What happens at home stays at home: the Vegas rule for work depends on working memory

ABSTRACT

Family problems, although separate from the work sphere, can impact one’s experience of work even when away from home. We propose that challenges arising from the home and family domain affect individuals’ experience of work because they act as distractions. If so, working memory, an ability relevant to managing distractions, should attenuate the effects that one’s family problems have on experienced job demands. Using a nationally representative dataset (N = 2591) with both concrete measures of family problems and cognitive performance measures, we show that family problems predict experiencing one’s job as more demanding and stressful. However, increasing working memory ability attenuates this relationship. Results suggest that although family problems impinge on one’s work, increased working memory ability to manage distractions may reduce their consequences. We connect our findings and their implications to relevant theoretical frameworks that inform the linkage between family and work.

KEYWORDS:

• family-work linkage
• job demands
• cognition
• working memory
• resources

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data are available through ICPSR (Midus 2 & Midus 2 cognitive project) _https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/pages/

Notes

1 The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson et al., 1988) assessed individuals’ levels of negative (α = .80) affect. Respondents were asked to indicate how much of the time in the past thirty days they have felt various negative (e.g., upset) emotions (none of the time, a little of the time, some of the time, most of the time, all of the time).

2 We ran the analyses separately for males and females. The interaction of working memory and family problems predicting job demands was significant for females (t = −1.97, p = .049) and marginal for males (t = −1.73, p = .084).

3 Zero-order bivariate correlations show that working memory and family problems are not correlated (r = .02).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Oscar Ybarra

Oscar Ybarra is professor of organizational behavior at the University of Illinois. He is also emeritus professor of psychology, and of management and organizations at the University of Michigan. Dr. Ybarra teaches leadership and negotiations, as well as courses on intelligence. His research interests revolve around the influence different relationship systems have on individual functioning and achievement.

Todd Chan

Todd Chan received his PhD from the University of Michigan. He is a researcher in industry, having worked with Uber, Facebook, and now Google where he is a senior research scientist.