Thinking Against Burnout? An Individual’s Tendency to Engage in and Enjoy Thinking as a Potential Resilience Factor of Burnout Symptoms and Burnout-Related Impairment in Executive Functioning

Abstract

The personality trait need for cognition (NFC) refers to individual differences in the tendency to engage in and enjoy cognitive endeavors. In today’s working world, which is characterized by increasing cognitive demands, NFC may contribute to resilience against work-related stress and burnout symptoms. We investigated this question in a large population-wide sample of 4,134 individuals (Study 1) and in a sample of 125 students (Study 2). NFC was consistently negatively related to the burnout facets emotional exhaustion and reduced personal efficacy of the Maslach burnout inventory and explained up to 10% additional variance in burnout symptoms over and above the five-factor model of personality. In the student sample, where stress factors are mainly cognitive in nature, NFC was the most relevant predictor. In this sample, we additionally investigated whether NFC might be a relevant moderator of the inconsistently found associations between burnout and impairments in cognitive functioning. The participants conducted three cognitive tasks (number–letter task, two-back task, and Go/NoGo task) that measure the executive functions switching, updating, and response inhibition, respectively. While burnout was slightly negatively related to working memory performance, NFC did not moderate the relationship between burnout and executive control which could be traced back to the young and healthy sample used to examine this research question. All in all, our results clearly suggest that NFC may be an important individual difference factor contributing to the resilience against burnout, especially if stress factors are cognitive in nature.

No relation of Need for Cognition to basic executive functions

“…However, in line with previous research (Bertrams & Dickhäuser, 2012a), the results indicate that NFC is at best weakly related to basic EF. They further confirm results of a recent study reporting no significant association of NFC to EF tasks for working memory updating (two-back), shifting (number-letter), and inhibitory control (Go-nogo;Fleischhauer et al, 2019). Complementary to the results reported here, mainly mental speed (and not basic EF) could be associated with NFC so that difference measures (i.e., IES) would disguise such effects.…”

Individual differences in impulsivity and need for cognition as potential risk or resilience factors of diabetes self-management and glycemic control

“…It has been demonstrated that type 2 diabetics with higher NFC were more likely to remember relevant written diabetes information than patients low in NFC [44]. Of note, NFC has been already identified as a protective health factor such as in terms of burnout [45].…”

The role of cognitive motivation and self-regulation in coping with occupational demands

“…Since recent effects regarding Need for Cognition (NFC) and burnout (e.g., Fleischhauer et al, 2019;Schmidt et al, 2012) are considerably smaller, the discovered effects of COM, SR and health-promoting/endangering behavior are quite astonishing and can be seen as a first confirmation for the notion of these traits being an important personal resource in work contexts.…”

“…High-NFC individuals tend to deal with these challenges by active (Grass et al, 2018) and problem-focused coping, resulting in more positive affect (Bye & Pushkar, 2009). Individuals with higher NFC feel better (Bertrams & Dickhäuser, 2012;Fleischhauer et al, 2010;Osberg, 1987) and show lower levels of neuroticism and symptoms of depression and anxiety (Bertrams & Dickhäuser, 2012;Epstein et al, 1996;Fleischhauer et al, 2019;Nishiguchi et al, 2016;Reeves et al, 1995;Sevincer et al, 2017). Additionally, Strobel et al (2021) assessed COM before in-patient's treatment in psychosomatic rehabilitation and reported a negative association with depressive symptoms after treatment.…”

“…There are several specific aspects of coping, which are similar in both studies: The effects regarding balance and inner stability (Study 1) and emotional coping (Study 2) are quite similar since they both refer to calming oneself at work. They can be compared in terms of effect sizes (not direction of the effect) to previous findings on NFC and neuroticism (e.g., Fleischhauer et al, 2019;Sevincer et al, 2017), as the individual tendency to be emotionally unstable. Also, previous work by Strobel and Anacker et al (2017) on NFC and positive emotionality yielded similar results to this study.…”