Work-Related Psychological Wellbeing: Testing the Balanced Affect Model among Anglican Clergy

Poor work-related psychological health and professional burnout remain issues of concern among clergy across denominations and across cultures. Maslach’s three-component model of burnout remains the most frequently employed conceptualization and measure in clergy research. Maslach proposes a sequential model of burnout. An alternative approach has been offered by the Francis Burnout Inventory that comprises two components. Francis proposes a balanced affect model of burnout according to which negative affect (emotional exhaustion) is offset by positive affect (satisfaction in ministry). This study draws on data provided by around 658 clergy serving in the Church of England to test this balanced affect model. Employing independent measures of burnout, the data demonstrated the significance of the interaction term between positive affect and negative affect in predicting individual differences in burnout. In other words, as positive affect increases the effects of negative affect decrease.