ABSTRACT

Demands and stressors from work increasingly encroach upon people’s family lives in modern settings, resulting in poorer familial relationships and impaired psychological health. The current study proposed and examined dispositional optimism as a potential psychological buffer of the deleterious impact of negative work-to-family spillover (WFS) on psychological health. Based on a sample of employed midlife adults in the United States (N = 1,252) drawn from a large and nationally representative dataset, MIDUS 3, we found that dispositional optimism significantly moderated the relationship between negative WFS and subjective well-being, even after controlling for a variety of potential confounds. However, this moderation effect was not consistently observed for the relationship between negative WFS and depressive symptoms, suggesting that the buffering utility of dispositional optimism may be limited to day-to-day subjective well-being and may not extend to the domain of mental health issues. Nonetheless, our findings indicate the potential importance of considering psychological resources in our efforts to mitigate strains on psychological health arising from negative WFS – to which future studies are encouraged to explore further.

摘要

在现代环境中，工作需求和压力源越来越多地侵占人们的家庭生活，导致家庭关系恶化和心理健康受损。目前的研究提出并检验了性格乐观作为负面工作对家庭溢出（WFS）对心理健康的有害影响的潜在心理缓冲。基于美国就业的中年人样本（N= 1,252）从具有全国代表性的大型数据集 MIDUS 3 中提取，我们发现即使在控制了各种潜在的混淆因素后，性格乐观也显着缓和了负面 WFS 与主观幸福感之间的关系。然而，对于负性 WFS 和抑郁症状之间的关系并没有始终如一地观察到这种调节效应，这表明性格乐观的缓冲效用可能仅限于日常主观幸福感，可能不会扩展到心理健康领域问题。尽管如此，我们的研究结果表明，在我们努力减轻负性 WFS 对心理健康造成的压力时，考虑心理资源的潜在重要性——鼓励未来的研究进一步探索。