SPILLOVER AND 10-YEAR CHANGE IN HEALTH: THE ROLE OF PERSONALITY

Balancing between the work and family demands is psychologically demanding, and the transfer of negative affect and worries from work to home was found to harm workers’ health and well-being. We used data from two waves of the Midlife in the US national longitudinal study (N=3411) to examine whether work-to-family spillover has negative consequences in terms of 10-year change in physical health, and whether this association is moderated by the Big 5 personality traits. As expected, spillover was significantly associated with residual change in health, operationalized as the number of chronic conditions. Moreover, the negative consequences on health were higher for those with higher levels of Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. In contrast, higher levels of Openness to Experience reduce the effects of spillover on health. The results are discussed with regard to the individual differences in terms of abilities to cope with work to family spillover.