THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION,

SOCIAL BEHA VIOR AND PERSONALITY, 2011, 39(3), 309-320? Society for Personality Research

DOI 10.2224/sbp.2011.39.3.309

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education. By the mid- and late 1990s, the Chinese Association of Social Workers and the Chinese Association of Social Work Education had been established, thus increasing the professional identity of Chinese social workers (Xia & Guo, 2002). However, even now, social work in China remains a predominantly academic discourse rather than a professional program in that only a small proportion of university courses offer a full range of social work training, and social work educators have little practical knowledge and experience (Yuen-Tsang & Wang, 2002). Nonetheless, the Chinese government has attached great importance to developing social work and has clearly articulated a goal “to establish a team of talented individuals consisting of social workers, which is characterized with a large scale, logical structure, and high quality” (Wang, 2007). Thus, it is reasonable to expect that the present situation will change.

Although social work in China has inevitably taken on a distinct Chinese flavor, it undoubtedly shares some similarities with its Western counterparts with regard to the notion of a “Chinese corpus and Western application” guiding the indigenization of Chinese social work (Yan & Tsui, 2009). As Yan and Tsui pointed out, people in the social work field in both China and Western countries find it difficult to work out what skills and knowledge are needed to help resolve some of the particular social problems of their countries. According to this analysis, one of the threats posed to the health and well-being of Western social workers ? job burnout (Klersy et al., 2007) ? has also taken root in Chinese soil. Burnout is universally viewed as the e xhaustion of physical or e motional stre ngth re sulting from prolonge d stre ss or frustration (Maslach & Jackson, 1984), and is detected among people working in nearly all professions and countries (Evans et al., 2006). It is a syndrome characterized by three main components: emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization, and decreased personal performance. Emotional exhaustion refers to feelings of being emotionally overextended and drained by one’s contact with other people. Depersonalization refers to an unfeeling and callous response toward these people, who are usually the recipients of one’s service or care. Decreased personal performance refers to a decline in one’s feelings of competence and successful achievement while working with people (Maslach & Jackson, 1984). Among the three elements, EE has attracted considerable interest because of its importance as the first phase of burnout when intervention is most likely to lead to successful resolution. In addition, EE carries great importance because, for those working in human services, it may cause increasing turnover rates among the staff and may lead to reduced quality of care (Cropanzano, Rupp, & Byrne, 2003). Increased feelings of EE imply that emotional resources have been gradually depleted until the worker feels unable to give at a psychological level. EE best captures the core meaning of burnout (Cropanzano, Rupp, & Byrne, 2003), and high levels of EE predict important organizational outcomes such as job performance, turnover

EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION IN SOCIAL WORKERS311 intentions, and voluntary staff turnover (Cropanzano, Rupp, & Byrne, 2003). Some models, such as the conservation of resources model (Hobfoll & Freedy, 1993), have been proposed to better depict the mechanism of EE.

To date, a large number of studies of emotional exhaustion have been focused only on health-related specialists such as anesthetists, emergency physicians, surgeons, oncologists, gynecologists, psychiatrists, primary-care doctors, and nurses (Gillespie & Melby, 2003). Furthermore, data for social workers is scarce even in countries where social work is an established profession (Evans et al., 2006), let alone for social workers in China. In the present study our aim was to help fill this gap.

However, EE has not been the only topic to interest researchers studying burnout. Bar-On, Brown, Kirkcaldy, and Thome (2000) explored the relationship between burnout and emotional intelligence (EI), which is, according to Salovey and Mayer (1990), the result of an adaptive inte raction be twe e n e motion and cognition that includes the ability to perceive, assimilate, understand, and handle one’s own e motions, and the capacity to de te ct and inte rpre t the e motions of others. However, there has been little research on the direct relationship between EI and EE. Nevertheless, in previous studies on the relationship between EI and burnout some light has been shed on this issue. In general, results of studies have revealed that EI predicts success in handling burnout (Brackett & Salovey, 2006; Gohm & Clore 2002; Tsaousis & Nikolaou, 2005). For example, Gohm and Clore pointed out that EI is potentially helpful in reducing burnout for some individuals, especially those who report more, and more frequent, burnout symptoms. Thus, as EE is one key element in burnout, it seems reasonable to assume that there exists a negative correlation between EI and EE. Therefore, we predicted that, in the present study, a high level of EI will predict a low level of EE.

Besides EI and EE, another concept that deserves attention is occupational identity (OI). OI refers to an individual’s positive assessment of the occupation he/she is engaged in, and it indicates the importance of the occupational role to the individual’s self-identity (Meyer, Allen, & Smith, 1993). According to Meyer and colleagues, OI is made up of three components: an affective attachment to the occupation (affective commitment), a perceived cost associated with leaving the occupation (continuance commitment), and an obligation to remain in the occupation (normative commitment). Meyer and colleagues also found that OI is closely connected with job satisfaction, involvement, and burnout. In particular, higher levels of OI predict lower levels of burnout. On the other hand, according to Salovey and Mayer (1990), EI reflects how individuals are able to respond adaptively to their surroundings. Hence, in the career of an individual, EI is partly manifested in the form of OI, which reflects that individual’s response to his/her work environment. Similar conclusions were drawn by Ashforth and Humphrey (1993) in their study. They claimed that individuals with higher levels of OI

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experienced less conflict between behavior and emotion. Hence, we predicted that a high level of OI will predict a more positive emotion and thus a high level of EI and a low level of EE.

Our purpose in the present study was to examine the relationships among EE, EI, and OI. Three hypotheses were tested; first, there will be a negative correlation between EI and EE, that is, a high level of EI will predict a low level of EE; second, a high level of OI will predict a high level of EI; third, a high level of OI will predict a low level of EE.

METHOD

P ARTICIPANTS

The participants in this study were 246 social workers (88 males, 158 females) in China. Their ages ranged from 20 to 55 years (M = 33.46). They were divided into two groups on the basis of their level of education; low (technical college and a lower diploma, 132 participants, 53.7% of the whole sample) and high (bachelor’s degree and a higher diploma, 114 participants, 46.3% of the whole sample). The social workers were recruited randomly through the Qingyi Social Workers’ Home Internet platform. The Qingyi Social Workers’ Home website is visited by about 70,000 people every day, and is one of the most influential websites pertaining to social work in China; it also provides an excellent communication platform for Chinese social workers (Social Enterprise Research Center, 2010).

I NSTRUMENTS

Chinese version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory?General Survey (CMBI-GS) The CMBI-GS, which was developed by Li and Shi (2003) based on the Maslach Burnout Inventory?General Survey (Schaufeli, Leiter, Maslach, & Jackson, 1996), is a 16-item self-report measure used to assess the extent of one’s burnout. It consists of three subscales; emotional exhaustion (five items), cynicism (five items), and reduced personal accomplishment (six items). In the present study we used only the emotional exhaustion subscale for which items are responded to on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 = never like this to 5 = always like this. A sample item is “My job makes me feel emotionally exhausted”. The internal consistency reliability coefficient for the subscale was .88.

Chinese version of the Emotional Intelligence Scale (CEIS) The CEIS, developed by Wang (2002), is based on the Emotional Intelligence Scale (Schutte et al., 1998), and is a 33-item self-report questionnaire that is used extensively to measure EI. The items are rated using a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 = very unlike me to 5 = very like me. A sample item is “I like to share my emotions with others”. The alpha coefficient for this study was .83. The scale is consistent with the model proposed by Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, and Sitarenios

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EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION IN SOCIAL WORKERS317 In their model, the individual experiences stress when there is an imbalance between supply and demand of resources, that is, all the energy, time, ability, and so on, that are closely related to the individual. When the individual works as the environment demands, his/her resources are threatened. Such a threat is regarded as stress at first, but when it persists, the individual experiences exhaustion (Hobfoll & Freedy, 1993). EE is the product of the outflow of major resources when the individual is unable to cope with the demand of work (Jackson, Turner, & Brief, 1987; Maslach & Jackson, 1981). OI is viewed as a kind of personal resource in the model, so a high OI implies more resources that can help prevent EE.

Researchers like Grotevant and Thorbecke (1982), Maslach and Jackson (1985), and Salovey, Brackett, and Mayer (2004), have put in considerable efforts in probing into the role of gender in EE, EI, and OI. Consequently, the results of the current study were also was in line with the findings of those authors and we observed a significant gender difference in EE, although not in EI or OI. The following may account for these findings: the female social workers in our study were significantly more emotionally exhausted than were the males; females are usually under dual pressures related to family and work, while males are typically exempt from family pressure (Hall & Gordon, 1973). In other words, females face more stress and are thus more vulnerable to EE regardless of EI or OI. On the other hand, the insignificant gender difference in EI and OI coincides with the findings of a number of previous researchers (e.g., Grotevant & Thorbecke, 1982; Salovey, Brackett, & Mayer, 2004).

Our results also indicated differences according to level of education in EE, EI, and OI of the social workers we surveyed. In general, EE declined as the level of education increased, while EI and OI both increased. This result also coincides with the findings gained in prior research conducted by Meltzer and Huckabay (2004) and also by Tsaousis and Nikolaou (2005). It seemed that the more highly educated social workers exhibited more and better stress-coping strategies, and this, in turn, helped them avoid EE. When dealing with their clients, the more highly educated social workers were better prepared with better developed professional skills in terms of perceiving, regulating, and using emotions; in other words they were displaying greater emotional intelligence, as described by Salovey and Mayer (1990). In addition, as social work education has developed in China, the occupation of a social worker has been better defined (Xia & Guo, 2002; Yuen-Tsang & Wang, 2002) so that higher education implies a greater opportunity to clarify what this occupation actually consists of and requires and this knowledge contributed to greater OI. However, further analysis revealed a seemingly confusing result in the group with a high level of education in that no significant correlations were found between EE and EI or EI and OI in this group. This may be because social workers with a high level

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of education usually engage in administrative work rather than in face-to-face work with clients, which means that they are less emotionally involved and thus less likely to become emotionally exhausted no matter what their EI score is in a questionnaire. Thus, there was no significant correlation between their EE and EI. Similarly, seemingly better and rewarding administrative work may give them a sense of higher status and therefore, they score higher on OI regardless of their EI score, and this then results in the insignificant correlation between their EI and OI that we found in this study.

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