Christina Maslach


Christina Maslach is an American social psychologist and professor emerita of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, known for her research on occupational burnout. She is a co-author of the Maslach Burnout Inventory and Areas of Worklife Survey. Early in her professional career, Maslach was instrumental in stopping the Stanford prison experiment.

Education and career

Maslach graduated from Radcliffe College and earned a Ph.D. in Psychology at Stanford University. After receiving her Ph.D., Maslach joined the psychology department at Berkeley as an assistant professor.
Her critique of the Stanford prison experiment persuaded investigator Philip Zimbardo to stop the experiment after only six days. The experience also shaped Maslach's later career, particularly her interest in occupational burnout as a response to unavoidable stress.
In 1981, Maslach and Susan E. Jackson authored the Maslach Burnout Inventory to assess an individual's experience of occupational burnout in human services settings. She later developed alternative versions of the original MBI to be used to assess education settings and general occupational settings. More than 30 years later, in 2014, Maslach Burnout Inventory was still being cited as "the mainstream measure for burnout."
In 1988–89, she was President of the Western Psychological Association. Since 2001, she has been Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at the University of California, Berkeley.

Awards and honors

In 1991, Maslach was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is also a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and of the WPA.
At Berkeley, Maslach has received the Distinguished Teaching Award and the Social Sciences Service Award. In 1997, she was named the U.S. Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1997. In 2008, Maslach won the WPA Outstanding Teaching Award.