Does Enthusiasm for Work Lead to Typical Burnout? A Three-Wave Panel Study with Caregivers

Previous studies have indicated that burnout arises from excessive enthusiasm for work. However, most psychological scale items that measure burnout focus solely on symptoms, and there is little evidence to indicate whether burnout symptoms can derive from enthusiasm for work. Therefore, we conducted a three-wave annual panel survey to assess whether scores on the Burnout Scale (BO scores), which focuses solely on symptoms, measure "typical burnout" caused by enthusiasm for work among Japanese caregivers. We used a cross-lagged and synchronous effects model and found that enthusiasm indicators negatively predicted BO scores. This result contradicts the assumptions of typical burnout. Subsequently, we classified enthusiasm indicators and BO scores through latent rank analysis. The results showed that people with high enthusiasm had low BO scores, and vice versa, indicating that very few people have typical burnout characteristics, and that the scale focuses only on symptoms and cannot measure typical burnout. Future studies should investigate the mechanism of typical burnout to distinguish between burnout and similarly presenting diagnoses.