EFFECT OF GASLIGHTING ON WORK RELATED BURNOUT AND TEACHING SELF-EFFICACY OF UNIVERSITY FACULTY

Abstract

Gaslighting is social tactic used generally to manipulate perception, reality, and abilities of a person and as a strategy to abuse someone. Facing gaslighting on a regular basis can be quite distressing. When gaslighting is experienced by nation builders; the teachers, they may feel stressed and worried that can eventually cause burnout, therefore, hampering their teaching capacities and competencies. Thus, this quantitative study aimed to investigate the effects of gaslighting on burnout and teaching self efficacy of university faculty based on non-probability convenient sampling technique. For this purpose, 200 university faculty members were recruited from government and private institutions. The data was collected using self-designed demographic sheet, victim gaslighting questionnaire, burnout assessment tool and teaching self-efficacy scale. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS version 22. After the analysis, it was found out that gaslighting has a strong positive relationship with burnout (rs = .66, p ≤ 0.01) which means higher gaslighting might lead to high levels of burnout. Gaslighting (rs = -.14, p ≤ .001) and burnout (rs = .15, p ≤ .05) were found to have a week negative correlation with teaching self-efficacy. When analysis was run to find out the gender differences on these experiences, it was found out that males experience higher level of gaslighting (Mean Rank = 109.54) and Burnout (Mean Rank = 103.20) in comparison to females (Gaslighting Mean Rank = 91.28; Burnout Mean Rank = 97.75) respectively. Conversely, females have higher Teaching Self-Efficacy (Mean Rank = 108.87) in comparison to males (Mean Rank = 92.30). Lastly, the results of Mann-Whitney U Test depicted that there are significant differences in experience of Gaslighting (p ≤ .01) and Teaching Self-Efficacy (p ≤ .05) based on the education. It was found out that participants with an education of MS/MPhil experience higher Gaslighting (Mean Rank = 105.29) and have low Teaching Self-Efficacy (Mean Rank = 96.39) in comparison to PhD participants (Gaslighting Mean Rank = 80.08; Self-Efficacy Mean Rank = 118.03). The faculty members who experience gaslighting find it difficult to keep their focus and enthusiasm for teaching. This may lead to fewer involvement with students, less creativity in designing lessons and more ineffective instructional and pedagogy methods at all levels. It is therefore likely that learning experiences will be reduced for students. Keywords: Gaslighting, Burnout, Teaching self-efficacy, University faculty