Mercurial Hearts: A Dyadic Perspective on the Role of Affect Spin in Work‐Family Conflict and Marital Satisfaction

Abstract

Affect spin, or the dispositional maladaptive tendency to experience qualitatively shifting affective states over time, has attracted growing interest in organizational scholarship. We take a first step to extend affect spin research to the work‐family interface. Drawing on the theoretical framework of personality in the stress process and family systems theory, we examine affect spin as a novel predictor of marital satisfaction and as a boundary condition for the interpersonal crossover of work‐family conflict (WFC) to marital satisfaction. A sample of 201 dual‐earner couples (402 participants) provided 7,533 experience sampling responses of affective states at home over 7 days, based on which we compute affect spin. Results from dyadic multilevel modeling suggest that individuals’ own affect spin not only takes a toll on their marital satisfaction but also exacerbates the negative crossover of spouses’ WFC to individuals’ marital satisfaction. In contrast, spouses’ affect spin does not predict individuals’ marital satisfaction nor does it impact the crossover effect of spouses’ WFC, suggesting individuals’ own affect spin, compared to spouses’ affect spin, is more consequential for marital well‐being. These findings underscore the challenge that affect spin presents for employees to tackle work‐family stressors and secure marital well‐being.