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Human Relations
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The independent relationships of objective and subjective workload with couples’ mood

IJ . Hetty van Emmerik

Utrecht University, The Netherlands, h.vanemmerik{at}fss.uu.nl

I. M. Jawahar

Illinois State University, USA, jimoham{at}ilstu.edu

Mood signifies general well-being and a positive mood benefits self, one’s spouse and the family unit. Dual-earner couples are particularly susceptible to spillover and crossover of mood. A lack of studies on the relationship between workload and mood and the repeated calls for more couple-level research served as the primary impetus for this study. Using data from 629 couples, we examined the relationship between objective (i.e. hours of paid work) and subjective (i.e. time pressure) workload on 1) one’s own (positive and negative) mood, 2) spouse’s mood, and 3) mood at the couple level. Results of two-level regression analyses indicated that subjective workload was positively related to negative mood. In contrast, objective workload was related to decreased negative mood and to increased positive mood. In addition to support for spillover effect, results supported one crossover effect, such that wives of husbands who devote more hours to paid work reported higher levels of negative mood, even as the husbands themselves reported lower levels of negative mood. Implications of results are discussed.

Key Words: couples • mood • workload

Human Relations, Vol. 59, No. 10, 1371-1392 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0018726706071649
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