Journal ofOccupational Psychology (1989), 62, 223-234 Printed in Great Britain --,

© 1989 The British Psychological Society

Burnout: The effect of psychological

type on research findings*

Anna-Maria Gardenf
High Tech Management Unit, London Business School, Regent's Park, London NWl, UK

In this study dimensions of burnout were compared in a human services sample of 81

nurses and a non-human services sample of 194 mid-career managers on an MBA course.
A measure of burnout, and certain postulated facets of burnout, were assessed through a
self-report questionnaire. An indicator of psychological type was also administered since,
it is argued, a confounding of personality with occupation may have occurred in early
studies of burnout. It was found that emotional demands and a lack of caring for others
were associated with the measure of burnout only for that psychological type which is
overtepresented in the human services. For a different psychological type, which is over-
represented in managerial occupations, the measure of burnout was associated instead
with mental demands and lower ambitiousness. This suggests that previous findings
about burnout may merely be a product of research being conducted in an occupation,
the human services, within which is a predominance ofa particular psychological type.

Burnout is a concept that may be understood as a form of psychological distress arising

from overextensioti ofthe self that manifests as a severe loss of energy and a deterioration
in performance. The original work on the phenomenon as an academic subject was carried
out by Freudenberger (1974) and Maslach (1976), basing their work on the human
services. The majority of subsequent work in the burnout field has looked also at 'people
professions', or the 'human services' (Freudenberger, 1983, p. 24; Maslach, 1982, p. 33),
or been derived from work within this context, t Within this framework, burnout is
assumed to be particularly relevant to those whose work focuses on caring for people in
emotionally charged situations. Descriptions of burnout by authors looking outside the
human services, however, provide a different picture (Freudenberger, 1977, 1980;
Ginsburg, 1974; Levinson, 1981), which emphasizes the pressure to achieve in a
demanding and complex business environment. It is clear that a different conventional
understanding of burnout would have emerged if the initial formal differentiation of the
phenomenon had been conducted outside the human services. While it has been argued

* This paper is based on research conducted for the author's doctoral dissertation, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management,
1985.
t Request for reprints.
t It is largely the claim that such jobs are more prone to burnout than others (Carroll & White, 1982, p. 46), that has
justified the continuation ofthe tradition of selecting the human services as a reseatch site. This is in spite ofthe lack of
empirical evidence to support such a notion. Indeed, what limited empirical evidence there is suggests that students score
higher on measures of burnout than human service workers (see Pines et at., 1981, p. 172; and Garden, 1985«, p. 51).
 224 Anna-Maria Garden
that the term burnout should be restricted to human service workers (Burke, Shearer &
Deszoa, 1983, p. 2; Maslach, \982b, p. 33), the early and exploratory state ofthe field
suggests that such demarcation would be premature.
The contradictory descriptions referred to above are further complicated by the fact that
there would appear, a priori, to be a confounding of occupation with personality in
burnout research. An earlier study (Garden, 1984, 1987) suggested that the concept of
depersonalization could not easily be applied to a non-human services occupation, and that
it applied with differential relevance to different types of people, using the Myers-Briggs
Type Indicator as a measure of psychological type. There may, then, be an undetected
confounding of occupation with psychological type as far as other aspects of burnout are
concerned.

Framework for the present study

The personality type composition of human service occupations has been found to be
markedly different compared with other occupations (McCaulley, 1981, p. 327). Keen
(1982) and Myers & McCaulley (1985) report that in health-related, counselling, and
education fields ofthe human services the proportion of'feeling types' to 'thinking types'
is at least 80/20. Managers and students, on the other hand, tend to be predominantly
'thinking' rather than 'feeling', again in a proportion of around 80/20 (Keen, 1982; Myers
& McCaulley, 1985).*
The personality of individuals may influence both the manifestations of burnout as well
as one's predisposition to burnout (Cherniss, 1980; Welch, Medeiros & Tate, 1982). As
has been found in the psychological stress field (Lazarus, 1966), it is important to take
personality into account. One way of doing this would be to use the model ofJungian type
since that has already been shown to be a relevant distinguishing factor between human
service workers and other occupations.
In this study two occupations, one in the human services and the other a non-human
services one, were sampled. Occupational differences/'er/^ are not addressed since it is the
effect of different psychological type profiles within each occupation which is being tested.
Thus, type variables are nested within the occupational variable.
Two issues were focused on to examine the claims made about burnout, one concerning
'symptoms' of burnout and the other 'causes' of burnout. In order to prove illustrative of
the field as a whole, symptoms and causes considered by many authors in the field as being
intrinsic to burnout were chosen. Note that whether these are, in fact, symptoms or causes
is subject to debate.
The critical difference in symptoms between workers in the human services arena and
other arenas is that in the former the emphasis is on the lessening of willingness to help or
nurture others as a result ofbeing burnt out, whilst in the latter it is on the lessening of
the will to excel or achieve. These two notions are described respectively in this study (in
their positive expression) as nurturing orientation and ambitiousness (their derivation is
described later).

• Persons who are oriented to life primarily through thinking typically develop strong powers of analysis, objectivity in
weighting events with regard to logical outcomes and a tough-minded scepticism. Persons who are oriented to life primarily
through feeling typically develop sensitivity to questions of what matters most to people, a need for affiliation, capacity for
warmth, (and) a desire for harmony (McCaulley, 1981, p. 300).
 Burnout 225
The critical difference in causes is that with human service workers the emphasis is on
emotional demands rather than on mental demands. In this study a measure of the
perceived amount of each type of demand was obtained.
The analytical task, then, is to examine the relationships between two postulated
'symptoms', nurturing orientation and ambitiousness, and two postulated 'causes',
emotional and mental demands, with a measure of burnout. The research question is
whether, in each occupation, psychological type moderates these relationships.

Method

The non-human setvices site chosen was the MBA progtamme at Cranfield School of Management, Bedford,
England. In total, this group consists of 194 respondents, from an overall population of 270, a response rate of
72 pet cent. This MBA programme is an intensive 12-month one, running from September to September. The
participants are predominantly mid-career managers and engineers. The occupation is not, therefore,
management/ler^e, but managers and engineers on an academic course. The relative proportions of different
personality types were, as expected, thinking (76 per cent) rather than feeling (24 per cent). This was
comparable to other populations of managers and engineers (Myers & McCaulley, 1985).
A second occupational sample, occupational health nurses, was obtained from the human service arena. An
occupational health nurse (OHN) has typically left 'regular' nursing to work as a nurse in industry. The OHNs
were on a one-day a week, two-year part-time training course run by the Royal College of Nursing. The
dominant Jungian function was feeling (70 per cent), as opposed to thinking (30 per cent). The overall
population sampled was 81 out of a population of 128 (63 pet cent).
Demographic variables by type and occupation are illustrated in Table 1. The MBA group is substantially
lower in age and predominantly male, in contrast to the OHN group. These differences need to be controlled
for in the subsequent analysis. (It should be noted, however, that only sex and number of children were
associated with the measure of burnout in any, but not all, ofthe subcells.)

Table 1. Demographic variables by type and occupation

MBA OHN
Thinking Feeling Thinking Feeling

Types Types Types Types

(« = 155) (« = 39) (n = 24) (« = 57)
X SD X SD X SD X SD

Age 31.6 4.4 31.1 4.7 37.3 8.3 39.8 7.9

Childten 0.6 0.9 0.7 0.9 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.3
Education level" 4.1 1.2 4.4 1.5 2.6 1.7 2.2 1.2
Sex: female 22 12 22 55
male 133 27 2 2
Marital single 47 12 6 9
Status: mattied 102 26 17 45
othet 6 1 1 3

' Note. Coding for this item was as follows:

1 = No O or A levels
2 = O or A levels
3 = Technical course or certificate
4 = Bachelors degree or professional exam
5 = Masters degree
6 = PhD
226 Anna-Maria Garden
Data collection
The instruments used were distributed through the normal pigeon-hole mailing system in the case of the
MBAs, and returned directly by mail to myself. In the OHN sample, the instruments were given out by an
RCN member during classes, filled out in their own time and returned directly by mail to myself. The first
instrument to be administered was the Myers—Briggs Type Inventory. This was followed, after up to a nine-
month interval, with my own 'stress questionnaire', which included over 200 items most to be answered in
terms of a five-point frequency rating scale from 'never' to 'always'. The measures used in the study were
derived from this questionnaire. The difference in timing ofthe two questionnaires is crucial. It is important
to gauge psychological factors which are not simply an outcome ofthe burnout experience. Whilst the MBTI has
been shown to change little on the Cranfield MBA (Chilmeran, 1981), gauging psychological factors which
could in any event be considered antecedent was critical, Gann's study (1979) using Loevinger's ego-
development scale and an adjective check list provided a personality profile of someone who was considered to
be prone to burnout. Yet, there is some question whether the personality indicators are not simply mapping
characteristics of the individual that are an outcome of the burnout experience.

Measures
The MBTI is a self-report inventory consisting of 166 forced-choice questions. It is an operationalization ofthe
eight types made explicit by Jung (1971), with the addition ofa fourth axis implicit in the theory. In this
study, only the thinking—feeling dimension is used since it is for this that significant differences were expected
to occur between the two groups.
The MBTI has been shown to be a reliable and well-designed measure (Carlyn, 1977; Strieker & Ross,
1963). Support has been obtained for its construct validity by Carlson (1980), Richek & Brown (1968), and
McCaulley (1981). Considerable research has been carried out illustrating the relationships between the MBTI
and other personality instruments (McCaulley, 1978; Myers, 1962; Saunders, I960; Strieker & Ross, 1964).
The results of these studies appear to be quite consistent with Jungian theory.
Apart from satisfying the criteria mentioned above, the MBTI was chosen as the preferred psychological
indicator since, in view ofthe sensitivity apparent in the literature to 'blaming the victim', it is important to
have a non-evaluative indicator. In the MBTI the theory attaches no prior value judgement to one preference as
compared with another but considers each one valuable (Myers, 1962, p. 3).
The measure of burnout used in this study represents the core symptom of burnout, i.e. energy depletion.
The dimension of burnout for which there is most definitional agreement is exhaustion or energy depletion
(Maslach, 1982), and it is generally considered to be a key component of burnout or the sole defining
component (Freudenberger, 1980; Pines, Aronson & Kafry, 1981). Most important, authors outside the human
services field include energy depletion as a key dimension in their discussion (Freudenberger, 1974, 1980;
Veninga & Spradley, 1981; Levinson, 1981). One recent study took as its measure of burnout the emotional
exhaustion subscale ofthe Maslach Burnout Inventory, without using the other two subscales. They justify the
use of only this one subscale for reasons similar to those mentioned above, referring to 'general consensus in the
literature that emotional exhaustion is the central or core dimension of burnout' (Gaines & Jermier, 1983).
The construct of energy depletion used in this study is comparable to the definition of burnout used in other
research. The majority of burnout research has measured aw;/defined burnout in terms ofexhaustion or energy
depletion. These are typically defined as preceding other manifestations or dimensions of burnout, such as is
described in this study as nurturing orientation and ambitiousness. Since the literature being tested in this
study posits energy depletion as a precondition for one or the other ofthe two 'symptoms' used here, and since
it does not appear to be context specific, energy depletion is taken to be the measure and operational definition
of burnout with the other two variables referred to as 'symptoms'. The latter classification is a heuristic device,
however, which serves to exaniine relationships already considered to exist, in terms ofthe burnout literature.
The measure of burnout, called the Energy Depletion Index, was obtained from a factor analytic procedure
of seven items each of which related to energy level, exhaustion or difficulty in renewing one's energy as it had
been described in the burnout literature. These items were included in the 'stress questionnaire' and were rated
on a scale from 1 to 5 (Never to Always) assessing the frequency of their occurrence over the previous nine-
month period. A detailed explanation ofthe derivation ofthe Index is described elsewhere (Garden, 1985a).
Resultsof the analysis are set out in Table 2. The criterion for selection of an item is that it loads above 0.5 on
one factor and not above 0.3 on any other factor. For each occupation two factors emerged with an eigenvalue
above 1.0. In each case, the first factor accounted for 40 per cent of total variance, and this was taken to
 Burnout 227
Table 2. Factor loadings for energy depletion factor

MBA OHN
(» = 194) (» = 81)

Factor Factor Factor Factor

Items one two one two

Feeling exhausted 0.73 -0.10 0.76 -0.01

At limit^ 0.82 0.06 0.77 -0.10
Severe energy fluctuations 0.64 0.01 0.51 -0.21
Non-renewal of energy^ 0.85 -0.15 0.88 -0.16
Feeling energized -0.001 0.70 0.04 0.71
Feeling enthusiastic 0.05 0.49 -0.11 0.30
Boredom 0.14 -0.40 0.14 -0.31

' These items were composite items. 'At limit' refers to being unable to perform a range of specific activities, e.g. teading,
talking to others. 'Non-renewal' comprises questions gauging whether sleeping, rest or vacation relieved sensations of
tiredness.

represent an energy depletion factor. The second factor contained only one clean item which was common to
both occupations and was, therefore, ignored.
The four items in factor one with significant and clean loading were added, with equal weighting, to form
the Energy Depletion Index. Cronbach's alpha was 0.87 for the MBA sample and 0.79 for the OHN sample.
The measures of nurturing orientation and ambitiousness were obtained by similar factor analytic
procedures. Items in the factor analysis had been included in the 'stress questionnaire', and were derived from a
reading ofthe burnout literature, and considered to be potentially relevant to the two symptoms. Items were
gauged in terms of their frequency of occurrence over the previous nine months on a scale of 1 (Never) to 5
(Always). Factor loadings are set out in Table 3.
Table 3 illustrates two clear factors, one pertaining to what is referred to in this study as nurturing
orientation, and the other pertaining to ambitiousness. Thefirstthree items were added with equal weighting
to form the measure of nurturing orientation. Ambitiousness was measuted by adding with equal weighting
the last three items. Cronbach's alpha was 0.61 for nurturing orientation and 0.65 for ambitiousness for the
combined sample. Whilst not as high as might be desited these reliabilities were considered satisfactory for
three-item measures.

Table 3- Factor loading of orientation factors

MBA OHN
Items Factor one Factor two Factor one Factor two

Concern for others' problems 0.07 0.51 0.29 0.53

Aware of changes in others'
appearance 0.00 0.56 0.00 0.54
Unable to say no to others 0.07 0.53 0.08 0.48
Tolerance of others 0.16 0.33 0.02 0.26
Pleased with performance 0.47 0.00 0.32 0.14
Achievement oriented 0.51 -0.02 0.58 0.19
Ambitiousness 0.56 -0.08 0.75 0.15
Trying to improve performance 0.59 -0.00 0.58 0.03
 228 Anna-Maria Garden
Two items in the questionnaire enabled people to report the level of both perceived emotional and mental
demands on a scale of 1 to 5 ('Not at all' to 'Very much'). These were used as the measures for the two possible

Results

Levels of energy depletion

There were no significant differences between either type or occupation in the mean level
of energy depletion. The mean level for both occupations was 2.5 (SD = 0.9). For
thinking types the mean was 2.4 (SD = 0.8) and for feeling types, 2.6 (SD = 9). In other
words, contrary to what one would predict from the literature, the human services sample
did not report a higher mean level of energy depletion than the non-human services
sample. This result does compare with the limited empirical evidence available, however
(see footnote on page 223).

Causes: Emotional demands and mental demands

What is interesting for the conceptual issues addressed here, is the mean level of each
demand broken down by occupation and type, reported in Table 4. Not only are
emotional demands reported in the non-human services sample, but they have a
significantly higher mean level in that sample than in the human services sample
{t = 2.66; P = 0.008). The MBA sample also shows a higher level of mental demands
(^ = 7.15; P = 0.000), probably reflecting the intensity and pressure of the MBA
programme. Thus, the claim in the human services literature that that arena has greater
emotional demands (and, as a result, higher levels of burnout) is not supported. As far as
the psychological types are concerned, there is little difference between the two types in
terms of mean level of reported emotional demands or mental demands.

Table 4. Mean level of reported emotional demands and mental demands by type and
occupation

MBAs OHNs Total

X SD X SD X SD
Emotional demands
Thinking types (« = 179) 2.9 1.3 2.5 1.4 2.8 1.3
Feeling types (» = 92) 3.3 1.1 2.6 1.4 3.0 1.4
Total (« = 271) 3.1 1.3 2.6 1.4 2.9 1.3
Mental demands
Thinking types (« = 179) 3.5 1.1 2.3 1.4 3.4 1.2
Feeling types (« = 92) 3.8 1.0 2.7 1.2 3.1 1.3
Total (« = 271) 3.6 1.1 2.5 1.3 3.3 1.3

The relationships between mental demands and emotional demands, and energy
depletion were examined for each separate type within each occupation. Standard multiple
regression procedure (using forward selection) was used, with mental and emotional
demands as independent variables. Results are reported in Table 5. Note that the
 Burnout 229
Table 5. Emotional and mental demands as predictors of energy depletion by type and
occupation

Thinking types Feeling types

(n = 155) (n = 37)

beta / beta

MBA Sample
Emotional demands 0.16 1.9 0.42 3 2**»
Mental demands 0.41 5.3*** 0.18 1.2

OHN Sample (« = 24) (« = 55)

beta / beta
Emotional demands 0.00 -0.01 0.24 1.7
(P = 0.09)
Mental demands 0.54 3.1** 0.10 0.7
r^ = 0.30 = 0.06

* P < 0.05; ** P < 0.01; *•• P < 0.001.

correlations between the two types of demand were 0.45 for the MBAs and 0.31 for the
OHNs suggesting that multicoUinearity was not a critical issue.
These results indicate: {a) emotional demands predict energy depletion only for feeling
types and not for thinking types in the MBA sample. In the OHN sample, neither type of
demand acted as a significant predictor for feeling types although emotional demands
contributed more than did mental demands, and the beta and / values are fairly high.
{b) Mental demands predict energy depletion only for thinking types and not for feeling
types, in both the MBA and OHN sample.
It should be noted that regression analysis controlling for the effect of demographic
variables on the above relationships (Peters & Champoux, 1979; Saunders, 1956; Zedeck,
1971) was carried out and showed the type variables to retain their importance. The
relationships could not be explained by the demographic variables. Note, however, that in
the OHN sample, the low number of males means that testing for the moderating effect of
sex within this sample is meaningless. The impact of this particular moderating variable
in such a sample would need to be clarified in further research.

Symptoms: Nurturing orientation and ambitiousness

The two symptoms nurturing orientation and ambitiousness and their relationship with
the measure of burnout were examined for each separate type within each occupation.
Table 6 provides the results of this.
Within each occupation, feeling types show a negative correlation between the Energy
Depletion Index and nurturing orientation, while thinking types in both the MBA and
O H N sample show a positive correlation. (Note that while the absolute magnitude of
these correlations is of a similar order, the substantial differences in the size of » for each
subgroup means that the P values for those subgroups with a low n are non-significant.)
Nevertheless, the pattern of relationships for the nurturing orientation is clear.
 230 Anna-Maria Garden
Table 6. Relationship between Energy Depletion Index and nurturing and ambi-
tiousness, in type and occupation

Nurturing orientation Ambitiousness

MBA
Thinking types (n = 155) +0.16 (P = 0.03) -0.23 (P = 0.01)
Feeling types (« = 39) -0.28 (P = 0.06) +0.01 (n.s.)
Total (» = 194) +0.14 (P = 0.05) -0.18 (P = 0.02)
OHN
Thinking types (« = 24) +0.30 (P = 0.05) -0.53 (P = 0.006)
Feeling types (« = 57) -0.27 (P = 0.04) -0.15 (n.s.)
Total (« = 81) -0.10 (n.s.) -0.23 (P = 0.05)

Looking at ambitiousness, again there are considerable differences between the feeling
and thinking types within each of the occupations. Yet the correlations for each of the
types across each of the occupations are quite similar. Thinking types show strong
negative correlations between ambitiousness and energy depletion in both occupations.
For feeling types the correlations are much lower or virtually zero.
Again, the relationships were examined controlling for the relevant demographic
variables. The correlations were virtually unchanged indicating that the type variables
retained their importance.

Discussion
There are a number of points which need to be made about these results. First, emotional
demands did not act, as the literature would predict, as a necessary predictor of energy
depletion in both types or both occupations and was not a generalizable notion about what
causes burnout. One could not argue from these data that the term 'burnout' be linked
solely to hunian service occupations nor to those situations which are 'emotionally
demanding' (Etzion, 1984; and Pines et al., 1981). With these data, such reasoning
would nnean that the term 'burnout' should be applied only to feeling types and not to
thinking types. The arbitrariness of such a notion illustrates the difficulties inherent in the
argument to restrict the term 'burnout' to the helping professions. Further, since
emotional demands were a predictor only for feeling types, who predominate in the
human services, one must wonder whether previous findings relating emotional demands
to burnout may have been due to the hidden effect ofa concentration of feeling types in the
dominant research site.
Second, in this study demands other than emotional demands are positively associated
with energy depletion. This is something which has not appeared in the burnout
literature. In this study, mental demands were the more important variable for thinking
types. Perhaps other types of demands, such as physical or creative, might also be
implicated if their potential role were included as variables in one's research design.
Third, the effect of type seems to be more important than that of occupation. The
pattern of results is different for the types within each occupation but similar for the types
across the occupations. Even in the human services sample, emotional demands do not
 Burnout 231
predict energy depletion in the thinking types who, instead, act like the thinking types in
the MBA sample. This suggests the potential importance of personality as an explanatory
variable in burnout research.
Fourth, since the two different kinds of demands are type specific, there may be
different 'causes' of burnout for different types of people. This is clearly an area for further
research which might clarify contradictory claims made in the literature about what causes
burnout.
Finally, the most intriguing, counter-intuitive finding concerns the fact that energy
depletion was most strongly associated with the kind of demand each type is naturally
adapted to deal with, i.e. to what is suitahle to a particular type rather than to what is
unsuitable to a particular type. One would expect thinking types to be more burnt out by
emotional demands than by mental demands if burnout does result from a lack of fit be-
tween person and environment (see Carroll & White, 1982). (It should be noted that when
the two kinds of demands are related to a measure of experienced stress, exactly the reverse
pattern occurs. That is, demands that are unsuitable to a type predict experienced stress.
Specifically, mental demands predict experienced stress for feeling types and emotional
demands predict experienced stress for thinking types— Garden, 1985^. An explanation
of this based on the Jungian concept of enantiadromia is discussed in Garden, 1985^.)
Turning to the findings about symptoms of burnout, a comparable analysis can be
made. First, the results obtained for the total occupation appear to be the product of type
concentration rather than being findings pertaining to the different occu^ztions per se. For
example, the relationships obtained for the MBA sample seem to be a product of the
concentration of thinking types only, rather than for the occupation as a whole, and
similarly for the O H N sample.
The two types show a considerably different pattern of relationships within each
occupation, but comparing the same type across the two occupations, there is a very
similar pattern for each type. In other words, the symptoms of burnout described here as
nurturance orientation and ambitiousness show systematic variation according toJungian type.
(It is also possible that the temporal sequence assumed in the literature is reversed. In
other words, that a low level of nurturing orientation for feeling types leads to high levels
of energy depletion. Low levels of ambitiousness in thinking types might lead to high
levels of energy depletion. The interpretation ofthe correlations presented here can only
be clarified by further research.)
Secondly, since it is only for feeling types that a negative relationship between the
Energy Depletion Index and nurturing orientation occurs, this suggests that the decrease
in nurturing orientation as a component of burnout cited in the human services literature
may be a product of a concentration of feeling types in that sector.
Indeed, contrary to what the burnout literature suggests, in this sample thinking types
show higher levels of concern for others with higher levels of depletion of energy. Thus a
measure such as the MBI (Masiach & Jackson, 1981) which presumes a low level of concern
for others as a component of depersonalization may not be measuring burnout in a
thinking type in a comparable way to measuring burnout in a feeling type.
Finally, the direction of the correlations indicates a process which may be called
'reversal'. It is precisely that orientation which characterizes that type which shows a
negative correlation with energy depletion for that type. Note that feeling types are
distinguished from thinking types by their concern for people and the maintenance of
 232 Anna-Maria Garden
relationships rather than for a concern fiar task competence. This is reflected in intercorre-
lations which show that ambitiousness is associated with being more thinking than feeling
(—0.16 and —0.18 for the MBA and OHN sample respectively), and nurturing
orientation is associated with being more feeling than thinking (+0.20 and +0.32 for the
MBA and OHN sample respectively). Note that the standard method of computation
(Myers & McCaulley, 1985) means a positive correlation represents a positive relationship
with the feeling function and a negative correlation indicates a positive relationship with
the thinking function.
One could not argue, however, that the levels of the orientation in relationship with
energy depletion are a manifestation of type since those levels relate in the opposite way to
what would be expected from the intercorrelations. Further analysis ofthe interrelation-
ships showed that, at low levels of energy depletion, feeling types had significantly higher
levels of nurturing orientation but significantly lower levels of ambitiousness than
thinking types (in both samples). However, at high levels of energy depletion, there are no
significant differences between the types in their levels of either nurturing orientation or
ambitiousness (Garden, 1988).

Conclusion
The conceptual framework outlined at the beginning of this paper addressed the notion of
whether different psychological type profiles have influenced the 'findings' about burnout
in different research sites. The findings in this study, both in terms ofthe 'symptoms' of
lack of nurturing orientation or ambitiousness, and such 'causes' as mental and emotional
demands, were seen to be type specific. Further, they were seen to be specific to that type which
predominates in whatever occupation previous findings emerged from.
Specifically, the generally held view that emotional demands are a necessary precursor
of burnout and that loss of caring for others is a necessary symptom or component was not
supported in this study even within the human services sample. Thus, the implications of
the findings in this report are far more serious than the issue of generalizing to other
occupations. They point also to difficulties in applying previous findings even within the
human services, since they suggest that these would apply to only one psychological type
and not another within that occupation. Restriction of measures and definitions to the
human services would seem to be an inappropriate solution to issues of generalizability or
the applicability of the term 'burnout'.
A further implication of these findings is the necessity of using an appropriate unit of
analysis. In this study the personality ofthe individual was a critical explanatory variable.
The usual approach in the literature of looking at a particular occupation or at a particular
work site would seem to be too broad a unit of analysis. Controlling for mediating
personality factors would seem to be a useful addition to burnout research. The
methodology adopted in the psychological stress field, where both situationai and
personality variables are both readily incorporated, needs to be adopted in the burnout
field.

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Received 12 August 1987; revised version received 14 November 1988