Burnout in Day Care Workers: The Effects of Learned Helplessness and Self-Esteem Mary Benson McMullen and Murray Krantz Florida State University ABSTRACT.. The study focused on the relationships between selected personality factors and burnout in day care workers. The results indicated that caregivers who experienced emotional exhaustion and depersonalization tended toward lower self-esteem and learned helplessness. Burnout did not, however, include a reduced sense of personal accomplish- ment in this population. Maslach (1982) defined burnout as the subjective experience of emo- tional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomp- lishment resulting from the continuous \"caring\" for needy clients in human service professions. Emotional exhaustion includes a sense of being drained of energy and an inability of the individual to give to others. Depersonalization describes the development of detached and callous response to recipients and a pattern of derogation toward the recipients of services. Reduced personal accomplishment involves a growing sense of inadequacy by the provider of services and a sense of failure with respect to present and past services rendered. In effect, the process of burning out transforms the \"helper\" into the \"helpless.\" Even cursory consideration of the typical work experience for day care center caregivers reveals a generative context for the experience of burnout. Multiple deficiencies in wages, benefits, supplies, supervision and supportive service create a stress-laden environment. The persist- ent expression of physical and emotional need by children in oversized groups at critical stages of their development virtually precludes the possibility of stress reduction during the work day. As a result the caregiver's emotions are frequently drained to the point of exhaustion. In order to defend the self against the impossibility of serving the needs of all of the children all of the time, the caregiver may become detached, reducing the quality of care provided. Thus, emotional exhaustion, dep- ersonalization and a reduced sense of personal accomplishment would appear to be inevitable long-term consequences of the caregiver expe- rience with young children. The question remains, however, as to why, under equally stressful working conditions, some caregivers succumb to burnout and others do not. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Murray Krantz, Department of Home and Family Life, College of Home Economics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306. Child & Youth Care Quarterly, 17(4), Winter 1988 ©1988 Human Sciences Press 275 276 Child & Youth Care Quarterly Maslach (1982, p. 9) has taken the theoretical position that burnout is determined primarily by a pile-up of physical and environmental deter- minants, as opposed to emphasis on personal susceptibitiy. In an early study of burnout in day care workers Maslach and Pines (1977) explored the relationship between environmental stress factors in the day care center and measures of dissatisfaction with the work experience by caregivers. Although a number of significant relationships were reported, the failure of Maslach and Pines (1977) to provide an integrated assess- ment of the burnout construct in this early work severely limits interpre- tation of their results. It is possible to conclude only that the conditions which are intuitively believed to foster burnout (e.g., high staff-child ratios, low pay and limited down time) were significantlya ssociated with negative attitudes toward both job and children. Even if Maslach and Pines (1977) had provided more convincing evidence of the effect of environmental factors, their research still failed to account for individual differences in susceptibility to burnout. The answer may lie in individual differences in enduring personality traits in caregivers. In particular, Seligman and his associates, in a series of research studies (Seligman & Schulman, 1986; Seligman, Abramson, Semmel &von Baeyer, 1979; Nolen-Hoeksema, Girgus & Seligman, 1986) indicated that \"learned helplessness\" is a stable personality trait asso- ciated with depression in children and adults. The learned helpless individual is characterized by stable patterns of attribution with respect to experiences of success and failure. In brief, the learned helpless individual feels personally responsible for failures, conceiving of failure as a pervasive quality of personal experience. Concomitantly, the learned helpless individual conceives of success as fortuitous and does not take responsibility when it occurs. In essence, the learned helpless individual \"takes the blame\" for failures and \"does not take credit\" for successes. In the context of the pressure-laden day care center environ- ment, the learned helpless caregiver would seem predisposed to the development of symptoms of burnout. A second individual difference variable which :may moderate suscep- tibility to burnout is self-esteem. Maslach (1982) speculated that a reduced sense of personal accomplishment, a subcomponent of burnout, would be associated with loss of self-esteem. However, no empirical data were provided in support of this contention. If the concept of self has been derived from multiple sources throughout the development of the individual and, if that concept of self is qualitatively positive, it sould serve to buffer the individual with respect to the environmental forces which induce burnout. A second purpose of this study was to demon- strate the association between self-esteem and burnout in day care workers. Mary Benson McMullen and Murray Krantz 277 Method Sample. Fifty-three day care and preschool centers were asked to partic- ipate in the study. One hundred and twenty-eight female caregivers in 18 centers agreed to participate. Sixty-seven subjects (54%) provided complete data. The remaining subjects excused themselves from participation during testing, citing fatigue, burnout, lack of time, and difficulty with the instruments. The respond- ents ranged in age from 18 to 61 years and averaged six years of caregiver experience. Sixty percent were Caucasian, 33% Black, 5% Hispanic and three percent American Indian. Six percent had not completed high school~ 57% had finished high school and 36% had a least a Bachelor's degree. Sixty percent of the sample were married. The subjects that dropped out during testing were on the average, six years younger, four years less experienced, better educated, less satisfied with their pay and more likely to be unmarried than those that com- pleted the testing. Instrumentation Burnout. Burnout was assessed by the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach & Jackson, 1981). The MBI is a 22 item serf-report instrument designed for measurement of burnout in human service professions. The MBI is made up of three subscales: Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Personal Accomplishment. Satisfactory levels of internal consistency lor the three sub- scales were demonstrated on a sample of public school teachers (Belcastro, Gold & Hays, 1983). Maslach and Jackson (1981) reported satisfactory subscale test-retest reliabilities and some evidence of convergent and discriminant valid- ity. The authors recommend that the subscales should be scored separately and not combined for statistical analyses. Learned Helplessness. Learned helplessness was measured by the Attri- butional S~le Questionnaire (Peterson, Semmal, von Baeyer, Abramson, Metalsky & Seligman, 1982). The ASQ is a 12 item serf-report measure which asks the subjects to respond to 12 hypothetical events. Subjects provide the cause of the event and rate the cause on the dimensions of internality, globality, and stability. The composite score for 6 negative events (summing across the dimensions) is subtracted from the composite score for positive events to yield a single index of attributional style. A low ASQ score indicates that the subjects have a tendency to make internal, global and stable attributions for personal failures and exter- nal, specific and unstable attributions for personal successes. Thus, failures are blamed on the self and are expected to recur over long periods of time and in many situations. Failures are not identified with and are thought of as infrequent and situationally specific. This response pattern has been described as the \"learned helpless\" or \"pessimistic\" attributional style. Self-Esteem. Serf-esteem was measured bythe Rosenberg Serf-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1979). This scale contains 10 Likert-t~pe items. Rosenberg (1979) reported satisfactory levels of internal consistency, test-retest reliability and considerable evidence in support of both convergent and discriminant validity. 278 Child & Youth Care Quarterly Results The Pearson Product-Moment correlations among the burnout, attri- butional style and self-esteem variables are presented in Table 1. In general, the hypotheses were supported. Both emotional exhaustion and depersonalization were significantly related to learned helpless attribu- tional style and to self-esteem, and the relationship between self-esteem and learned helplessness was confirmed. Significant relationships were not found between reduced personal accomplishment and either attri- butional style or self-esteem. In summary, caregivers who reported high levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization showed some ten- dency toward learned helplessness and low self-esteem and learned helplessness was associated with relatively low self-esteem. It should be noted that the percent of variance accounted for was modest, ranging from 5 to 6%. There was a relationship between self-esteem and attributional style (r=.41, p(.001) and learned helplessness was associated with relatively low self-esteem among caregivers. Consistent with Maslach et al. (1981), the emotional exhaustion and depersonalization scales were signifi- cantly correlated (r=.48, p(.001) and each of these subscales showed low negative correlations with personal accomplishment. TABLE 1 Correlations Among Variables Maslach Burnout Inventory EE Rosenberg Self-Esteem Attributional Style Maslach Personal Accomplishment Maslach Depersonalization -27\" -.23\" DP -.23* -.24\" PA .12 -.03 Attributional Style .41'* -. 13 .48\" * -.25* Note: *p ~ .05; ** 12 ) .001; n = 67 Mary Benson McMullen and Murray Krantz 279 The high percentage of subjects who began but did not complete testing (46%) prompted concern about the possible affects on the results. Mastach (1982) provided evidence that the helping professionals most likely to show burnout were young, white, unmarried females in the early stages of their work experience. In the present study demographic data on 36 of 54 subjects with incomplete data were compared to data on subjects who completed testing. \"Incompletes\" were, on the average 6.5 years younger (p~.01), 3.7 years less experienced in day care (p~.001), more educated and more likely to be unmarried Caucasians than subjects for whom complete data were available. According to Maslach and Jackson (1981), this group might be expected to be at substantial risk for burnout. It is likely, therefore, that the loss of this subsample reduced the variance on all variables and, consequently attenuated the magnitude of the reported correlations. Discussion The results generally supported the hypothesized relationships between burnout, learned helplessness and self-esteem. If one assumes that attributional style and self-esteem are relatively stable aspects of caregiver personality, it is reasonable to conclude that learned helpless- ness and low self-esteem predisposed certain caregivers to burnout. The results, however, allow for an alternative explanation. A sense of hel- plessness and low self-esteem may have resulted from, rather than caused, the experience of burnout. This second interpretation would merely explicate the pervasive effects of burnout on caregiver function- ing. Correlational analysis, however, does not allow for clarification of the direction of causality. A longitudinal research design, incorporating the assessment of predisposing factors prior to initiation of child contact by caregivers, would serve to differentiate between antecedents and consequences of burnout. The application of the present methodology with the caregiver popu- lation requires some comment. First, caregivers showed great reluctance to cooperate with the self-report format of the investigation. We suspect that some respondents were concerned that participation might impact negatively on their employment status, despite assurances of confiden- tiality. Regardless, it appears that the group thought to be at the highest risk for burnout self-selected out of the study, possibly attenuating the magnitude of the demonstrated relationships. Future burnout research with this population should take appropriate measures to prevent this difficulty. 280 Child & Youth Care Quarterly This study identified two personality factors associated with burnout in the caregiver population. Future research should attempt to further explicate factors within the \"helper\" and characteristics of the children being helped which contribute to the development of burnout. References Belcastro, P.A., Gold, R.S., & Hays, L.C. (1983). Maslach burnout inventory: Factor struc- tures for samples of teachers. Psychological Reports, 53, 364-366. Maslach, C. (1982). Burnout: The cost of caring. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc~ Maslach, C., & Jackson, S.E. (1981). TheMaslach burnout inventory, (2nd ed.). Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologists Press. Maslach, C., & Pines, A. (1977). The burnout syndrome in the day care setting. Child Care Quarterly, 6(2), 100-113. NolemHoeksema, S., Girgus, J.S., & Seligman, M.E.P. (1986). Learned helplessness in child- ren: A longitudinal study of depression, achievement, and explanatory style. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5, 435-442. Peterson, C., Semmel, A., Baeyer, Abramson, L., Metalskw, G., & Seligman, M.E.P. (1982). The attributional style questionnaire. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 6(3), 287-300. Rosenberg, M. (1979). Conceiving the self. New York: Basic Books. Seligman, M.E.P., Abramson, L.Y., Semmel, A., &von Baeyer, C. (1979). Depressive attribu tional style. 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