Autonomic feedback in stressful environments: How do individual differences in autonomic feedback relate to burnout, job performance, and job attitudes in salespeople?

Individual differences in autonomic feedback-the dispositional tendency to experience signs and symptoms of autonomic nervous system activity in response to positive and negative emotionally evocative stimuli-were hypothesized to relate to affective and behavioral job outcomes in occupations characterized by job stress because higher autonomic feedback would intensify reactions to emotional evocation. In a cross-sectional study of Dutch salespeople, individual differences in autonomic feedback were independent of role stress and yet were strongly and positively related to burnout and negatively related to extra-role performance and job satisfaction; they were also nonsignificantly and negatively related to in-role job performance. Further, when job stress was higher-high role stress or low managerial support-individual differences in autonomic feedback were more strongly related to burnout, especially emotional exhaustion.