2018;Petitta, Jiang, & Härtel, 2017;Ten Brummelhuis, Haar, & Roche, 2014;Wirtz, Rigotti, Otto, & Loeb, 2017). Existing research focuses on crossover theory (Bakker, Westman, & Schaufeli, 2007;Westman, 2001) and suggests that supervisor emotional exhaustion influences employee emotional exhaustion through emotional contagion (Bakker et al, 2009), negative affect (Ten Brummelhuis et al, 2014), and increased job demands (Chullen, 2014).…”

“…Stres alanyazınında bu kavramın diğer birçok kavram ile ilişkisi detaylı bir şekilde ortaya konmaktadır (Alarcon, 2011;Cropanzano, Rupp ve Byrne, 2003). Ancak duygusal tükenmişlik yaşayan bireylerin (örn., yönetici, çalışan) birbirlerini nasıl etkiledikleri de gittikçe önem kazanan bir araştırma alanıdır (Bakker, Westman ve Hetty van Emmerik, 2009;Hobfoll, Halbesleben, Neveu ve Westman, 2018;Petitta, Jiang ve Härtel, 2017;Ten Brummelhuis, Haar ve Roche, 2014;Wirtz, Rigotti, Otto ve Loeb, 2017). Özellikle günümüzde sürekli yükselen iş taleplerinin, iş ortamlarında tükenmişliği arttırıcı bir etkisi bulunmaktadır.…”