Abstract
This study examines the mediating role of work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict between the Big Five personality traits and mental health thereby enhancing theoretical development based upon empirical evidence. Integrating Conservation of Resources theory with the self-medication hypothesis, we conducted a mega-meta analytic path analysis examining the relationships among employees' Big Five traits, work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict, anxiety and depression, and substance use. We produced a ten-by-ten synthetic correlation matrix from existing meta-analytic bivariate relationships to test our sequential mediation model. Results from our path analysis model showed that agreeableness and conscientiousness predicted substance use via mediated paths through both work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict and sequentially through depression as well as through family-to-work conflict followed by anxiety. Extroversion and openness-to-experience had relatively weaker influences on substance use through work-to-family conflict, anxiety, and depression. Neuroticism was the strongest driver of the two forms of conflict, the two mental health conditions, and substance use. From this model it can be inferred that work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict may be generative mechanisms by which the impact of personality is transmitted to mental health outcomes and then to substance use when analyzed via a Conservation of Resources theory lens.
Highlights
The ever-growing body of research around work-to-family conflict began with the theoretical work [1] and has been followed by immense interest in its measurement, correlates, antecedents, and outcomes
We suggest that the self-medication hypothesis [25, 81], which proposes that individuals sometimes attempt to alleviate the anxious or depressive symptomatology through the use of illicit substances [82, 83], can help integrate these three outcomes of work-to-family conflict (WFC)/family-to-work conflict (FWC) still under the heading of COR
Despite many primary studies on WFC/FWC using many different theoretical frameworks to explain the same relationship and certainly to explain different relationships even within the same primary study, we focus our analysis only on those model relationships that can be unified under COR theory as supplemented by the self-medication hypothesis and, on relationships which are available as published meta-analyses
Summary
The ever-growing body of research around work-to-family conflict began with the theoretical work [1] and has been followed by immense interest in its measurement, correlates, antecedents, and outcomes. Work-to-family conflict is a form of inter-role conflict where “participation in the work [family] role is made more difficult by virtue of participation in the family [work] role” [1] [p. Because employees face pressure from work and family simultaneously, demands in one role interfere with meeting the requirements in the other role resulting in conflict [2, 3]. The definition implies a bi-directional feature of employees’ work.
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