arbiter
JournalsAccount

The Role of Self-Reflectivity in the Association Between Emotional Demands at Work and Irritability Toward Family Members at Home

Nina M. Junker et al.

Journal of Business and Psychology2026https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-026-10110-6article
AJG 3ABDC A
Weight
0.50

Abstract

Most work-family conflict research relies on measures that combine antecedents, processes, and outcomes within the same items, limiting the ability to identify factors that prevent negative work experiences from translating into adverse family-directed behaviors. Drawing on work-family conflict and spillover theories, we adopt a more indirect assessment of strain-based work-to-family conflict by examining the day-level link between emotional job demands and evening irritability toward family members, and (exploratorily) test affective work-related rumination as a process indicator. We further introduce self-reflectivity as a stable, person-level cognitive individual difference variable that should attenuate negative spillover by facilitating recognition and interpretation of work-related strain. We test our hypotheses in a 10-workday diary study with two daily measurement points among working parents (N = 86, n = 528 after-work reports and n = 591–606 evening reports). As expected, day-specific emotional job demands were positively associated with evening irritability toward family members. Additional analyses showed that this association was mediated by higher evening affective work-related rumination and was weaker among individuals higher in self-reflectivity. Target-specific (children vs. significant others) analyses revealed a more nuanced pattern: emotional job demands predicted evening irritability toward significant others regardless of self-reflectivity, whereas emotional job demands were positively directly and indirectly (via affective work-related rumination) related to evening irritability toward children at lower, but not higher, levels of self-reflectivity. We discuss the implications of these results for theorizing about strain-based work-to-family conflict, the role of cognition as a boundary condition, and the value of distinguishing targets within the family domain.

Open via your library →

Cite this paper

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-026-10110-6

Or copy a formatted citation

@article{nina2026,
  title        = {{The Role of Self-Reflectivity in the Association Between Emotional Demands at Work and Irritability Toward Family Members at Home}},
  author       = {Nina M. Junker et al.},
  journal      = {Journal of Business and Psychology},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-026-10110-6},
}

Paste directly into BibTeX, Zotero, or your reference manager.

Flag this paper

The Role of Self-Reflectivity in the Association Between Emotional Demands at Work and Irritability Toward Family Members at Home

Flags are reviewed by the Arbiter methodology team within 5 business days.

Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.