Burnout, Uncertainty, and the Desire for Social Comparison Among Nurses

Abstract

A study was conducted among 295 nurses to examine the interest in social comparison information, that is, the desire to learn more about the feelings and responses of others facing a similar situation. Occupational burnout, in particular emotional exhaustion, reduced personal accomplishment and uncertainty, had independent relationships with the interest in social comparison information. Comparison preferences were strongly upward; there was in general a stronger preference for information about others who were better off than for affiliation with such others. There was also a stronger preference for comparison with more experienced than with more competent others. However, better‐off others were avoided relatively more by those high in burnout, especially by those high in reduced personal accomplishment. The results are discussed in the context of social comparison as a way of coping with stress, and self‐improvement and self‐protection as motives for social comparison.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 77 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.