Getting Under the Skin? Work-Family Interface’s Effects on Personality Change & Reciprocal Relations

Abstract

Heavily influenced by the classic dispositional perspective of personality, the work-family literature has predominantly assumed that personality traits cause work-family experiences, not vice versa. The burgeoning literature on personality development, however, suggests that work and life experiences may foster personality adaptation throughout one’s whole adulthood (Tasselli, Kilduff, & Landis, 2018). Drawing upon the neo-socioanalytic model of personality (Roberts & Nickel, 2017; Roberts & Wood, 2006), we built a theoretical model and investigated what, how, and why work-family experiences may spur personality development and more important, change-related reciprocal relationships between personality traits and work-family experiences in recursive cycles. Findings from two three-wave longitudinal studies revealed that work-to-family conflict, family-to-work conflict, work-to-family facilitation, and family-to-work facilitation mostly had lagged influences on changes of conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism and the influences were generally channeled through changes of anxiety. Personality traits also exerted lagged influences on changes of work-family experiences, with some influences deteriorating over time. Change-related reciprocal relationships were recorded mainly between neuroticism and extraversion and work-family experiences, suggesting recursive cycles. Our findings offer important implications for organizations and employees to better manage their work and family experiences and career development.