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 Husbands and wives who were conscientious and helped create
satisfying home lives for their spouses were linked to future job
satisfaction, promotion and income, researchers found.
“The person that you marry and spend a lot of time with . . . can
influence you in a different domain,” Joshua Jackson told Reuters
Health in a phone call.
Jackson, a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis,
co-authored the paper with Brittany Solomon, a graduate student at
Washington University.
“Who they are within your relationship can influence who you are at
your work - even though they're not there,” he said.
While past studies have found that home life can influence work life
and spouses can influence job satisfaction, Jackson and Solomon say
little is known about whether a spouse’s personality is linked to
success on the job.
For the study, which is scheduled for publication in the journal
Psychological Science, the researchers used information from the
Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey from 2005
through 2009.
Specifically, they looked at 4,544 heterosexual, married adults
ranging in age from 19 to 89 years.
The participants took a series of psychological tests in 2005 that
assessed five broad measures of personality: openness, extraversion,
agreeableness, neuroticism and conscientiousness.
Over the following four years, the researchers tracked the
on-the-job performance of working spouses using annual surveys
designed to measure job success. The participants reported their
opinions on job satisfaction, salary increases and the likelihood of
being promoted.
The researchers found that workers who scored highest on those
measures of job success tended to have spouses with a high score for
conscientiousness.
The relationship was the same for both men and women. It was also
true for single and dual income couples, although a partner's
conscientiousness had a bigger impact on a spouse’s income when they
didn’t work themselves.
The researchers identified three ways by which conscientious spouses
may help their mates at work.
For example, Jackson said, conscientious spouses are hard working,
efficient and able to complete several chores around the house and
other responsibilities outside their mate’s job.
"And as a result you have more free time or more mental energy and
you can use that to recover from a hard day at work,” he said,
adding that some people could use that time to work more.
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“But the idea is that you're able to not be bogged down by extra
responsibilities outside of one’s occupation,” he said.
Another possibility is that the workers pick up on their spouse’s
good behavior, Jackson said.
The other possibility is that people who have conscientious partners
tend to have better relationships throughout their lives, he added.
Jackson said that more work is needed to know for sure what is
behind the link.
The results confirm the parental guidance that it’s better to marry
a person who is conscientious than beautiful, Dr. Emanuel Maidenberg
told Reuters Health in a phone call.
Maidenberg, who wasn’t involved with the new study, is director of
the Cognitive Behavior Therapy Clinic at the University of
California, Los Angeles. He believes a person modeling their
spouse’s behaviors is likely the driving force behind the link.
“We tend to model behaviors, so if I'm in a relationship with
somebody and specifically more so if I respect that person, then I
am likely to start doing things in a way that will simulate what
they do,” he said.
Maidenberg added that it becomes a process of developing new habits
that are functional, helpful and productive.
“It seems like this is something that happens as a side effect of
being in a relationship that is close and intimate,” he said. “You
start doing things either to compliment your partner or to repeat
their behaviors and this is how we develop habits that seem then to
slip into the working environment.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/YOMceM
Psychological Science 2014.
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