Journal of Organizational Behaviour

J. Organiz. Behav. 27, 793–807 (2006)

Published online 19 June 2006 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/job.397

Emotional social support and job burnout

among high-school teachers: is it all due to
dispositional affectivity?y
JEFFREY H. KAHN*, KIMBERLY T. SCHNEIDER,
THERESA M. JENKINS-HENKELMAN AND LAURA L. MOYLE
Department of Psychology, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, U.S.A.

Summary The authors investigated whether the relationship between the contents of emotional social
support and job burnout among high-school teachers is spurious because of the role of
dispositional positive and negative affectivity. A national sample of 339 teachers was surveyed
via a web-based procedure. Hierarchical regression analyses did not support spuriousness;
emotional social support was uniquely predictive of three dimensions of burnout controlling
for affectivity. As positive emotional social support increased, emotional exhaustion and
cynicism decreased, and professional efficacy increased. As negative emotional social support
increased, emotional exhaustion and cynicism also increased. Commonality analyses based on
the present data and data reported by K. L. Zellars and P. L. Perrewé (2001; Journal of Applied
Psychology, 86, 459–467) provided additional support for the unique role of emotional social
support on burnout, but these analyses suggest a greater role of affectivity than emotional
social support. These findings have implications for research on burnout as well as the
prevention of burnout among teachers. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Introduction

Job burnout has negative consequences for both the individual and the organization. For the individual,
burnout is associated with a variety of potential health problems, including cardiovascular disorders,
ulcers, somatic complaints, psychosomatic symptoms, and depressed mood (Burke, Greenglass, &
Schwarzer, 1996; Guglielmi & Tatrow, 1998). For the organization, employees experiencing burnout
display more turnover intentions, greater absenteeism, and reduced productivity (Iverson, Olekalns, &
Erwin, 1998; Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). The total economic impact of burnout is difficult to
estimate, but the lost productivity and the cost of recruiting and training new employees make burnout a
critical issue for organizations.
Teachers in the United States are among those employees who are at risk for job burnout (Farber,
1991; Shirom, 2003). Teachers—particularly those in high schools (Byrne, 1999)—experience more

* Correspondence to: J. H. Kahn, Department of Psychology, Campus Box 4620, Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790-
4620, U.S.A. E-mail: jhkahn@ilstu.edu
y
Theresa M. Jenkins-Henkelman and Laura L. Moyle have contributed equally to this project. The authors wish to thank Robert
Hessling and Margaret Nauta for their comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Received 15 August 2005

Revised 16 March 2006
Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 27 March 2006
794 J. H. KAHN ET AL.

burnout than other professionals who serve the public, including nurses, mental-health professionals,
physical-health professionals, and domestic and personal-care professionals (de Heus & Diekstra,
1999). Many new teachers leave the profession after just a few years (Roehrig, Pressley, & Talotta,
2002), with some estimates indicating that 20–25% of new teachers leave within 2 years and only 50%
remain after 5 years (Huling-Austin, 1986; National Center for Education Statistics, 2001). Burnout
has been linked to a range of organizational withdrawal behaviors such as absenteeism, intentions to
turnover, and actual turnover (Maslach et al., 2001). Because of the high demand for secondary school
teachers at present (Capa, Loadman, & Bryant, 2002) and as projected over the next decade (U.S.
Department of Education, 2003), it is crucial to understand what factors might predict burnout among
high-school teachers.
In most contemporary research job burnout is viewed as comprising three dimensions (Maslach,
2003; Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996; Maslach et al., 2001). Emotional exhaustion is characterized
by an employee’s feelings of emotional and physical overextension, such as when a teacher feels
drained and depleted because of work. Cynicism refers to a detached attitude toward the people
encountered at work. This would be illustrated by a teacher who lacks concern about students. Finally,
feelings of reduced professional efficacy refer to a lack of confidence concerning one’s productivity at
work and affect multiple teaching tasks and domains, not only emotional aspects of teaching. Taken
together, these three dimensions represent the burnout syndrome, although profiles of scores on the
dimensions may vary consistently across occupations (Schaufeli & Enzmann, 1998).

Emotional social support and burnout

One factor that protects teachers from burnout is social support. Specifically, higher levels of social
support from supervisors and coworkers are linked to fewer burnout experiences (Burke et al., 1996;
Iverson et al., 1998; Pascual, Perez-Jover, Mirambell, Ivanez, & Terol, 2003; Schaufeli & Buunk, 2003;
Zellars & Perrewé, 2001). Not all supportive communications are equivalent, however. Simply asking
employees how much support they receive from co-workers ignores the fact that supportive
communications can differ in content (Beehr, King, & King, 1990; Fenlason & Beehr, 1994).
According to Beehr et al., the contents of emotional social support reflect the topic that is being
discussed, and these contents can be positive, negative, or non-job related. Communications are
positive in content if they focus on pleasant aspects of the job. The content of support may also be
negative, such as when stressful aspects of the job are discussed (Beehr et al., 1990; Fenlason & Beehr,
1994). Negative social support as defined here emphasizes the content of the communication and is
distinct from what others have identified as negative exchanges (e.g., Newsom, Nishishiba, Morgan, &
Rook, 2003) or negative support interactions (e.g., Helgeson, Cohen, Schulz, & Yasko, 2000), both of
which refer to failed support attempts wherein one party trivializes the other’s problems or indicates a
lack of sympathy or caring. The final content dimension described by Beehr et al. is non-job related
support, whereby an employee discusses issues unrelated to work, such as family issues.
Two studies of which we are aware have focused specifically on the contents of emotional social
support and their differential effects on burnout. Among a sample of nurses, Beehr et al. (1990) found
that as positive support increased, emotional exhaustion and cynicism decreased, but negative support
and non-job support were unrelated to burnout. Also using a sample of nurses, Zellars and Perrewé
(2001) found that as positive support increased and negative support decreased, emotional exhaustion
decreased, cynicism decreased, and professional efficacy increased. Non-job related support was not
predictive of burnout (Zellars & Perrewé, 2001). Zellars and Perrewé also assessed the degree to which
employees actually receive empathic expressions of understanding and sympathy from coworkers.
Such empathy support was positively predictive of professional efficacy (Zellars & Perrewé, 2001).

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 EMOTIONAL SOCIAL SUPPORT AND JOB BURNOUT 795

Thus, there is evidence that different contents of emotional social support are differentially
predictive of burnout. Although these contents are not mutually exclusive (e.g., empathy support may
be received when discussing negative aspects of the job), they represent a useful typology of the
contents of emotional social support one receives at work. The observed relations these contents have
with burnout are also consistent with theories of social support (e.g., Cohen & Wills, 1985).
Specifically, social support likely helps to provide opportunities for reappraisal and adaptive responses
to work stress, thereby easing burnout. Positive reappraisal and the formation of adaptive responses are
reflected by communication that is positive in content; thus, greater positive support is associated with
less burnout (Beehr et al., 1990; Zellars & Perrewé, 2001). Communications focusing on negative
topics might reflect failed efforts to provide adaptive responses; thus, feelings of burnout might
increase to the degree that coping efforts fail. Zellars and Perrewé’s (2001) finding that greater negative
support was associated with greater burnout supports this idea.

The potential role of dispositional positive affectivity (PA)

and negative affectivity (NA)
Although a causal relationship between emotional social support and burnout is theoretically justified,
an alternative explanation for the association between the contents of emotional social support and
burnout is that this relationship may be largely spurious as a result of one’s dispositional trait PA and
NA. PA and NA are closely linked to the broader personality factors extraversion, r ¼ 0.64, and
neuroticism, r ¼ 0.66, respectively (Watson, David, & Suls, 1999); however, PA and NA exclusively
concern the affective core of personality.
Employees with high PA are generally energetic and experience positive moods. High-PA
individuals are more likely to seek social support than low-PA individuals (Watson et al., 1999).
Correlations reported by Zellars and Perrewé (2001) support this idea; nurses with greater extraversion
engaged in more positive, non-job related, and empathy support than low-extraversion nurses.
Likewise, perhaps because of their energy and pleasant mood, high-PA employees are less likely to feel
burned out than low-PA nurses. A recent meta-analysis (Thoresen, Kaplan, Barsky, Warren, &
DeChermont, 2003) revealed that PA was positively related to professional efficacy and negatively
related to emotional exhaustion and cynicism.
Employees with high NA often experience events negatively and are more likely than low-NA
individuals to use emotion-focused coping to manage their negative moods (Watson et al., 1999).
Zellars and Perrewé (2001) reported correlations indicating that nurses with higher levels of
neuroticism reported less positive support, less empathy support, but more negative emotional social
support than low-neuroticism nurses. This is consistent with the idea that nurses high in NA have more
unpleasant emotions for which to seek support, and their support appears to focus on these unpleasant
emotions. High-NA individuals also have a greater likelihood of experiencing burnout, possibly
because of that same predisposition to experience negative moods. Thoresen et al. (2003) found
positive correlations between NA and emotional exhaustion and between NA and cynicism; NA was
negatively related to professional efficacy.
Because affectivity guides employees toward certain contents of emotional social support, and
because affectivity is associated with burnout, it might be the case that the relationship between the
contents of emotional social support and burnout documented in previous research (i.e., Beehr et al.,
1990; Zellars & Perrewé, 2001) is due to one’s PA and NA. Research has documented that high-NA
employees overemphasize the frequency and intensity of work stressors and, as such, variance due to
NA should be removed from any stressor-strain correlation (Burke, Brief, & George, 1993; Watson,
Pennebaker, & Folger, 1987). In the social support literature, there is evidence that NA (or neuroticism)

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796 J. H. KAHN ET AL.

spuriously explains much of the relationship between support and strain (Kahn, Hessling, & Russell,
2003; Lauver & Johnson, 1997), and in the general job stress literature, there is evidence that NA
spuriously explains much of the relationship between self-reports of stress, job satisfaction, somatic
complaints, life satisfaction, and depression (Brief, Burke, George, Robinson, & Webster, 1988;
Schaubroeck, Ganster, & Fox, 1992). Additionally, Parkes (1990) has suggested that the confounding
role of NA may be applicable to interpersonal forms of stress, such as lack of support from colleagues.
The primary purpose of our study was to test whether affectivity spuriously explains the relationship
between the contents of emotional social support and burnout. This test directly addresses the issue of
why these two variables might be related. Accordingly, conducting this test has value for the
development of theories describing the interplay among affectivity, social support, and burnout.
A spurious role of PA and NA would be apparent in two ways. First, in a regression analysis,
controlling for affectivity ought to leave little correlation between emotional social support and
burnout. Not all research supports affectivity as a spurious variable in social support relations. Among a
sample of 184 new female teachers, Schonfeld (2001) found that social support from colleagues and
from supervisors predicted job satisfaction even after controlling for NA. Zellars and Perrewé (2001)
found a relationship between the contents of emotional social support and burnout while controlling for
affective dimensions of personality (but not PA and NA specifically). We found only one other study
(Iverson et al., 1998) that measured PA and NA, social support, and burnout, but Iverson et al. did not
measure the contents of emotional social support. We therefore assessed the possible spurious role of
PA and NA using hierarchical regression analyses.
Second, there ought to be less variance in burnout uniquely explained by the contents of emotional
social support than by affectivity. This issue can be addressed by a commonality analysis, whereby one
determines the percentage of variance in the three burnout dimensions uniquely explained by
affectivity, uniquely explained by emotional social support, and jointly explained by affectivity and
emotional social support. Our second goal was to test spuriousness via this commonality analysis.
Because no prior research has done such an analysis, we supplemented our analysis with a
commonality analysis of data from Zellars and Perrewé’s (2001) study. Although they assessed
extraversion and neuroticism whereas we assessed PA and NA, reporting analyses on both data sets
provides a more complete test of the hypothesis.

Organizational Context

Characteristics of the Population

Data were collected from teachers working in several high schools in the United States. The high-
school teacher’s primary role is to instruct students in one of several specialized areas, such as
English, Mathematics, and Science. These instructional tasks include establishing learning
objectives, delivering lectures or leading discussions, and assessing student outcomes in the form of
examinations and other student work. In addition to providing instruction, teachers are responsible
for enforcing rules for behavior and maintaining accurate records. Most high-school teachers are
required to have at least a 4-year bachelor’s degree, and they are required to be certified to teach in
the public schools.

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 EMOTIONAL SOCIAL SUPPORT AND JOB BURNOUT 797

Organizational Factors
High school teachers function under the direction of a principal. Principals are responsible for hiring
and evaluating teachers, and they set the organizational tone for their schools. Many large schools
may have department chairs that serve some of these leadership functions. The leadership style of
the principal can impact the degree of autonomy felt by the teachers. Teachers may be fairly isolated
from other teachers in their day-to-day activities, although some schools implement team-teaching.
Teachers’ primary contact is with their students.
Time
Data were collected during late February and early March in 2003. This was late in the academic
year, and teachers were likely well engaged in their roles. The time of the data collection was a
challenging time for many schools. Many high schools were not adequately funded, had large class
sizes, had deteriorating physical conditions, and had unmotivated students. Adding to the challenge
of high schools was Federal legislation (the No Child Left Behind Act) signed into law 1 year earlier
dictating that schools be accountable for meeting State-imposed standards. Schools that did not
meet the standards to an increasing degree over time were given increasingly severe consequences,
with reconstitution of the school being the most severe consequence. Teachers themselves were also
being held accountable by No Child Left Behind for students’ performance on tests, and this added
to teacher stress.

Method

Participants

The data were drawn from 339 high school teachers (229 women, 110 men) from the United States.
These teachers were employed in various high schools from 41 of the 50 states in the U.S., with the
greatest representation coming from New Jersey (n ¼ 39), Pennsylvania (n ¼ 33), New York (n ¼ 26),
Illinois (n ¼ 21), and Texas (n ¼ 20). The average length of employment as a high school teacher was
13.70 years (SD ¼ 10.07), with a range of 0–43 years. These teachers taught a variety of subject areas,
although the most common were Social Studies (n ¼ 77), Science (n ¼ 56), English (n ¼ 54), and
Mathematics (n ¼ 31). Most (90%) of the participants reported their race as Caucasian.

Measures

Positive and Negative Affect

The 20-item Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988)
measured teachers’ trait PA and NA. There are 10 emotions for each subscale (e.g., ‘interested’ and
‘excited’ for PA, ‘distressed’ and ‘upset’ for NA), and teachers rated the extent to which each emotion is
generally experienced on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (very slightly or not at all) to 5 (extremely).
Higher scores reflect greater levels of PA and NA. Internal consistency reliability estimates for trait PA
and NA have been reported to be 0.88 and 0.87, with test-retest reliability (8-week interval) being 0.68
and 0.71, respectively (Watson et al., 1988). Coefficients alpha in this study were 0.89 and 0.87 for trait
PA and NA, respectively. Validity has been supported by factor analyses that reveal the existence of two

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798 J. H. KAHN ET AL.

uncorrelated factors corresponding to PA and NA (Watson et al., 1988). Moreover, the PA and NA
subscales correlate with sets of mood descriptors and within-subjects data reflecting PA and NA,
respectively (Watson & Clark, 1997).

Contents of emotional social support

We used an adapted form of Zellars and Perrewé’s (2001) 18-item emotional social support
questionnaire (ESSQ) that measures the extent to which teachers engage in different types of supportive
conversations with their coworkers. Zellars and Perrewé themselves adapted these items from previous
research on the contents of emotional support (Beehr et al., 1990; Fenlason & Beehr, 1994). The
content areas of emotional social support measured are positive support (four items; e.g., ‘We talk
about the good things about our work’), negative support (five items; e.g., ‘We talk about how we
dislike some parts of our work’), non-job-related support (four items; e.g., ‘We discuss things that are
happening in our personal lives’), and empathy support (five items; e.g., ‘My coworkers tell me they
sympathize with what I am saying’). Because the scale has previously been used with nurses, we
changed the wording of the items to apply to the experience of teachers (e.g., changing ‘hospital’ to
‘school’). Respondents used a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always). Zellars and Perrewé
reported coefficients alpha of 0.83 (negative) to 0.93 (non-job). In the present study alphas were 0.79
(positive), 0.81 (negative), 0.86 (non-job), and 0.85 (empathy).

Burnout
The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI; Maslach et al., 1996) is a commonly used 22-item measure of
three components of job burnout: emotional exhaustion (nine items; e.g., ‘I feel emotionally drained
from my work’), cynicism (five items; e.g., ‘I feel I treat some students as if they were impersonal
objects’), and professional efficacy (eight items; e.g., ‘I can easily understand how my students feel
about things’). We used the educator’s version, which contains wording specific to teachers. Teachers
responded to each item on a 7-point scale ranging from 0 (never) to 6 (every day). Higher scores reflect
greater levels of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy. Maslach et al. (1996)
reported internal consistency to range from 0.71 (professional efficacy) to 0.90 (emotional exhaustion).
They also reported test-retest reliability (1-year interval) among a sample of teachers ranging from 0.54
(cynicism) to 0.60 (emotional exhaustion). Among our data alphas were 0.92 (emotional exhaustion),
0.82 (professional efficacy), and 0.75 (cynicism). Validity of the MBI has been supported by the
expected three-factor structure and by positive correlations with peer ratings (Maslach et al., 1996).

Procedure

Participants were recruited through several teacher and educator listservs on the Internet. An electronic
letter of solicitation invited teachers to participate in a study on ‘high-school teachers’ perceptions of
their job.’ Potential participants were told that they must currently be teaching in a high school to
participate. Interested teachers were directed to a website that displayed information about the survey
that also contained an informed consent statement. Teachers provided informed consent by clicking a
link indicating their consent; this link opened a secure web page containing some demographic items,
the PANAS, the ESSQ, and the MBI, in that order, in an on-line form. Respondents indicated their
response by clicking the appropriate choice for each item. After completing the instruments,
respondents clicked a ‘Submit Form’ button which sent their data to the researchers and took the
participant to a debriefing page. Our method of soliciting participants did not allow us to compute a
response rate because we have no way of knowing how many teachers read the solicitation message on
the listservs.

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 EMOTIONAL SOCIAL SUPPORT AND JOB BURNOUT 799

Table 1. Correlations, means, and standard deviations among the measures (N ¼ 339)
Measure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

1. Sex 1.00
2. Years teaching 0.23 1.00
3. Positive affectivity
0.11 0.06 1.00
4. Negative affectivity 0.00
0.09
0.47 1.00
5. Positive support
0.09
0.02 0.57
0.43 1.00
6. Negative support
0.06
0.10
0.24 0.38
0.29 1.00
7. Non-job support
0.13
0.01 0.27
0.13 0.47 0.13 1.00
8. Empathy support
0.09
0.12 0.26
0.06 0.33 0.16 0.40 1.00
9. Emotional exhaustion
0.09
0.11
0.46 0.63
0.48 0.54
0.11 0.00 1.00
10. Cynicism 0.07
0.12
0.52 0.52
0.48 0.45
0.19
0.08 0.66 1.00
11. Professional efficacy
0.02 0.01 0.61
0.41 0.52
0.21 0.18 0.27
0.39
0.44 1.00
M 0.32 13.70 37.58 17.93 12.69 16.67 12.95 18.42 24.39 7.23 37.35
SD 0.47 10.07 6.30 6.05 2.57 3.22 2.90 3.09 12.04 5.75 6.95
Note: All correlations of 0.11 or stronger are significant, p < 0.05. Sex was coded 0 ¼ female and 1 ¼ male.

Results

Means, standard deviations, and correlations among the measures of affectivity, emotional social
support, and burnout are presented in Table 1. Teachers who experienced high amounts of NA and low
amounts of PA reported higher levels of job burnout than those who experienced low amounts of NA
and high amounts of PA. Affectivity was also related to the contents of emotional social support,
particularly the use of positive and negative support. Finally, teachers who engaged in more (vs. fewer)
communications with positive content with coworkers (i.e., positive emotional social support)
experienced lower levels of job burnout, and teachers who engaged in more (vs. fewer)
communications with coworkers dealing with negative content (i.e., negative emotional social
support) experienced higher levels of job burnout. Despite the high correlations among variables,
confirmatory factor analyses of the present data indicated that NA, negative-support, emotional
exhaustion, and cynicism factors represented empirically distinct factors from one another, as
compared to a general ‘negative’ factor, Dx2(6) ¼ 694.41, p < 0.001. Likewise, PA, positive-support,
and professional efficacy represented distinct factors from one another as compared to a general
‘positive’ factor, Dx2(3) ¼ 298.30, p < 0.001.
We also wanted to determine whether affectivity and emotional social support interact in the
prediction of burnout. Of the 24 possible interactions between (a) PA and NA and (b) positive, negative,
non-job, and empathy support predicting (c) emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy,
only one explained an increase of more than 1% of the variance in burnout. We therefore concluded
that, in general, affectivity does not moderate the relationship between emotional social support and job
burnout.

Does emotional social support predict burnout controlling for affectivity?

Our first goal was to examine emotional social support as a predictor of burnout controlling for
affectivity. If affectivity spuriously explains the relationship between emotional social support and
burnout, then emotional social support should not predict burnout while controlling for affectivity. If

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800 J. H. KAHN ET AL.

Table 2. Beta weights from hierarchical regression analyses predicting dimensions of burnout
Burnout dimension

Step Predictor Emotional exhaustion Cynicism Professional efficacy

Step 1 Sex
0.07 0.10
0.02

Years teaching
0.09
0.14* 0.02
Step 2 Sex
0.11** 0.05 0.06
Years teaching
0.02
0.08
0.04
Positive affectivity
0.22***
0.34*** 0.55***
Negative affectivity 0.53*** 0.35***
0.16**
Step 3 Sex
0.10* 0.05 0.06
Years teaching
0.01
0.07
0.02
Positive affectivity
0.13**
0.24*** 0.43***
Negative affectivity 0.39*** 0.23***
0.12**
Positive social support
0.18**
0.13* 0.25***
Negative social support 0.29*** 0.27*** 0.00
Non-job social support
0.02
0.07
0.11*
Empathy social support 0.07 0.02 0.11*
Note: For Step 3, R2 ¼ 0.56 for emotional exhaustion (Adjusted R2 ¼ 0.55), R2 ¼ 0.45 for cynicism (Adjusted R2 ¼ 0.44), and
R2 ¼ 0.45 for professional efficacy (Adjusted R2 ¼ 0.43), p < 0.001.

emotional social support does predict burnout controlling for affectivity, then spuriousness would not
be indicated. We conducted three hierarchical regression analyses, one on each dimension of burnout
(see Table 2). For each analysis, we entered participant sex (coded 0 ¼ female, 1 ¼ male) and the
number of years employed as a teacher as control variables because male teachers and younger teachers
may be more prone to burnout (Russell, Altmaier, & Van Velzen, 1987). In the second step we entered
PA and NA. In the third step we entered the contents of emotional social support. We entered emotional
social support after affectivity so we could determine whether emotional social support explains a
significant percentage of variance in burnout (i.e., determine whether the R2 change is significant) while
controlling for affectivity. After the third step tolerance ranged from 0.48 to 0.92 for the predictors,
suggesting overlap among predictors but not to a degree that collinearity was a severe problem.
In the analysis of emotional exhaustion, sex and years teaching were not significantly predictive
of emotional exhaustion, explaining only 2% of the variance, F(2, 336) ¼ 2.70, p > 0.05. Adding
affectivity, however, provided a significant increase in explained variance in burnout, DR2 ¼ 0.43,
F(2, 334) ¼ 129.14, p < 0.001. As expected, lower PA and higher NA were predictive of greater
emotional exhaustion. Contrary to the spuriousness hypothesis, the block of emotional social support
also resulted in a significant increase in explained variance in burnout, DR2 ¼ 0.11, F(4, 330) ¼ 20.69,
p < 0.001. Less positive and more negative emotional social support were significantly predictive of
greater emotional exhaustion, even while controlling for affectivity. Non-job and empathy emotional
social support were not predictive of emotional exhaustion. In all, 56% of the variance in emotional
exhaustion was explained by the predictors, Adjusted R2 ¼ 0.55, F(8, 330) ¼ 51.71, p < 0.001.
For the analysis of cynicism, the two control variables significantly predicted cynicism, R2 ¼ 0.02,
F(2, 336) ¼ 4.12, p < 0.05. Teachers who had been employed longer reported less cynicism than
younger teachers. Affectivity explained a significant increase in cynicism variance, DR2 ¼ 0.35,
F(2, 334) ¼ 91.35, p < 0.001, such that less PA and more NA predicted greater cynicism. Adding
emotional social support further explained variance in cynicism, DR2 ¼ 0.08, F(4, 330) ¼ 12.56,
p < 0.001. Spuriousness was again not supported because, even while controlling for affectivity, less
positive and more negative emotional social support were significantly predictive of greater cynicism.

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Non-job and empathy emotional social support were unrelated to cynicism. The eight predictors
combined to explain 45% of the variance in cynicism, Adjusted R2 ¼ 0.44, F(8, 330) ¼ 34.09,
p < 0.001.
The analysis of professional efficacy indicated that sex and years teaching were not predictive of
professional efficacy, R2 ¼ 0.00, F(2, 336) ¼ 0.10, p > 0.05. Adding affectivity resulted in a significant
increase in explained variance, DR2 ¼ 0.40, F(2, 334) ¼ 110.94, p < 0.001. More PA and less NA were
predictive of greater professional efficacy. The block of emotional social support explained another
significant increase in variance, R2 ¼ 0.05, F(4, 330) ¼ 7.04, p < 0.001. More positive emotional social
support was predictive of greater professional efficacy; negative emotional social support was unrelated
to professional efficacy. Non-job emotional social support had a negative association, and empathy
support had a positive association, with professional efficacy. Thus, as with emotional exhaustion and
cynicism, a spurious role of affectivity was not supported. In all, 45% of the variance in professional
efficacy was explained by the predictors, Adjusted R2 ¼ 0.43, F(8, 330) ¼ 33.30, p < 0.001.

Unique contributions of affectivity and emotional social support

The regression analyses revealed that emotional social support–particularly the positive and negative
contents–was predictive of burnout even while controlling for affectivity. We conducted a commonality
analysis to compare whether the unique variance in burnout explained by emotional social support was
comparable to that uniquely explained by affectivity. A commonality analysis is a regression-based
procedure that determines the proportion of variance in the criterion explained uniquely by each set of
predictors as well as the proportion of variance in the criterion that the predictors commonly explain
(see Pedhazur, 1997). The percentage of variance uniquely explained is the change in R2 when the
variable set is entered last in a hierarchical regression (i.e., controlling for other variables). In the
present case, the hierarchical multiple regression analyses that we conducted indicated the unique
effect for emotional social support while controlling for affectivity. Our commonality analysis
determines both the change in R2 for affectivity controlling for emotional social support and the change
in R2 for emotional social support controlling for affectivity. The commonality analysis therefore
addresses the issue of which predictor is relatively more important in the prediction of burnout: one’s
affective disposition or the contents of emotional support at the workplace.
As indicted in Table 3, the percentage of variance in burnout jointly explained by affectivity and
emotional social support was consistent across all three dimensions of burnout. (We omitted sex and
years teaching in this analysis because they did not strongly contribute to the prediction of burnout.) For
example, although 55% of the variance in emotional exhaustion was predicted by affectivity and
emotional social support, 29% of the variance (which represents 53% of the explained variance) was
explained by the joint contribution of affectivity and emotional social support. The remaining 26% of
the variance in emotional exhaustion scores was explained by the unique effects of affectivity and
emotional social support.
Across all dimensions of burnout, the unique contribution of affectivity was higher than the unique
contribution of the contents of emotional social support. This difference in unique variance explained
was small for emotional exhaustion, stronger for cynicism, and fairly dramatic for professional
efficacy, where affectivity explained more than three times the unique variance than emotional social
support. Squared partial correlations, which remove variance due to affectivity from both burnout and
emotional social support, were substantial, ranging from 0.08 to 0.20. Because emotional social
support and burnout overlap even with affectivity completely partialed out, the relationship between
emotional social support and burnout is not spurious. Affectivity does, however, play a strong role in
predicting burnout independently of the contents of emotional social support.

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802 J. H. KAHN ET AL.

Table 3. Variance in burnout dimensions explained jointly and uniquely by affectivity and emotional social
support (percentages in parentheses)
Variance components

Affectivity Affectivity ESS

Data set Criterion and ESS jointly uniquely uniquely Total pr2

Present study Emotional exhaustion 0.29 (53%) 0.14 (25%) 0.12 (22%) 0.55 0.20
Cynicism 0.26 (58%) 0.11 (24%) 0.08 (18%) 0.45 0.13
Professional efficacy 0.24 (55%) 0.15 (34%) 0.05 (11%) 0.44 0.08

Zellars and Perrewé Emotional exhaustion 0.08 (21%) 0.15 (39%) 0.15 (39%) 0.38 0.20
(2001) Cynicism 0.05 (19%) 0.09 (35%) 0.12 (46%) 0.26 0.14
Professional efficacy 0.08 (33%) 0.08 (33%) 0.08 (33%) 0.24 0.10
Note: ESS ¼ Emotional Social Support. Commonality analyses were conducted without controlling for participant sex and years
teaching. Unique variance components for affectivity and ESS were statistically significant for each dimension of burnout among
both data sets, p < 0.001.

An additional way to test the unique explanatory role of PA and NA on burnout is to compare our
results with what has been previously reported. Accordingly, we conducted a commonality analysis on
data reported by Zellars and Perrewé (2001). Zellars and Perrewé’s data set represents a useful
comparison to ours because it contains the same variables with the exception of containing extraversion
and neuroticism in place of PA and NA. Thus, a comparison of the two data sets indicates the relative
role of dispositional affectivity on burnout versus the role of personality more generally. The results of
the commonality analysis of the Zellars and Perrewé data are in the lower portion of Table 3. More total
variance in burnout was explained among the present data than in the Zellars and Perrewé data set. This
appeared to be primarily due to the fact that the joint contribution of affectivity and emotional social
support was substantially larger among the present data than Zellars and Perrewé’s data. However,
between the two studies the unique contributions of affectivity and emotional social support were
similar in the percentage of burnout variance they explained. Moreover, squared partial correlations
were remarkably similar between the two data sets, and among both data sets emotional social support
had a meaningful unique effect in predicting burnout. This supports the conclusion that the relationship
between emotional social support and burnout is not spurious.

Discussion

We examined the relationship between the contents of emotional social support at work and burnout
among teachers. Our specific question was whether this relationship observed in past research (e.g.,
Beehr et al., 1990) is due to the spurious role of affectivity. The spuriousness hypothesis was not
supported. Rather, our study supported previous research (Zellars & Perrewé, 2001) demonstrating a
relationship between the contents of emotional social support and job burnout while controlling for
affective dispositions. Affectivity is still an important variable to consider, however, as our
commonality analyses revealed that PA and NA explained more unique variance in burnout than did

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 EMOTIONAL SOCIAL SUPPORT AND JOB BURNOUT 803

emotional social support. Thus, it is important to consider both affectivity and emotional social support
in predicting the burnout of high-school teachers.
Research has indicated that dispositional affectivity—particularly NA—spuriously explains part of
the relationship between job stress and a variety of emotion-related outcomes (e.g., Brief et al., 1988;
Burke et al., 1993). Moreover, affectivity may be one source of method bias, and addressing method
bias statistically is critical in organizational research (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003).
Despite these reasons why affectivity might play a spurious role, our findings suggest that the contents
of emotional social support have a ‘real’ relationship with burnout that is independent of one’s affective
dispositions. The more teachers engaged in supportive communications in which they discussed
pleasant aspects of the job, the less likely they were to experience burnout. Drawing from social support
theory (Cohen & Wills, 1985), discussing pleasant aspects of the job may have helped to reframe
teachers’ experiences in a positive way. In an opposite manner, discussing unpleasant aspects of the job
was associated with a higher likelihood of burnout. Perhaps social comparison processes are enacted in
cases where employees discuss work problems with a group that has a pre-existing negative view (or
group affective tone; see George, 1990); this may result in an employee leaving the conversation with
an even more negative view (Buunk & Peeters, 1994). Such an interpretation is supported by research
on emotional contagion, whereby burnout may transfer among employees because of conversations
with negative content among coworkers (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2000).
Professional efficacy was the only dimension of burnout predicted by empathy support and non-job
support. The former finding was also reported by Zellars and Perrewé (2001). Professional efficacy
might have been positively associated with greater empathy support if the receipt of empathy helped
teachers to cope more successfully, thus freeing up the teacher’s mental resources to focus on the job.
The latter finding concerning non-job support was unexpected and somewhat puzzling. The zero-order
correlation between non-job support and professional efficacy was positive, yet the beta in the
regression analysis was negative. This discrepancy appeared to be due to correlations among non-job
support, positive support, empathy support, and PA; that is, this negative relationship was likely an
artifact of minor collinearity.
The finding that the contents of emotional social support are related to burnout independent of
affectivity is generally in line with Maslach’s (2003) suggestion that the individual and the job context
need to be addressed in burnout interventions, as opposed to a focus only on individual difference
variables. An expanded transactional focus on both individual differences and work context variables
may be required to explain more completely the complexities of individuals’ burnout experiences. For
instance, LeBlanc, Bakker, Peeters, van Heesch, and Schaufeli (2001) integrated assessments of
quantitative job demands (e.g., fast work pace, work overload, long hours), emotional job demands
(e.g., interpersonal tensions), and an individual difference variable focused on susceptibility to
emotional contagion. Parkes (1986) similarly emphasizes the importance of intraindividual,
environmental, and situational factors in examinations of work stress. Our research supports the
idea that one cannot focus solely on affectivity when trying to understand burnout, but one cannot
completely diminish the role of dispositional affectivity either. The commonality analyses revealed that
burnout has more in common with existing affective dispositions than it does with the contents of
emotional social support. These affective dispositions are not unchanging, as one’s reports of
affectivity as well as burnout may be influenced by one’s current emotional state; however, trait PA and
NA as we measured in this study are fairly stable over time (Watson et al., 1988).
An additional finding of note was that the relatively larger role of individual differences versus
emotional social support was not apparent for extraversion and neuroticism. On the basis of our
analysis of Zellars and Perrewé’s (2001) data, contents of emotional social support uniquely explained
about as much variance in burnout as did extraversion and neuroticism. Although comparing our study
with Zellars and Perrewé’s study is problematic because of differences in occupational groups sampled

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804 J. H. KAHN ET AL.

and methodologies, burnout seems to have more in common with PA and NA than it does with the more
general personality factors extraversion and neuroticism. We do note, however, that the relationship
between emotional social support and burnout while completely partialing out affectivity was nearly
identical among our data and those of Zellars and Perrewé.

Limitations and future research directions

Our web-based administration may have precluded some teachers from participating if they did not feel
comfortable with computer technology. We could not determine the response rate, and accordingly it is
impossible to assess non-response bias. Perhaps teachers who had complaints about their work were
more likely to participate in this survey. However, our method facilitated our ability to sample teachers
from 41 of the 50 states in the U.S. Moreover, results of web-based research are consistent with those
from laboratory studies (Gosling, Vazire, Srivistava, & John, 2004). It remains important for this
research to be replicated with additional samples and methodologies, including coworker reports and
observations of interactions with coworkers to gain supplemental measures of emotional social support.
Second, our design did not allow us to draw conclusions about causality. Some of the relationships
among affectivity, emotional social support, and job burnout may be reciprocal. For example, positive
emotional social support may serve to reduce burnout, whereas experiencing burnout may lead teachers
to discuss more unpleasant aspects of their job. We were also unable to distinguish between short- and
long-term implications of negative social support. Research by Pennebaker, Colder, and Sharp (1990)
provides some indication that the opportunity to discuss negative feelings may temporarily increase
distress but have benefits in the long-run. Longitudinal studies would be necessary to test the temporal
ordering of affectivity, emotional social support, and job burnout.
Finally, our focus was on supportive communications with coworkers. Although some respondents
may have considered ‘coworkers’ to be either teachers or supervisors, support from other teachers may
take on a different tone than support from supervisors. Peeters and LeBlanc (2001) provided evidence
that differential effects of social support occur depending on the match between the type of stressor and
the source of the support. It would be potentially interesting to determine how supportive conversations
with other teachers differ from those with supervisors and whether such support affects teachers to
different degrees. Likewise, it would be theoretically interesting to examine the extent to which
affectivity might explain the relationship between burnout and other forms of social support, such as
perceived social support, instrumental support, or characteristics of the employee’s social network.

Implications for burnout prevention

Given our results, burnout prevention needs to be viewed as an organizational issue as well as an
individual one. It is important for school administrators and human resource professionals to be
sensitized to the potential value of teachers engaging in positive conversations with coworkers.
Whereas teacher conversations that focus on negative content cannot be eliminated, these negative
conversations may be offset by structured opportunities to promote positive discussions of work.
Providing positive feedback to teachers is a way in which principals can add to positive emotional
social support. School administrators are also encouraged to provide time and opportunities for
teachers to discuss pleasant aspects of the job while at work.
It may not be economically feasible to provide interventions to all teachers, so early identification of
burnout proneness via an assessment of affectivity may provide a viable solution. The formation of
teacher support teams (Farber, 1991) or mentoring programs (Davis, 2003) could provide resources that

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 EMOTIONAL SOCIAL SUPPORT AND JOB BURNOUT 805

reduce role ambiguity or role overload. Such interventions may also be useful for at-risk teachers in
providing emotional social support. Parkes’ (1986, 1990) research indicates that an assessment of the
work environment, including quantitative and emotional job demands, would provide guidance to
administrators regarding which prevention strategies may be most effective. Of course, these
recommendations rest on an assumption of causality, but this assumption is consistent with social
support theories. Although there is progress to be made regarding the development and empirical
validation of preventative interventions focusing on affectivity and emotional social support, the
pursuit of these efforts ought to be a valuable means to reduce teacher burnout.

Author biographies

Jeffrey H. Kahn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Illinois State University.
He received his Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Iowa State University in 1997. His research
interests are in the areas of social support, self-disclosure, emotion and affectivity, vocational
psychology, and scientific training. He is a past member of the Editorial Board of Journal of
Counseling Psychology, and he is a current member of the Editorial Board of The Counseling
Psychologist.
Kimberly T. Schneider is an Assistant Professor of Industrial-Organizational/Social Psychology at
Illinois State University. She received her Ph.D. in I/O Psychology from the University of Illinois in
1996. Dr. Schneider’s research interests have focused on job stress, workplace sexual and ethnic
harassment, and work group conflict.
Theresa M. Jenkins-Henkelman, PHR, earned an M.S. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology
from Illinois State University in 2003. She is currently the Sr. Human Resources Representative at
Chestnut Health Systems in Bloomington, IL, and her professional interests include employee
wellness, work/life benefits, and human resources information systems.
Laura L. Moyle, Student Support Services Counselor, earned an M.S. in Industrial and Organizational
Psychology from Illinois State University in 2004. Laura is currently an academic advisor and
counselor at Illinois Valley Community College in Oglesby, IL. Her professional interests include
promoting student success through personal and academic support.

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