This research investigated how negative and positive residuals of the workday spill over into the partner relationship. To unravel the mechanism of this spillover, this study introduces the concept of "psychological availability," which refers to the individual's ability and motivation to direct psychological resources at the partner. A survey was conducted among 313 Dutch dual-earner couples with children, using dyadic data analysis to analyze both partners simultaneously in 1 model. Psychological availability mediated the link between negative and positive work-related residuals (i.e., work-related negative mood, exhaustion, rumination and work-related positive mood and vigor, respectively) and marital behavior. The findings suggest that partners' workday residuals spill over into the marital relationship through being more or less psychologically available for each other.
Using data from a sample of Dutch dual‐earner parents (N = 261), this study showed that parents' psychological availability acted as a link between negative and positive workday residuals (i.e., work‐related negative mood, exhaustion, rumination, and work‐related positive mood and vigor) and the quality of parent–child interactions after the workday. Parents' preference for type of role combination moderated these relationships in that evidence for negative spillover was found only for parents who tended to integrate work and family life, whereas positive spillover was found only for parents who tended to segment work and family life. These findings suggest that workday residuals combined with parents' boundary management strategies have important implications for the parent–child relationship.
This research investigated how and for whom experiences of the workday spill over into relationship functioning at home. Two correlational studies and one experimental study were conducted among Dutch dual‐earners with children. Moderated mediation analyses showed that work demands spill over into relationship behavior through the depletion of temporary self‐regulatory resources and subsequently a decrease in psychological availability for the partner. Whether work demands spill over into relationship behavior was dependent on dispositional self‐control in that evidence for negative spillover was only found for individuals low in dispositional self‐control. The experimental study showed that the induction of gratitude for the partner after the workday helped individuals low in dispositional control to prevent negative spillover into the partner relationship.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.