Abstract

This study aimed at investigating how much burnout feeling individuals experience at work and which individual related variables give influence on the burnout experience. Emotional characteristics have been recently regarded as important factors to deal with stress from the outside world of individuals. In accordance to this regard, in this study it was investigated if the burnout experience is mediated by emotional dispositions (mood - awareness, mood - regulation, mood - expressiveness), emotion related motivations (ego - resilience, self - efficacy, optimistic thinking). Among scales measuring these variables, scales of ego - resilience and optimistic thinking, not introduced before in Korea, had been analyzed for their validity evidences. The regression analysis showed the burnout experience had quadratic relationship with months for participants to work at present job positions. Also, it was found that the more flexibly individuals made thoughts and the better they dealt with emotional problems, the less they experienced burnout feeling caused by work. Furthermore, the interaction was found between a quadratic term of months to work and emotional characteristics on burnout experience. In other words, middle - aged workers repressing emotional conflicts with rigid way of thinking could be most vulnerable to job - associated stress.