Association of adaptive and maladaptive narcissism with personal burnout: findings from a cross-sectional study

Burnout is associated with poor mental and physical functioning and high costs forsocieties. Personality attributes may critically increase the risk of personal burnout. We specificallyexamined whether narcissism associates with personal burnout in a working population. Westudied n=1,461 employees (mean age 41.3 ± 9.4 yr, 52% men) drawn from a random sample of apharmaceutical company in Germany. All participants completed the personal burnout subscale ofthe Copenhagen Burnout Inventory and the Narcissistic Personality Inventory to assess maladaptive(entitlement/exploitativeness) and adaptive (leadership/authority) narcissism. In linear regressionanalysis, when mutually adjusting for the maladaptive and adaptive narcissism scales, higheradaptive narcissism was associated with lower burnout scores (ß = −0.04, p < 0.05), whereas highermaladaptive narcissism was associated with higher burnout scores (ß = 0.04, p < 0.05). Additionally,younger age (ß = −0.07), female gender (ß = 0.11), depressive symptoms (ß = 0.42), sleep problems(ß = 0.30), stress at work (ß = 0.23) and at home (ß = 0.09) were all independently associated withincreased burnout scores (all p-values < 0.01). Narcissistic personality attributes may play an importantrole in personal burnout. While maladaptive narcissism was associated with increased levels ofburnout symptoms, adaptive narcissism was associated with fewer burnout symptoms.