Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-020-09407-w

Who Gets Burnout and When? The Role of Personality, Job Control,
and Organizational Identification in Predicting Burnout
Among Police Officers
Sumagna Bhowmick 1 & Zubin Mulla 2

# Society for Police and Criminal Psychology 2020

Abstract
Burnout is found to negatively impact the quality of life of professionals working in the human service industries. By studying
152 police officers in Kolkata, India, we explore what contributes to burnout, and in which context burnout can be reduced or
increased. We have focused on the relationship between personality and burnout, and examined the relationship between
different job aspects, like job control and organizational identification with burnout. Results indicate that certain personality
traits like agreeableness and conscientiousness significantly predict personal accomplishment, while neuroticism predicts emo-
tional exhaustion. Low job control was related with increased emotional exhaustion, and higher level of identification with
organization was related with increased sense of personal accomplishment.

Keywords Job burnout . Personality . Police . Job control . Organizational identification

In the last few decades, various police forces over the world
have been subject to drastic structural reforms and an increas-
ing number of responsibilities (Fleming and Rhodes 2005).
While trying to implement management techniques to the
public services such as the police, we must be careful to ensure
that they are customized to take into account the unique cir-
cumstances and challenges faced by the police (Fleming and
Lafferty 2000). One such challenge is the high levels of stress
and job burnout among police personnel. The Indian police
force is no exception. A survey conducted across 21 Indian
states by the collaboration of Common Cause and Lokniti (a
research programme at the Center for the Study of Developing
Societies (CSDS) in India) found that police officials are un-
der stress due to workload, poor work-life balance, and defi-
ciency of resources. Additionally, it was found that, if given a
chance to join another job with the same salary and benefits,
more than one-third of police personnel would be willing to
* Sumagna Bhowmick
sumagna87@gmail.com
1
School of Social Sciences, Tata Institute of Social Sciences,
Mumbai, India
2
School of Management and Labour Studies, Tata Institute of Social
Sciences, Mumbai, India
give up their profession (Kawoosa 2020). This appears to be
daunting as far as the police service in India is concerned.
In this paper, we investigate the role of personality, job
control, and organizational identification in predicting burnout
among Indian police officers. It explains why people working
under the same conditions do not develop burnout at equal
levels (Garbarino et al. 2013a; Queiros et al. 2013). Thus, we
can argue that personality and certain aspects of job (such as
job control and organizational identification) might play an
important role in an individual experiencing burnout.
Burnout
Burnout is a complex process and is more common among
employees working in the human service industry. Burnout
undermines the quality of care and professional attention giv-
en to the clients of human service professionals, such as
teachers, police officers, lawyers, and nurses (Maslach and
Jackson 1981). Experiencing burnout over time not only leads
to low quality of work life, but its effect also spills over one’s
personal life, thus, making the overall situation worse. There
has been a lot of research to understand the predictors of
burnout and the way in which the impact of burnout can be
reduced (Alarcon et al. 2009; Judge et al. 1999; Ones et al.
1993; Rupert et al. 2015; Smith 2000). Freudenberger (1957)
defined burnout as to “fail, wear out, or to become exhausted

by making excessive demands on energy, strength, or re-
sources; burnout manifests itself in many different symptom-
atic ways which vary in symptom and degree from person to
person” (p. 73). Maslach and Jackson (1981) developed a
multidimensional theory of burnout which continues to be
the principal theoretical framework in the burnout field.
Burnout was defined as a psychological syndrome which en-
tails three features, namely emotional exhaustion,
depersonalization, and a diminished sense of personal
accomplishment that occurred among various professionals
who work with other people in challenging situations. Later,
Maslach et al. (2001) extended burnout to human service in-
dustry and defined the dimensions as follows. Emotional ex-
haustion refers to the emotional demand of human services
that can exhaust the service provider’s capacity to be involved
with, and be responsive to, the need of the service recipient.
The depersonalization component of burnout refers to the pro-
cess of distancing oneself from the service recipients by being
disengaged in the work process. Individuals manage the de-
mands of human service when they consider themselves im-
personal objects of work as against being unique and engaging
people. Lack of personal accomplishment means reduced self-
efficacy. This can develop sequentially, to some degree, as a
result of exhaustion/depersonalization or a combination of
both. For example, a work situation with high work demands
that contribute to exhaustion and depersonalization can also
interfere with one’s sense of personal accomplishment. Other
than this, lack of personal accomplishment can also develop
parallelly with exhaustion and depersonalization in situations
characterized by absence of adequate work resources.
Policing and Burnout in India
Police work is one of the most stressful occupations in the
world (Anshel 2000; Bawa and Kaur 2011; Gul and Delice
2011; Lambert et al. 2017, 2018; Ranta and Sud 2008;
Shekhar and Kizhakekkara 2013). In New Delhi, the capital
of India, 40 police personnel committed suicide within 5 years.
Some of the reasons cited were lack of holidays, work pres-
sure, no time with the family, and lack of timely professional
counseling support at work (Angad and Singh 2018). Tandon
(2007) described the work culture of police force in India as
inhuman. More specifically, a dehumanizing and
deintellectualizing work culture prevails especially for the ju-
nior and middle-rank police officers in India. Tandon (2007)
further explained that the trend of suicides and killing of
superior officers on refusal of leave illustrates how
unfavorable the work culture of police in India is. Ranta and
Sud (2008) stated that the law enforcement officers are killed
more by the job-related stress than by the criminals.
Job stress in police work is primarily due to role conflict,
and ambiguity (Kwak et al. 2018). Lambert et al. (2017) found
J Police Crim Psych
that job stress was positively related with emotional
exhaustion and reduced sense of personal accomplishment
among the police officers of a Northern Indian State,
Haryana. It was found that job stress emotionally drained
them and lowered their sense of confidence. Tyagi and Dhar
(2014) found that job stress of police work was positively
related with poor health and led to problems like high blood
pressure, depression, sleeplessness, and increased weight.
Moreover, police officials must work for long hours to
maintain the safety of a designated territory. They get overly
fatigued because of sleeplessness, erratic work hours, and shift
work (Vila 2006). Because of insufficient funds, recruitment
of personnel is not a priority. Hence, police officials must
work more than 12 h a day (Tyagi and Dhar 2014). Heavy
workload, political pressures, and lack of role clarity produces
negative emotional reactions among the police officers.
Almost 80% of police constables were found to be stressed
because of factors like long work hours, less communication
with the family, restricted leave, and less chance to participate
in social functions. Other causes of job stress were low salary,
negative public image, restricted social participation, inade-
quate infrastructure, delayed promotion, not able to take an-
nual leave, and pressure from seniors (Bawa and Kaur 2011;
Deb et al. 2008; Gaikwad 2012; Sundaram and Kumaran
2012; Tandon 2007). Poor working conditions, task pressures,
lack of proper training, and professional and personal obliga-
tions produced mild to severe stress among the police officers.
The hazardous nature of policing keeps the officials at a state
of constant arousal which in turn affects their physical and
psychological well-being (Bawa and Kaur 2011).
Personality and Burnout
Given the grim situation of high levels of job stress and its
adverse health implications, it is essential for us to seek out
ways in which various individual differences could enhance or
reduce the effects of stressor on an individual’s experience of
burnout. For example, personality traits can promote resil-
ience or increase vulnerability to job stress (Garbarino et al.
2013b). Work stress has been extensively studied from the
perspective of environmental or occupational load and poor
work conditions. Significantly less attention has been given to
study the relationship between individual differences and
work stress. Since individual differences could possibly ex-
plain some variance in the development of burnout, we be-
lieve examining the relationship between personality traits and
burnout would be insightful. In this study, we have considered
the five-factor model of personality and have tried to examine
its effect on the development of burnout. Mc Crae (1993)
explained that the discovery of five-factor model has revital-
ized personality psychology and it was found that all the five
J Police Crim Psych
factors have shown agreement and longitudinal stability in
adulthood for periods ranging up to 30 years.
Individuals with higher levels of neuroticism tend to expe-
rience more negative emotions such as anxiety, disgust, and
fear. These individuals are vulnerable for developing mental
disorders like depression (Roberts and Kendler 1999; Teven
2007). Neuroticism is related with tension, irritability, and
vulnerability to stress (Burnett et al. 2019; Garbarino et al.
2013b). Such individuals adopt a pessimistic view to under-
stand the world around them (Mc Crae and John 1992). Earlier
research found that neuroticism was positively related with all
the subscales of burnout—emotional exhaustion, depersonal-
ization, and loss of personal accomplishment (Alarcon et al.
2009; Swider and Zimmerman 2010). Among police officers,
it was found that neuroticism predicted job strain and it was
positively related with all the stress variables. In the case of
police officers, officials who demonstrated higher levels of
neuroticism are not only vulnerable to stress but they also
engage in a negative appraisal of work environment. This
further increases the level of perceived work stress
(Garbarino et al. 2013b) and may lead to physical fatigue,
emotional exhaustion, and cognitive weariness (Louw
2014). Hence, we propose the following hypothesis.
Hypothesis 1: Higher levels of neuroticism would be pos-
itively related with emotional exhaustion and deperson-
alization and negatively with personal accomplishment.
Several studies have reflected upon the fact that con-
scientious individuals are efficient in their performance.
Conscientiousness is the top predictor of high job per-
formance and success (Schmidt and Hunter 1998).
Conscientious individuals are hardworking, persistent,
responsible, planful, and organized (Barrick and Mount
1991; Salgado 1997). Conscientiousness is positively re-
lated to task performance and long-term career perfor-
mance (Judge et al. 1999; O nes et al. 1993).
Conscientious individuals engage less in counterproduc-
tive behaviors and more in efficient job-seeking behav-
iors (Hogan and Ones 1997; Judge et al. 1999;
Wanberg et al. 1996). The findings of several studies
show that conscientiousness is a predictor of low burn-
out (Anvari et al. 2011; Burnett et al. 2019). Morgan
(2008) found that conscientiousness was negatively re-
lated with emotional exhaustion and cynicism, and pos-
itively related with professional efficacy. Hence, we
propose the following relationship between conscien-
tiousness and the dimensions of burnout.
Hypothesis 2: Higher level of conscientiousness would be
negatively related with emotional exhaustion and deper-
sonalization and positively related with personal
accomplishment.
Agreeableness means cooperation. Individuals who are
high on this trait crave social harmony. They are supportive
and honest in relationships (Newman et al. 1999; Mc Crae and
Costa 1991). Individuals high on this trait show more positive
emotions and suppress negative emotions as they always give
value to social relationships (Yazdani 2013). Individuals high
on agreeableness would seek for more favorable outcomes
from the social environment. Thus, they experience less burn-
out than their counterparts.
Hypothesis 3: Higher level of agreeableness would be
negatively related with emotional exhaustion and deper-
sonalization and positively related with personal
accomplishment.
Extraverted individuals are cheerful, fun-loving, and enthu-
siastic. Extraverted individuals, in addition to being more so-
ciable than the introverts, are more sensitive to the rewards
inherent in the social interaction in a way that would benefit
them and aid in the accomplishment of their task (Mc Crae
and Costa 1991; Smith 2000). It has been argued that individ-
uals high on extraversion experience work more positively
than their counterparts (Lau et al. 2006). Extraverted individ-
uals adopt an energetic approach to life and display sub-traits
like assertiveness, sociability, gregariousness, excitement-
seeking, and positive emotionality. Hence, for a given set of
stressors in the work environment, it is likely that individuals
with high levels of extraversion would be less influenced and
would report a more positive experience out of their work as
compared to those with lower levels of extraversion. Hence,
we propose the following hypothesis.
Hypothesis 4: Higher levels of extraversion would be
negatively related with emotional exhaustion and deper-
sonalization and positively related with personal
accomplishment.
Individuals high on openness to experience are crea-
tive, curious, imaginative, original, and flexible in think-
ing (Preece and Delongis 2005; Yazdani 2013). Such in-
dividuals try not to hide their feelings and try to be orig-
inal at every service encounter (Prentice 2008; Smith and
Canger 2004). Openness to experience is related with re-
flectiveness and a need to enlarge experience; hence, in-
dividuals high on this dimension are experience-seeking
individuals (McCrae 1993). Such individuals always try
to learn something meaningful from stressful experiences.
These individuals use their broad mindedness to deal with
stressful events (Goldberg 1993; Mc Crae and Costa
1991; Watson and Hubbard 1996). Individuals high on
openness to experience get less stressed because they per-
ceive stressful situations more as an experience to reflect
upon and as less threatening.

Hypothesis 5: Higher openness to experience would be
negatively related with emotional exhaustion, deperson-
alization and positively related with personal
accomplishment.
Contextual Factors Affecting Burnout
According to Pfeffer (2018), workplace activities can increase
stress, negatively affect well-being, and incur higher health-
care costs. Hence, management should introduce practices
which can either mitigate stress or provide ways which can
increase well-being and reduce health-care costs.
Beyond an individual’s personality, there are several con-
textual factors which affect one’s experience in response to
environmental stressors. Prior studies have investigated some
of these factors specifically in the context of the police force.
For example, job involvement and job satisfaction were found
to be negatively related with burnout. In other words, psycho-
logical identification with the job and liking one’s job mitigat-
ed the effects of burnout among Indian police officers
(Lambert et al. 2017). Tyagi and Dhar (2014) found that work-
load was positively related with job stress among the police
officers of Uttarakhand, a state in North India. On the other
hand, they found that perceived organizational support was
inversely related to job stress. It was stated that the support
system for the police officers was weak and the officers did
not receive support from their seniors and fellow workers.
Duxbury and Halinski (2017) found that role overload was a
significant source of stress for police personnel.
Studies have found that police officers belonging to the
lower rank feel a sense of powerlessness (Bawa and Kaur
2011). Additionally, studies have found that lower rank offi-
cers experience pressure from seniors, are subjected to verbal
and physical abuse, and are sometime forced to do non-
mandated work of various authority figures like tending ani-
mal or crops, cleaning personal toilet, or accompanying chil-
dren to and from school (Human Rights Watch 2009; Jauregui
2009; Tandon 2007). These factors can amplify frustration,
produce negligible to minimal organizational identification,
and lower one’s control over job, thus contributing to the
experience of burnout. With such aspects defining police work
in India, we believe examining job control and organizational
identification are likely to have an impact on burnout.
Job control refers to the extent of control over one’s job re-
garding how to schedule one’s work, and how the task must be
done (Paul 2002). Karasek (2008) defined job control or job
decision latitude as one’s ability to control one’s activities and
skill usage. A few studies (e.g., Lord 1996; Tsai et al. 2018) have
shown that police officers with more control over their work had
higher stress. However, most studies show the opposite. A meta-
analysis combining results from multiple studies on workplace
J Police Crim Psych
stressors found that low control over one’s job and having little
freedom to take decisions as one of the ten prominent workplace
exposures affect human health and longevity (Goh et al. 2015).
Similarly, jobs with low control were positively related with
increased coronary heart disease mortality (Marmot et al.
1997). Higher control over one’s work is related with less emo-
tional exhaustion and depersonalization and more increased
sense of personal accomplishment (Lee et al. 2011).
Employees with low job control feel helpless, frustrated, and
underappreciated (Medibank 2008) and low job control was re-
lated with high burnout (Taris et al. 2005). On the other hand,
increased job control decreased burnout and cynicism (Hatinen
et al. 2007). Among police officers, it was seen that the relation-
ship between supervisor feedback and burnout was fully medi-
ated by psychological empowerment (Zhenxing et al. 2017).
Low job control also affects mental health and is related to de-
pression and anxiety (Spell and Arnold 2007). Not being able to
control one’s work environment sends a message of powerless-
ness regardless of formal status or job salary (Pfeffer 2018).
Officials of lower rank feel that they do not possess the informa-
tion to perform a task adequately; hence, they consider them-
selves powerless and suffer from feelings of worthlessness
(Bawa and Kaur 2011).
In a longitudinal study of 2 years, it was found that low job
control had a direct effect on the health of the employees. Low
control and high environmental stress had a cumulative effect
on the physical activity and the health status of the employees
(Smith et al. 1994). Spector (1986) in a meta-analysis of
eighty-eight studies on job control found that individuals with
high control are found to be more committed, satisfied, in-
volved, and motivated. Such individuals experienced less role
ambiguity and conflict and demonstrated lower level of phys-
ical symptoms and emotional distress. They were less likely to
quit the job. This leads us to suggest that job control is an
important job aspect that can impact burnout.
Hypothesis 6: Low job control is positively related with
emotional exhaustion and depersonalization.
In addition to job control, the other factor that is likely to
have an impact on experienced burnout is organizational iden-
tification. “Organizational identification is a form of social
identification, whereby a person comes to view himself or
herself as a member of a social entity the organization”
(Boros 2008, p. 12). Members vary in how much they identify
with their work organization, but when they strongly identify
with the work organization, the attributes they use to define
the organization also define them (Garbett 1988). “A person is
strongly identified with an organization when (1) his or her
identity as an organization member is more salient than alter-
native identities, and (2) his or her self-concept has many of
the same characteristics he or she believes define the organi-
zation as a social group” (Dutton et al. 1994, p. 239).
J Police Crim Psych
Strong identification with the organizations results in high
job satisfaction, and more investment of effort in
accomplishing a task (Efraty and Wolfe 1988). Individuals
having strong identification with their organization demon-
strate higher levels of work engagement even when their work
load is high, and hence organizational identification mini-
mizes the impact of burnout (Guarana 2010) as well as re-
duces turnover intentions (Cole and Bruch 2006). Ashforth
and Humphrey (1993) proposed that emotional dissonance
would be reduced if an employee strongly identifies with the
display norms of the organization. Strong identification with
the organization helps the employees to act out normally with-
out voluntarily engaging in the regulation strategies. Hence,
we propose the following hypothesis.
Hypothesis 7: High organizational identification is nega-
tively related with loss of personal accomplishment di-
mension of burnout.
Job Control and Organizational Identification
as Moderators
We have hypothesized here that neuroticism predicts higher
level of burnout. Earlier studies have also established the same
relationship (Alarcon et al. 2009; Garbarino et al. 2013b;
Swider and Zimmerman 2010). Since neuroticism is the only
personality trait which predicts higher levels of burnout, we
wanted to investigate if contextual factors like job control and
organizational identification can moderate the relationship be-
tween neuroticism and burnout. Individuals high on emotional
stability (low neuroticism) exercise greater control over their
work, and experience significantly reduced effort in physical
and mental activities of law enforcement activities (Garbarino
et al. 2013b). It is likely that job control and organizational
identification will both impact the extent to which neuroticism
leads to burnout. In other words, increased job control and
organizational identification can diminish the negative effect
of a stressor on burnout. In situations where job control and
organizational identification is higher, there is likely to be less
impact of an individual’s personality on burnout. Hence, we
propose the following hypotheses.
Hypothesis 8a: Job control will moderate the relationship
between neuroticism and burnout such that at higher
levels of job control, the relationship between neuroti-
cism and burnout will be weaker.
Hypothesis 8b: Organizational identification will
moderate the relationship between neuroticism and
burnout such that at higher levels of organizational
identification, the relationship between neuroticism
and burnout will be weaker.
Objectives and Hypotheses Formulation
The present study aims to study if personality traits predict
burnout among police officials of Kolkata, India. This study
also aims to investigate if certain aspects of job (job control
and organizational identification) predicted burnout among
the police officials. Lastly, in this study, we also studied if
job control and organizational identification moderated the
relationship between neuroticism and burnout.
Guided by previous findings, we have formulated hypoth-
eses for formal testing. Hypotheses 1 through 5 examine the
relationship between personality and burnout. Hypotheses 6
and 7 examine the relationship between job control, organiza-
tional identification, and burnout. Hypotheses 8a and 8b in-
vestigate the moderating effect of job control and organiza-
tional identification on the neuroticism and burnout
relationship.
Method
Sample Design
This study was conducted among 152 police officials of the
Kolkata Police posted in different police stations in the city of
Kolkata located in eastern India. We collected data from indi-
viduals occupying three work levels, sub-inspectors (51 re-
spondents), assistant sub-inspectors (51 respondents), and
constables (50 respondents). The mean age of the participants
was 43.4 (SD = 9.34, minimum = 24, and maximum = 59) and
they had a mean work experience of 20.1 years. Except for
three respondents, the rest were all male. We collected data
from officials posted in different police stations within
Kolkata city. On average, data was collected from 15 (five
constables, five assistant sub-inspectors, and five sub-inspec-
tors) police officials each from the respective police stations.
To collect the data, we followed a systematic process. At
first, permission was taken from the Kolkata Police
Headquarters, Lalbazar. West Bengal state is in the eastern
part of India and Kolkata is the capital of West Bengal.
Presently, Kolkata covers an area of 185 km2 and Kolkata
Police is vested with the power of policing this metropolitan
city. Kolkata Police is one of the police forces of West Bengal
apart from the West Bengal Police.
A cover letter describing the purpose of our study, a copy
of the tools to be administered, and a formal letter with an
identification proof of the researcher seeking the permission
for the present study were addressed to the Joint
Commissioner of Kolkata Police, Crime Branch. All the doc-
uments submitted at the headquarters were then subjected to a
cross verification process. After verifying the documents,
meetings were conducted with different officials to give them
a clear picture of our study. Following the meetings,

permission was granted and letters from the Joint
Commissioner of Kolkata Police (Crime) and the Additional
Commissioner of Kolkata Police were dispatched to the eight
Regional Deputy Commissioners’ office to further initiate the
process of data collection. Meetings were conducted with the
respective Regional Deputy Commissioners to get permission
for conducting the study in police stations which came under
their control. According to their convenience, permission was
granted to conduct the study in some police stations which fell
under their jurisdiction. After the Deputy Commissioners
granted permission, invitations were sent to the respective
police stations. Permission was granted from the South divi-
sion, South-West division, South-East division, North and
North suburban division, East and East suburban division,
and the Central division. The Deputy Commissioners granted
permission for 12 police stations. Only for the South Division,
the data collection was organized at its regional head office
where officers from different police stations posted under the
jurisdiction of South division came and participated in the
study. Further permissions were taken from the officer-in-
charge of the police stations to get the consent from him and
to facilitate the process of data collection.
Prior to data collection, we informed all the participants
about the purpose of the study by providing a cover letter
describing the study in detail. Participants indicated their con-
sent to be part of the study by providing their signature. We
assured participants of complete anonymity. We collected da-
ta using standardized questionnaires which were anonymous
after we received the participants’ written consent.
Measures
To measure the personality traits, Big-Five mini markers scale
developed by Saucier (1994) was used. It is the shorter version
of Goldberg’s (1993) Unipolar Big-Five markers. The mini
markers contained forty words to measure five factors of per-
sonality, namely, extraversion, neuroticism, conscientious-
ness, openness to experience, and agreeableness. The items
were rated on a 9-point scale where 1 indicated “extremely
inaccurate” and 9 indicated “extremely accurate.”
For burnout, we used a 22-item scale developed by
Maslach and Jackson (1981). It assesses burnout in a wide
range of human service workers. The MBI scale is often used
by several researchers to study burnout in India because of its
high validity (Lambert et al. 2017; Langade et al. 2016). The
items were measured on a 6-point scale where 0 indicated
“never” and 6 indicated “everyday.”
To measure organizational identification, we used a single-
item graphic scale (Shamir and Kark 2004). There were seven
rectangles, and in each rectangle, there were two circles out of
which one represented the participant himself/herself and oth-
er circle represented the organization. In each rectangle, the
circles are overlapping differently. In the first rectangle, the
J Police Crim Psych
circles are completely separated and in the last rectangle, the
circles are totally overlapping which indicated complete iden-
tification with the organization.
For job control, we used a three-item scale developed
Steptoe (2001). The items were measured on a 4-point scale
where 1 indicated “strongly disagree” and 4 indicated “strong-
ly agree.” The scale is used to assess perceived job control
which measures the extent to which one can decide over and
control the aspects of job. Given the purpose of this study, we
found this scale useful to measure job control.
Besides these, the demographic details that we measured
were age, gender, marital status, educational qualification,
years of work experience, working hours, and job position
(rank). Job position (rank) was measured as an ordinal vari-
able having three levels—1 = constable, 2 = assistant sub-in-
spector, 3 = inspector.
Since most of the respondents were fluent in Bengali, we
back-translated all the scales. Following Carlson (2000), we
used the services of two independent translators. The original
English text was translated into the native language (Bengali)
by an English teacher teaching in a higher secondary govern-
ment school. Once this translation was done, the Bengali-
translated text was again re-translated into English by an
English professor of a Government college. After the back
translation was completed, the original text was compared
with the translated text. The equivalence of the comparisons
was judged by us before the translated set of text was accept-
ed. Cronbach’s alpha for the given translation was computed
using IBM SPSS for all the scales used in the study. The
Cronbach’s alpha coefficients are presented in Table 1. The
Cronbach’s alpha for all the scales ranged from 0.46 to 0.75.
The Cronbach’s alpha for job control, emotional exhaustion,
personal accomplishment, depersonalization, extraversion,
agreeableness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and openness
to experience are 0.73, 0.75, 0.63, 0.63, 0.46, 0.54, 0.56, 0.49,
and 0.53 respectively.
Results
The means, standard deviations, correlations, and Cronbach’s
alpha are reported in Table 1. Most of the results are in the
predicted directions. For example, conscientiousness and
agreeableness were positively related with increased sense of
the personal accomplishment dimension of burnout and neg-
atively related with the emotional exhaustion and depersonal-
ization dimension of burnout. Neuroticism predicted higher
levels of emotional exhaustion.
We performed regression analysis to test the hypotheses.
Basic assumptions of multiple regression were examined and
were found to be in order. Specifically, we checked normality
using skewness which was within acceptable limits. We tested
collinearity statistics to check instances of multi-collinearity,
J Police Crim Psych

Table 1 Correlation matrix representing the Pearson coefficients, mean, SDs, and Cronbach’s alpha of different variables

Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

1. Working hours 11.7 2.63 ___

2. Job position (rank) 2.0 0.81 0.23** ___
3. Org. identification 5.4 1.5 − 0.05 0.11 __
4.. Job control 6.8 2.0 0.01 0.28** 0.23** (0.73)
5. Emotional exhaustion 31.0 12.08 0.16* 0.06 − 0.09 − 0.17** (0.75)
6. Personal 43.0 8.92 0.08 0.17* 0.21** 0.10 − 0.10 (0.63)
accomplishment
7. Depersonalization 13.4 7.17 0.07 0.10 − 0.04 − 0.04 0.57** − 0.11 (0.63)
8. Extraversion 28.7 7.1 0.24** 0.32** 0.04 0.07 − 0.09 0.11 − 0.12 (0.46)
9. Agreeableness 42.0 7.6 0.10 0.12 0.09 0.01 − 0.23** 0.27** − 0.34** 0.27** (0.54)
10. Neuroticism 55.9 8.7 0.02 0.10 − 0.08 0.15 0.16* − 0.06 0.14 − 0.09 − 0.11 (0.56)
11. Conscientiousness 20.4 7.4 0.04 0.10 0.03 0.06 − 0.37** 0.23** − 0.43** 0.28** 0.16* − 0.13 (0.49)
12. Openness to experience 35.2 8.4 0.02 0.23** 0.16* 0.05 − 0.02 0.18 − 0.11 0.20* 0.43** 0.12 0.34** (0.53)

Cronbach’s alphas are in italics

N = 152. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01. Job position—1 = constable, 2 = assistant sub-inspector, 3 = inspector

and variance inflation factor (VIF) was less than the threshold
level. Also, to check auto-correlation, we examined the
Durbin-Watson test statistic which was less than 2.5. Thus,
there were no instances of multi-collinearity and auto-
correlation respectively.
Table 2 shows the output of regression analyses to test the
hypotheses. Neuroticism predicted emotional exhaustion not
depersonalization. This partially supports Hypothesis 1.
Conscientiousness negatively related with emotional exhaus-
tion and depersonalization which supports Hypothesis 2.
Agreeableness predicted higher levels of personal accom-
plishment which supports Hypothesis 3. Extraversion did
not emerge out as a potential predictor of burnout. Thus,
Hypothesis 4 was not supported. Openness to experience
was not found to be related with the dimensions of burnout.
Thus, Hypothesis 5 was not supported. Among the contextual
factors, we found that job control was negatively related to
emotional exhaustion, and organizational identification was
positively related to personal accomplishment, and hence,
Hypothesis 6 and Hypothesis 7 were also supported.
We used Baron and Kenny’s (1986) procedure to test the
effect of the moderators (job control and organizational iden-
tification) on the relationship between neuroticism and burn-
out. In performing the moderated regression analyses at first,
the main effect of the predictors and the moderators were
controlled before determining the moderating effect of job
control and organizational identification on the neuroticism-
burnout association. At first, the main effect of neuroticism
and job control was entered in the first block of regression
analyses and the interaction term was entered in the second
block to determine the moderating effect on the said predictor-
outcome association. In the first block of regression analysis,
it was found that the main effect of neuroticism and job con-
trol predicted emotional exhaustion (β = 0.195, p = 0.016; β =

Table 2 Predictors of dimensions

of burnout Emotional exhaustion Depersonalization Personal accomplishment

Extraversion
Agreeableness 0.092†
†
Neuroticism 0.121
Conscientiousness − 0.362** − 0.362**
Openness to experience
Job control − 0.170*
Organizational identification 0.170*
F 4.998** 5.555** 2.906**
Adjusted R2 0.156 0.174 0.081

Values are standardized regression coefficients and blank spaces indicate that the relationship is non-significant
N = 152. † p < 0.10; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01
 J Police Crim Psych

− 0.207, p = 0.011). Neuroticism also partially predicted de-
personalization (β = 0.151, p = 0.068). Job control had no re-
lationship with depersonalization.
In the second block, the independent predictors and the
interaction term were entered. Neuroticism and job control
significantly predicted emotional exhaustion (β = 0.196, p =
0.014; β = − 0.192, p = 0.016 respectively). We found that the
interaction term of neuroticism and job control was negatively
related with emotional exhaustion (β = − 0.175, p = 0.027).
So, it can be said that when job control is high, the association
between neuroticism and burnout is weak, and when job con-
trol is low, the association between neuroticism and burnout is
strong.
Regarding depersonalization, neuroticism partially predict-
ed depersonalization (β = 0.151, p = 0.064). Job control did
not emerge as a significant predictor of depersonalization.
The interaction term of neuroticism and job control with de-
personalization was partially significant in the hypothesized
direction (β = − 0.155, p = 0.055).
Results did not show any significant relationship between
the neuroticism, job control, and personal accomplishment
dimension of burnout. Also, results did not show any signifi-
cant relationship between neuroticism, organizational identi-
fication, and burnout dimensions. Thus, Hypothesis 8a was
supported and there was not enough support for Hypothesis
8b. The results of the regression are shown in Table 3.
Discussion
In this study, we focused on the fact that under the same
working conditions, not all individuals are equally vulnerable
towards developing stress or burnout. Hence, a scientific in-
quiry if personality traits predicted burnout was warranted.
We also focused on how certain aspects of job like, job
control, and organizational identification influences burnout.
Finally, we also studied if individuals with certain personality
types, such as neuroticism, can sustain during the periods of
high burnout if aspects of job like, job control, and organiza-
tional identification are introduced. As policing is a stressful
profession (Bawa and Kaur 2011; Lambert et al. 2017,
2018;Ranta and Sud 2008; Shekhar and Kizhakekkara
2013), the findings of this study can be useful to lessen the
impact of burnout. The study specifically aimed to find out
which of the personality traits are susceptible to burnout and in
which context the development of burnout can be controlled.
Our results are in line with those of previous studies
(Anvari et al. 2011; Bakker et al. 2006; Barrick and Mount
1991; Morgan 2008; Piedmont 1993; Salgado 1997). High
neuroticism predicts emotional exhaustion. The findings of
the present study are in line with the findings of the past
researchers (Alarcon et al. 2009; Goldberg 1993; Mc Crae
and John 1992; Swider and Zimmerman 2010; Watson and
Hubbard 1996). Individuals high on neuroticism suffer more
from burnout (Garbarino et al. 2013b; Louw 2014). One rea-
son may be that these individuals tend to behave as if they
have already accepted failure. They appraise stressful situa-
tions as threatening and fail to cope up with the stress; hence,
they are left exhausted (Alarcon et al. 2009; Mc Crae and John
1992; Swider and Zimmerman 2010). Individuals with higher
levels of neuroticism tend to experience more negative emo-
tions such as anxiety, disgust, and fear (Roberts and Kendler
1999; Teven 2007). Such individuals are high on irritability
which might make it difficult to maintain smooth interperson-
al interaction with their clients. (Burnett et al. 2019; Garbarino
et al. 2013b). We expected that the dispositional effect of
neuroticism along with situational context in terms of poor
working conditions prevailing in police might result in deper-
sonalization. In this study, neuroticism was not related with
depersonalization. However, future studies can be conducted

Table 3 Job control as moderator

in predicting relationship between Emotional Exhaustion Depersonalization
neuroticism and burnout
β SE Sig. β SE Sig.

Step 1
Neuroticism 0.195 0.138 0.016 0.151 0.084 0.068
Job control − 0.207 0.482 0.011
Adjusted R2 0.056 0.011
Step 2
Neuroticism 0.196 0.136 0.014 0.151 0.083 0.064
Job control − 0.192 0.477 0.016
Neuroticism × job control − 0.175 0.895 0.027 − 0.155 0.546 0.055
Adjusted R2 0.081 0.029

Blank spaces indicate that the relationship is non-significant

N = 152
J Police Crim Psych
to test the relationship between neuroticism and
depersonalization.
The results of the present study show that personality var-
iables are significant predictors of burnout. Individuals who
are high on agreeableness and conscientiousness are high on
personal accomplishment and are low on the other two dimen-
sions of burnout (emotional exhaustion and depersonaliza-
tion). Conscientious individuals are planful and organized,
and on the other hand, agreeable individuals are friendly and
cooperative, and they value relationships. Individuals belong-
ing to such personality trait are proactive. Both types of per-
sonality (conscientiousness and agreeableness) engage in ap-
propriate coping mechanism. Adequate planning and perceiv-
ing a stressful situation as less threatening make them less
exhausted and low on depersonalization.
Contextual Factors Predicting Burnout
In line with earlier studies, we found that low job control is
related with emotional exhaustion. In other words, working in
an atmosphere where everything is highly structured and not
being able to plan one’s work, or exercise freedom over one’s
work, can make an official exhausted. Past findings also
reflected the same. Studies have found that low job control
is related with high burnout (Hatinen et al. 2007; Taris et al.
2005). Studies have found that low job control and high envi-
ronmental stress had a cumulative effect on the physical ac-
tivity and the health status of the employees (Smith et al.
1994).
Earlier researchers have also concluded that strong identi-
fication with the organization results in high job satisfaction
and task accomplishment (Efraty and Wolfe 1988). Strong
identification minimizes the impact of burnout and demon-
strates higher levels of work engagement even if the workload
is high (Guarana 2010). Organizational identification is an
important variable to achieve the desired level of personal
accomplishment. In this study, we have not investigated the
interaction effects of organizational identification and job
control on burnout. Knight and Haslam (2010) found that
increased managerial control (low autonomy) reduced organi-
zational identification which in turn reduced job satisfaction.
Future studies can be conducted to study how organizational
identification with job control can influence burnout.
We also found that job control moderated the relationship
between neuroticism and burnout. The finding of the present
study bears similarity with the earlier findings (Garbarino
et al. 2013b; Jackman et al. 2019; Louw 2014). It can be said
that higher job control will help the individuals high on neu-
roticism to endure stress without much affecting their mental
health. High job control will thus help to neutralize the effect
of neuroticism on burnout. Job control will help to regulate the
optimal functioning of neurotic individuals in high burnout
professions like policing where such individuals will be less
likely to develop mental disorders like depression and anxiety.
Other Significant Findings
Higher job position (rank) is positively related with long work
hours, personal accomplishment, and high job control. With
each increase in job level (rank) comes more responsibility
and control over the job. The results of the present study
reflected that sub-inspectors have high job control followed
by the assistant sub-inspectors and the constables. When an
official can exercise control over his or her job, he or she has
the freedom and the responsibility over deciding how he or
she will execute the work. And once they are successful in
planning and executing the work, they can easily accomplish
their work goals they had set for themselves. Bawa and Kaur
(2011) found that officials of lower rank consider themselves
powerless and suffer from feelings of worthlessness because
they do not possess adequate work-related information.
Long working hours can make an official more exhausted.
The long hours of work with no work resource available high-
light why, in the present study, long working hours are related
positively with emotional exhaustion. The findings of the
present study mirror the findings of past studies which had
confirmed that long working hours are an important job stress-
or which leads to many problems like developing physiolog-
ical disorders, family problems, and psychological problems
(Deb et al. 2008; Gaikwad 2012; Frauke et al. 1997;Tharkar
et al. 2008; Vila 2006; Violanti 1996). In police work, no fixed
work hours are set. Even though the work hours are set ac-
cording to the governmental regulations, still officials cannot
estimate when they will be able to end their day at work. One
reason which was repeatedly highlighted for long working
hours was the shortage of manpower.
Individuals demonstrating higher levels of openness to ex-
perience identify more with their organization in comparison
to their counterparts. Such individuals are more flexible and
would readily identify with their organizations. These individ-
uals are more prone to enlarge experiences rather than getting
cognitively fixed. Such individuals always try to learn some-
thing meaningful from stressful experiences. They use their
broad-mindedness to deal with stressful events which in turn
help them achieve higher levels of personal accomplishment
(Goldberg 1993; Mc Crae and Costa 1991; Watson and
Hubbard 1996).
Limitations
This study has some limitations which should be taken into
consideration. First, this study had heavily depended on
self-report questionnaires. Second, a convenience sample
of police officials was used for the data collection. Thus,

there remains a doubt regarding the generalizability of the
present findings. Third, the response rate was very low at
some police stations which led to a reduced sample size.
Since the manpower was low at many police stations,
many officials had to leave to meet their on-duty official
obligations. In such cases, all the incomplete forms were
discarded. This posed a serious limitation to findings of the
study. Fourth, the findings of this study could be
constrained to the specific kind of occupation like policing.
Fifth, organizational identification was measured by a
single-item scale. Sixth, the gender perspective was not
highlighted in the present study, since almost all the re-
spondents were men. Sixth, the Cronbach’s alpha values
for the personality variables were not satisfactory. Some
factors like inconsistent situational settings in police sta-
tions and length of the test might affect the reliability.
Finally, there are a myriad of other variables, like job dis-
satisfaction, leadership, job attitude, workload, or role am-
biguity not studied here, that could have possibly had an
impact on burnout.
Practical Implications
Despite some limitations, this study provides important prac-
tical implications given the dire situation in the police depart-
ments in India. Given the high levels of stress and burnout
among police force, the findings of our study provide some
concrete steps to address this malaise. First, given the high
number of external stressors in police work, the recruitment
for police work must be done carefully. Special attention must
be paid to the personality characteristics of the individuals,
and care must be taken to ensure that those with a stress-
prone personality, if selected, are properly trained to learn
how to recognize and manage their own stress. Several stress
management interventions (Ivancevich et al. 1990; Mulla and
Vedamuthachar 2014) may be adopted to reduce stress in the
workforce. Mental health professionals like psychiatrists, psy-
chologists, and counselors should be appointed who can iden-
tify and help to minimize stress in police force. Various stress
management intervention strategies, like practicing medita-
tion, playing games, or creating social support groups at work,
can help such individuals to maximize their well-being (Toch
2002). Alternatively, as the findings of the study suggest, of-
ficials should be able to access more control over their job
which will help them to balance out stress in a healthier
way. Moreover, it is essential for police personnel to feel a
sense of control over their job and their immediate environ-
ment. Police personnel must feel empowered so that they can
make substantial decisions within their area of expertise and
they must feel that their ideas and suggestions are heard by the
higher ups. Finally, it is important that police personnel feel a
J Police Crim Psych
sense of pride and identification with their job. These steps
will go a long way to ameliorate the current sorry situation.
Conclusion
Police work is a profession characterized by high job stress by
always being exposed to certain stressful events. This research is
a small attempt to study how individual differences can impact
the experience of burnout via the presence (absence) of certain
contextual factors like job control and organizational identifica-
tion. Our findings suggest that some personality traits, like con-
scientiousness and agreeableness, are successful predictors of
reduced burnout and neuroticism as predictor of increased burn-
out. Moreover, certain aspects of job like job control and organi-
zational identification play an important role in combating the
negative outcomes of burnout. Organizational identification en-
hances personal accomplishment, while low job control leads to
emotional exhaustion. Thus, organizations in service work must
put in place systems to ensure that individuals identify strongly
with the organization and perceive a high degree of job control.
To conclude, findings of our study serve as a valid base for taking
initiatives with respect to managing burnout which will help the
police force to restore its vigor in the best possible way.
Compliance with Ethical Standards
Ethical Statement All procedures performed in studies involving hu-
man participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the
institution and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amend-
ments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained
from all individual participants included in the study.
Conflict of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of
interest.
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