Investigation of the relationship between personality traits and burnout levels of individuals: A comparative analysis in the scope of Big Five and HEXACO personality models

The personality concept has an important place in individuals' lives. Personality traits affect individuals' attitudes and relationships both in their private and working lives, direct the way they interpret and react to the circumstances they experience, and can affect both their own lives and the lives of those around them. Furthermore, burnout is an important phenomenon of the modern age, especially for employees, and is experienced by many individuals. Burnout, a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion caused by long-term involvement in situations that are emotionally demanding, also has a significant impact on individuals' lives, like personality. These two concepts' effects on employees and businesses make it important to investigate them. In this context, the aim of this study is to examine the relationship between the personality traits and burnout levels of individuals. The research was carried out comparatively within the scope of the Big Five and HEXACO personality models. Data of research, in which the quantitative method was used, were collected by the online survey method. The sample of the research consists of 514 academics working at Akdeniz University, Burdur Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, and Süleyman Demirel University. As a result of the research, a negative and significant relationship was found between openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, emotional stability personality traits of the Big Five model, and burnout level. In the HEXACO model, a negative and significant correlation was found between honesty-humility, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and burnout level. Furthermore, a positive and significant correlation was found between emotionality and burnout level. However, it was observed that the personality traits of the Big Five model generally had higher correlation coefficients with the burnout level. In the study, it was found that burnout levels differed significantly in terms of gender, title, university, and research field. It was also determined that the elements of injustice, negative relationships, workload, and mobbing could cause burnout, and it was seen that the participants used the methods of having hobbies, perseverance, positive thinking, and patience in order to cope with burnout. The originality of this study is that it is one of the few studies comparing the Big Five model and alternative personality models.