Burnout & Identity: A Multi-Study Investigation of Identity Processes in Burnout and Recovery

Identity work is the process whereby people create, fix, preserve, strengthen, or revise their identities. In this project, you will investigate the role of identity processes in the emergence of and the recovery from burnout. Three symptoms characterize a burnout syndrome: emotional exhaustion (i.e., chronic fatigue), cynicism (i.e., taking a distant attitude towards work and the people with whom one works), and reduced personal accomplishment (i.e., feelings of reduced efficiency). Burnout is a challenging yet quite common syndrome. In today's organizational contexts where work is a primary source of self-definition, it is especially important to understand how a pervasive experience like burnout may be interpreted by individuals, and how it can affect the way they see themselves. In this vein, this research seeks to unpack the psychological processes at play in burnout, and to understand how burnout may change people's identities in the short and long term (e.g., some people may change careers after burnout, others may reorganize some aspects of their non-work life etc.).