Psychological Counselors’ Emotional Competence And Its Relationship With Emotional Work And Job Burnout

The emotional competence of psychological counselor refers to the ability of a counselor to operate emotion in the counseling process,and it includes 2 dimensions of emotional management competence and emotional impact competence.Psychological counseling is a profession that helps people to solve mental problems,requires a high level of emotional involvement,and is one of high-risk occupations that are prone to job burnout.Therefore,the study of psychological counselor’s emotional competence and the relationship between emotional work,emotional competence,and job burnout is helpful.This study not only enriches the relevant research about psychological counselors’ competence,helps them to improve their emotional competence,but also helps them reduce job burnout so that they can work better.Based on the literature analyses and interviews,we compiled the questionnaire of emotional competence.And then we have 182 psychological counselors filled that questionnaire and discussed the relationship between emotional work,emotional competence,and job burnout.Main conclusions:(1)Psychological counselors’ emotional competence questionnaire contains 2 dimensions: emotional management competence and emotional impact competence.(2)Psychological counselors’ emotional competence has significant difference in demographic variables such as age,work time and training experience.(3)Psychological counselor’s emotional diversity was significantly negatively correlated with job burnout and reduced personal accomplishment,and was not significantly related to emotional exhaustion and cynicism;emotional expression rule was significantly related to job burnout and emotional exhaustion and cynicism,was not significantly related to reduced personal accomplishment;surface acting was significantly correlated with job burnout and its all dimensions;Deep acting is significantly related to job burnout and its dimensions of cynicism and reduced personal accomplishment,and not significantly related to emotional exhaustion.(4)Emotional competence plays a mediating role in the relationship between emotional work and job burnout.Specifically emotional competence plays a partly mediating role between the relationship of emotional diversity-reduced personal accomplishment,emotional expression rule-emotional exhaustion,emotional expression rule-cynicism and deep acting-cynicism.