Are you tired? Spillover and crossover effects of emotional exhaustion on the family domain

This paper examines the spillover and crossover effects of emotional exhaustion on marital satisfaction for both employees and partners as well as on employee work-family conflict and partner family-work conflict. It investigates how the transmission of psychological strain from the workplace to the family domain mediates these relationships. In a sample of 226 employee-partner dyads from manufacturing, electronics, banking, service industries and public organizations, the results support the notion that employees' emotional exhaustion spawns negative strain in the home. More specifically, the results of spillover mediation analyses show the relationships between emotional exhaustion and employee marital satisfaction/work-family conflict in the home. In a crossover model, the results indicate that employee psychological strain mediates the relationships between emotional exhaustion and the marital satisfaction of partners/family-work conflict in partners. These findings provide supports for spillover and crossover models to investigate a direction for the effectiveness of emotional exhaustion on family issues. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed, and directions for future research are offered.