Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve: The Experience of Burnout Among Child Welfare Workers Who are Cognitive Versus Emotional Personality Types

This study explores if child welfare workers who are predominantly cognitive in their personality type, rather than emotionally predominant, experience less burnout in their work. The thinking versus feeling and sensing versus intuition poles of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator were used to determine predominance in cognitive or emotional personality type and the Maslach Burnout Inventory was used to measure burnout. There was no statistical difference found on burnout scores based on personality type. These results have implications for child welfare organizations and on the recruitment and retention of a qualified work force. Selective recruitment based on personality type may not contribute to better retention of workers.