The relationship between burnout and Outlook, Resilience, and other emotional styles: Evidence from United Methodist clergy

Emotional styles, which compose an individual’s dependable pattern of responses to their temporary emotional states, have been associated with academic success, life satisfaction, and flourishing mental health, but have not been studied in terms of work-related burnout. Navigating emotions is essential across many occupational settings, which makes emotional styles relevant to work and burnout. The current study examines the relationship between emotional styles and burnout among clergy and explores whether emotional styles might moderate the relationship between burnout and length of time in ministry. Drawing from the Clergy Health Initiative Longitudinal Survey, we used the Emotional Styles Questionnaire and the three components of the Maslach Burnout Inventory in multiple regression analyses and found that five emotional styles (Outlook, Resilience, Self-awareness, Sensitivity to Context, Attention) were significantly associated with each burnout outcome. Moderation analyses showed that higher emotional style scores were associated with better burnout scores for participants with more years of ministry experience. These findings provide the groundwork for future longitudinal studies to determine whether change in emotional styles can improve burnout, especially mid-career.