Psychosocial Risk Factors and Burnout Among Teachers: Can Emotional Intelligence Make a Difference?

Teaching is a complex profession that demands simultaneous cognitive and emotional efforts. The present study aims to determine whether teachers’ emotional intelligence moderates the relationship between psychosocial risk factors and burnout. A cross-sectional online survey was conducted among 215 secondary school teachers. Measurement instruments included: Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT-23) to assess burnout dimensions; Health and Work Survey (INSAT) to evaluate psychosocial risk factors; Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS-P) to assess emotional in-telligence. A mediation/moderation analysis using PROCESS macro was conducted to examine whether emotional intelligence mediates/moderates the relationship between psychosocial risk factors and burnout among teachers. The results show that psycho-social risk was a significant positive predictor of burnout (B = .313, p = .001), indicating that higher perceived risk was associated with higher burnout symptoms. Emotional intelligence did not significantly predict burnout on its own (B = .176, p = .364), and the interaction term (psychosocial risk × emotional intelligence) was not significant (B = 0.000, p = .995), suggesting that emotional intelligence does not moderate the relation-ship between psychosocial risks and burnout. These findings underscore a more holis-tic approach to address burnout, centred in intervention strategies that includes a deeper analysis on organizational context determinants.