A burnout is a psychological state of mind in which a person becomes emotionally and physically drained, and does not have the capability or energy to achieve anything anymore. In the Netherlands, about 1 in 7 employees are experiencing symptoms of burnout, which amounts to around 140,000 people diagnosed with burnout every year (CBS, 2019). Burnouts are everywhere. We see them in our colleagues, in our families, and sometimes even within ourselves. When people fall into a burnout, it usually takes an extensive amount of time to recover. One reason is that there is an inconsistency of diagnostic criteria that can lead to the delayed diagnosis of burnouts. Burnouts vary per person and per workplace. The time, money, and energy that then has to be invested in the recovery of a burnout illustrate that burnout has an enormous personal, societal, and economic impact. Bloakes is an intuitive marketing research company that is specialized in using implicit measures to improve branding strategies for their clients. Implicit measures are tools that detect subconscious and intuitive decisions before your brain has time to process the stimulus fully. Due to the difficulty of diagnosing a burnout and possibly to the delayed diagnosis, looking at the subconscious, fast response decision making (Kanheman, 2011), when participants respond to questions about work and life could aid in better recognition of burnouts. Considering this, Bloakes teamed up with us to understand whether their implicit tools could be used to predict burnouts in an aim to prevent them.
