Christina Maslach | |
|---|---|
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| Born | (1946-01-21)January 21, 1946 (age 79) |
| Education | Radcliffe College (BA) Stanford University (PhD) |
| Occupations |
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| Known for | Stopping theStanford prison experiment |
| Spouse | |
Christina Maslach (born January 21, 1946)[1] is an Americansocial psychologist andprofessor emerita ofpsychology at theUniversity of California, Berkeley,[2] known for her research onoccupational burnout.[3] She is a co-author of theMaslach Burnout Inventory[4] and Areas of Worklife Survey.[5] Early in her professional career, Maslach was instrumental in stopping theStanford prison experiment.[6] In 1997, she was awarded the U.S. Professor of the Year.
Maslach graduated fromBerkeley High School (California) (1963),Radcliffe College (1967) and earned aPh.D. in psychology atStanford University (1971).[7] After receiving her Ph.D., Maslach joined the psychology department at Berkeley as an assistant professor.[2]
Her critique of theStanford prison experiment persuaded investigatorPhilip Zimbardo (later her husband) to stop the experiment after only six days.[6] The experience also shaped Maslach's later career, particularly her interest inoccupational burnout[8] as a response to unavoidable stress.[9] Maslach and Zimbardo married in 1972, a year after the study.[10]
In 1981, Maslach and Susan E. Jackson authored theMaslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) to assess an individual's experience of occupational burnout in human services settings.[4] She later developed alternative versions of the original MBI to be used to assess education settings (1986) and general occupational settings (1996).[11] More than 30 years later, in 2014, the Maslach Burnout Inventory was still being cited as "the mainstream measure for burnout".[12]
From 1988 to 1989, she was president of theWestern Psychological Association (WPA). Since 2001, she has beenvice provost for undergraduate education at the University of California, Berkeley.[7]
In 1991, Maslach was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science. She is also a Fellow of theAmerican Psychological Association[7] and of the WPA.[13]
At Berkeley, Maslach has received the Distinguished Teaching Award and the Social Sciences Service Award.[14] In 1997, she was named the U.S. Professor of the Year by theCouncil for Advancement and Support of Education and theCarnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1997.[15] In 2008, Maslach won the WPA Outstanding Teaching Award.[13]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)In lectures they frequently discuss the moment when Maslach argued with Zimbardo in the parking lot, which Zimbardo describes as an act of heroism, because she stood up for her principles even though she knew the consequence might be losing his and his colleagues' approval—and ending a relationship she cared about.
Maslach walked into the mock prison on the evening of the fifth day. Having just received her doctorate from Stanford and starting an assistant professorship at Berkeley, she had agreed to do subject interviews the next day and had come down the night before to familiarize herself with the experiment.
The clearest influence the study had on me was that it raised some really serious questions about how people cope with extremely emotional, difficult situations, especially when it's part of their job—when they have to manage people or take care of them or rehabilitate them. So I started interviewing people. I started with some prison guards in a real prison, and talked to them about their jobs and how they understood what they were doing...I interviewed people who worked in hospitals, in the ER. After a while I realized there was a rhythm and pattern emerging, and when I described it to someone they said, "I don't know what it's called in other professions, but in our occupation we call it 'burnout.'
The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is the mainstream measure for burnout.
