Motivational and Dispositional Features of Burnout of Students – Future Psychologists

The relevance of the study is due to the the increasing prevalence of burnout in the world, which may be associated with the blurring of the boundaries between a personʼs professional activity and his/her activity outside of work: a person is constantly in touch with work, which deprives him/her of quality rest and renewal of energy reserves. The purpose of the article is to conduct a study of studentsʼ (n=106) burnout in the context of their motivational and dispositional characteristics based on the theoretical analysis of the phenomenon of burnout and its understanding in psychology. The following methods were used in the study: Academic Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SRQ-A) by R. M. Ryan, & J. P. Connell, Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) (C. Maslach, S. Jackson, & M. Leiter), Motivation for Success and Fear of Failure (MFS) by A. Rean, diagnostics of socio-psychological attitudes of a person in the motivational and need sphere by O. Potemkina, Definition of Mental Burnout by O. Rukavishnikov, Big Five test by R. R. McCrae, P. T. Costa. Mathematical processing of the research results was carried out using the statistical package SPSS 17.0. The analysis of the understanding of burnout by scientists allows us to generalise: burnout begins due to the discrepancy between the requirements of the profession and the specialist (and vice versa), which causes prolonged stress, aggravated by stressful non-work activities; burnout manifests itself as a process of emotional, mental and physical exhaustion, accompanied by a feeling of emotional devastation; a manifestation of detachment from professional duties and communication, which develops into an impersonal and cynical attitude towards colleagues and clients, ending with a loss of professional motivation and devaluation of oneself as a specialist and a person. The survey results showed that the vast majority of respondents experience a high level of burnout. When burning out, a person behaves altruistically, but eventually becomes insensitive and anxious and depressed; is motivated by the desire to avoid failure, is not interested in the outcome of his or her work; and controls colleagues, perceiving them as rivals. A personʼs orientation towards the motivation to avoid failure can influence the development of burnout.