Northwestern Kellogg School of Management, United States
While curiosity is generally considered a positive workplace attribute, its effects on employee burnout, a consequential workplace outcome are unclear. We draw on the Job Resources-Demand Model and a multidimensional understanding of burnout to theorize how curiosity may influence employee experiences of burnout. Across four studies (three pre-registered), we show that experimentally inducing curiosity in a longitudinal design reduces and mitigates cynicism-based burnout but has no significant effect on exhaustion- or inefficiency- based burnout. We demonstrated this pattern of findings in a month-long field experiment of college interns across different U.S. colleges and industries (Study 1) as well as in two two-week-long experiments of full-time workers across various job roles and industries (Studies 2 and 3B). Additionally, we find that learning goal orientation mediates the relationship between curiosity and cynicism-based burnout (Studies 3A and 3B). By experimentally manipulating curiosity in the context of everyday work and tracking its effects over time, our research offers valuable insights into the role of curiosity in the workplace.
