I Can Bear Feeling Your Pain Because I Also Feel Your Joy: Connecting with Others’ Positive Emotions Protects Against the Burnout-Inducing Effects of Connecting with Others’ Negative Emotions

One contributor to job-related burnout is strong and repeated connection with others’ negative emotions. But, what about connection with others’ positive emotions? In two different high-stress professions we showed that whereas individuals’ dispositional levels of negative empathy were associated with greater burnout, dispositional positive empathy was associated with decreased burnout.