An examination of the relationships between select psychological dimensions and work-to-family and family-to-work role conflict in men and women.

Abstract

This study examined relationships between select psychological dimensions and work-to-family and family-to-work role conflict in men and women. Psychological dimensions included in this study were health, self-esteem, perceived stress, guilt, trait anger, anger expression-in (suppressed anger), anger expression-out (expressed anger), and depression. The mediating and moderating roles of sex role egalitarian attitude and gender were also examined. Data were obtained from a corporate sample of 221 employed adults (144 men, 77 women). Due to the multivariate nature of the data, a canonical correlation analytic strategy was used, followed by a series of multiple regression analyses. Results supported previous empirical evidence that both types of work-family conflict are positively related to psychological distress. Results indicated that family-to-work conflict may have a slightly stronger relationship with psychological distress accounting for 32% of the variance, while work-to-family conflict accounted for 28% of the variance. Overall, both types of work-family conflict accounted for 38% of the variance, indicating the two types of conflict shared substantial variance. Both types of conflict were also found to relate positively to a broad range of psychological variables, with health, perceived stress, and depression among the strongest relationships. Family-to-work conflict significantly predicted 7 of 8 psychological variables, whereas work-to-family conflict only predicted 4. Neither gender nor sex role egalitarian attitude were found to have a significant effect on the relationships of work-to-family and family-to-work conflict with psychological distress in this sample. Potential implications of these results for organizations are discussed.