Burnout and Loss Aversion: how high-value losses (HVLs) on the job can expose workers to high strain - Part 1

Burnout research has been applied to different aid fields, as well as to high stressful work sectors, and ultimately extended to most of the jobs. Still, in certain professions, the burnout issue is more relevant, especially when it comes to some subtended and unavoidable consequences, such as the loss experience. The stress caused by potential high-value losses (HVLs) in some jobs can be the primary source of suffering, detachment, cynicism, and strain at work. Moreover, decades of decision-making research, by using simple experimental tasks, has proved that a heterogeneity in loss aversion responses exists and is great. Individual differences may reflect a stable dispositional characteristic in avoiding at all costs consequences of HVLs stress, which could be implicated in burnout development. Drawing on the conceptualizations of burnout and research on loss aversion, we designed two within-subject studies using experimental tasks for measuring loss avoidance, in two different sectors, all associated by potential HVLs (i.e. medical, financial). The aim of this research is to explore how individual differences related to loss aversion are associated with burnout and its components. Based on such results we longitudinally model the causality between loss aversion and burnout.