Keywords

Both in the scientific literature and in popular media, the topic of “work-life balance” has received much attention, particularly for the age group of middle-aged adults. The term “work-life balance” expresses a metaphor revolving around an “optimal” ratio or relationship between life domains when having to juggle the simultaneous demands and tasks of work, family, and leisure (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000; Guest, 2002). The scientific literature approaches the topic of “work-life balance” from different angles under the umbrella term of spillover effects across life domains. The perspective on vulnerabilities of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research LIVES—Overcoming vulnerability: Life course perspectives (NCCR LIVES; see Chap. 2) addresses central characteristics of spillover effects in its multidimensional view of life domains. The vulnerability process includes resource dynamics that address the successful allocation of one’s resources when experiencing and dealing with spillover effects across life domains. A key route to well-being and goal attainment lies in the availability of limited resources (e.g., money, time) and the efficient use of these resources (Freund & Riediger, 2001).

This chapter starts with the developmental phase of middle adulthood as the “rush hour of life.” Based on this lifespan perspective, we provide a brief theoretical and empirical overview of different perspectives on spillover effects. We outline the literature on interdomain relationships, multiple goal pursuit, boundary management, and models of spillover effects on well-being and health. After that, we focus on spillover and crossover effects in the work-family interface in couples. To provide empirical evidence, we draw mainly on studies conducted within the NCCR LIVES research program. Finally, this chapter presents promising routes for future research on spillover effects in middle adulthood.

Lifespan Perspective on Middle Adulthood

Middle adulthood, loosely defined as the age between 30 and 60 years, is characterized as the phase during which adults have to manage multiple demands related to responsibilities in work, family, and leisure. Many middle-aged adults aim to foster their careers but must also engage in household chores, care for the younger (e.g., childcare) and older generations (e.g., parents), and pursue leisure activities. The term “rush hour of life” (Bittman & Wajcman, 2000; Freund et al., 2009) portrays the simultaneity of the resource demands from work and family, in line multidimensional and process-oriented vulnerability framework of NCCR LIVES (Spini et al., 2017; Chap. 3).

In many Western societies, the “crunch” of family- and work-related demands in middle adulthood results from the prolonged period of education and exploration of available lifestyle options (e.g., partnerships, housing) during young adulthood. Age-related social and biological constraints in opportunity structures set limits on the postponement of work- and family-related goals (Freund et al., 2009). Consequently, work and family compete for the same resources, which, if one has children, leads to pressure on work and family in a person’s 30s and 40s (Mehta et al., 2020). To fulfil the demands of work and family, middle-aged adults tend to sacrifice the less obligatory leisure and social goals, intending to pursue these goals in the postretirement period (“bucket list effect,” Freund, 2020). However, contrary to public and medial notions of a normative (i.e., inevitable) midlife crisis, middle adulthood is a peak time in several regards (e.g., career path, earnings, self-confidence). Middle-aged adults experience high and stable levels of well-being. If anything, crises are attributed to events (e.g., divorce) rather than to specific age groups (Infurna et al., 2020; Lachman, 2015).

Conceptualizations of Positive and Negative Spillover Across Life Domains

Across the lifespan, and particularly in middle adulthood, adults have to juggle the demands of multiple life domains, such as work, family, and leisure. These life domains interact in complex ways, such as carrying the good mood from a work-related success home or feeling stressed because work demands seep into family time. These cross-domain interactions are often labeled spillover effects. In this chapter, we outline different perspectives on spillover effects that built the foundation for the NCCR LIVES studies. Spillover exemplifies the multidimensional and resource/stressor-oriented NCCR LIVES vulnerability framework.

Conflict and Facilitation

When people manage the demands of multiple life domains in their everyday lives, they experience and deal with the effects of positive and negative spillover (e.g., Edwards & Rothbard, 2000). The prototypical instances of spillover refer to interdomain conflict, indicating negative spillover, and to interdomain facilitation, indicating positive spillover. Early research on spillover focused mainly on interdomain conflicts, resulting in a biased and incomplete picture of spillover effects that overlooked facilitation (Wiese et al., 2010). The NCCR LIVES studies on spillover have contributed to a more differentiated view on both positive and negative spillover.

Interdomain conflict emerges when the pursuit of tasks, goals, and demands in one life domain interferes with those in another. In other words, engagement in one life domain hampers engagement in another (e.g., caring for a sick child interferes with one’s work schedule). According to Greenhaus and Beutell (1985), conflict results from incompatibilities among life domains. The authors distinguish between time-, strain-, and behavior-based conflicts. Sources of conflict arise when there is insufficient time to meet the demands of all life domains, strain (e.g., fatigue) that carries over from one life domain to another, and behaviors in one life domain that are incompatible with those in another (e.g., being assertive in the workplace but agreeable with family). Carlson and Frone (2003) introduce the distinction between internally and externally generated conflicts. Negative spillover results from psychological (i.e., internal conflicts) or behavioral involvement (i.e., external conflicts) in one life domain that interferes with engagement in another life domain.

Facilitation among life domains emerges when pursuing tasks, goals, and demands in one life domain is beneficial to engagement in another life domain. In other words, people benefit from the enriching influences among life domains (e.g., positive mood during a family outing after a successful workday). According to Greenhaus and Powell (2006), people experience facilitation when being engaged in one life domain enhances performance or positive mood in another life domain. Addressing facilitation, Wiese et al. (2010) distinguish between positive transfer and compensation. Positive transfer denotes either positive mood or competencies that carry over from the supporting to the receiving life domain. Compensation represents a response that helps people deal with deficits in one life domain. Positive experiences in the supporting life domain “buffer” the effect of negative experiences in the receiving life domain.

Conflict and facilitation also apply to the pursuit of multiple goals. These goals can conflict due to time or resource constraints, or they can facilitate each other when one goal is instrumental for another (Freund & Riediger, 2006). Goals direct people’s behavior across time and situations, as “cognitive representations of personally desired (or dreaded) states to be approached (or avoided) … through action” (Freund et al., 2019, p. 286). Goals consist of the link between goal-relevant means and desired outcomes of goal pursuit. Overall, a “good goal system” consists of many and strong facilitative relations and few and weak conflicting relations among goals (Tomasik et al., 2017).

One way to promote successful goal pursuit in work and private life is to employ the life-management strategies of selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC; Freund & Baltes, 2002). Selection refers to the development of and commitment to goals. By selecting a subset of goals from a range of potential alternatives (i.e., elective selection), people give direction to their development and focus their resources. Optimization denotes the process of acquiring and investing resources as goal-relevant means to achieve the selected goals. Compensation is the process of counteracting losses by substituting lost goal-relevant means (e.g., asking for support), thereby maintaining a given level of functioning. An alternative way to manage losses is to adjust existing or select different goals (i.e., loss-based selection). The use of SOC strategies is associated with higher well-being (Freund & Baltes, 2002), higher job satisfaction (Wiese et al., 2002) and lower work-life conflict (Baltes & Heydens-Gahir, 2003).

In a 20-day measurement burst study, Knecht and Freund (2017) examined the role of the momentary use of SOC strategies when pursuing multiple goals in work, family, and leisure. Higher momentary goal conflict was associated with higher subsequent use of optimization and compensation. Higher momentary goal facilitation was related to lower subsequent use of loss-based selection and compensation. Thus, by using SOC strategies, people adaptively responded to momentary challenges that threatened their successful pursuit of multiple goals. This NCCR LIVES study extended previous studies on the habitual use of SOC strategies by targeting their momentary use in a longitudinal design.

In general, positive and negative spillovers are bidirectional concepts, as they can occur in both directions (e.g., friends offer support in dealing with work-related problems, working overtime decreases time spent with friends). Each life domain can function as the source of conflict or facilitation, and the relationship between two life domains can encompass both conflicting and facilitating aspects (e.g., Edwards & Rothbard, 2000).

Research on spillover has largely centered on the work-family interface but has neglected the role of leisure (Kuykendall et al., 2015). Complementing prior research, Knecht et al. (2016) investigated the interdomain relationships among work, family, and leisure in another NCCR LIVES study. Work was the highest and leisure the lowest source of conflict. Family was the strongest and work the weakest source of facilitation. Owing to the high demands of work and family, leisure was the highest recipient of conflict and the lowest recipient of facilitation. In a longitudinal study over six years, Bernardi et al. (2017) adopted the NCCR LIVES vulnerability framework to investigate subjective well-being in the context of the transition to parenthood not only in work and family but also in leisure.

Empirical evidence supports the impact of conflict and facilitation on indicators of well-being and health, highlighting the negative impact of conflict (e.g., Amstad et al., 2011; Nohe et al., 2015; Shockley & Singla, 2011) and the positive impact of facilitation (e.g., McNall et al., 2010; Shockley & Singla, 2011; Wiese et al., 2010). Similarly, self-reported goal relations indicate that facilitation is associated with higher levels of engagement in goal pursuit, successful goal attainment, and well-being. By comparison, goal conflict primarily decreases well-being (Boudreaux & Ozer, 2013; Gray et al., 2017; Riediger & Freund, 2004). Contrary to public and medial portrayals, there is no consistent evidence for gender differences regarding conflict (Allen et al., 2012; Nohe et al., 2015) or facilitation (Grzywacz et al., 2002; Lapierre et al., 2018; Shockley et al., 2017; Wiese et al., 2010). However, where present, gender differences reveal that women tend to suffer more from conflict and benefit less from facilitation. The results obtained within the NCCR LIVES research program also support these tendential gender differences (e.g., Freund et al., 2014).

Boundary Drawing Around Life Domains

Another perspective on spillover effects addresses the boundaries that people draw around life domains, which is in line with the multidimensional view of the NCCR LIVES vulnerability framework. According to border theory (Clark, 2000), boundary theory (Ashforth et al., 2000), and boundary management styles (Kossek et al., 2012), boundaries influence how people manage their activities in different life domains. Boundaries are “lines of demarcation between domains, defining the point at which domain-relevant behavior begins or ends” (Clark, 2000, p. 756). These metaphoric “fences” can be physical, temporal, emotional, cognitive, and relational. In their daily lives, people negotiate boundaries on a continuum ranging from segmentation (i.e., separation) to integration (i.e., blurring, complete overlap). Boundaries differ in their flexibility and permeability. Flexibility indicates the degree of pliability of physical and temporal boundaries (e.g., whether one can work at different places at various times). Permeability denotes to what degree the physical location of one life domain can differ from the psychological and behavioral involvement in another life domain (e.g., whether one can investigate one’s next holiday destination at work). Inflexible and impermeable boundaries result in the segmentation of life domains, whereas flexible and permeable boundaries lead to their integration (Ashforth et al., 2000).

To date, research has not resolved the question of whether people benefit more from segmented or blurred boundaries (Schüttengruber & Freund, 2022). Both research on boundary management in general and the studies conducted within the NCCR LIVES research program highlight that there is evidence supporting the benefits of both segmentation and integration. For example, blurred boundaries facilitate switching between life domains, whereas segmented boundaries decrease detrimental intrusions from one life domain into another (Allen et al., 2014; Knecht & Freund, 2016). For example, the usage of information technologies and flexible work arrangements (e.g., remote work) can potentially both enhance and impair well-being and productivity (Allen et al., 2015).

Research on psychological detachment (Sonnentag, 2018) has shown that people can profit from segmentation. Detachment denotes “switching off” from work-related activities, thoughts, and locations during nonwork time. Experiencing detachment functions as the central recovery process, reducing work-related exhaustion, and increasing well-being. For example, participants perceived less spillover of a negative mood from work to the next morning when they reported higher detachment in the evening after work (Sonnentag & Binnewies, 2013). Our research on emotion regulation supports these empirical findings. When bank employees adopted strategies that hindered “switching off,” they experienced more intrusive work-related thoughts during nonwork time (Wiese et al., 2017).

Some research on boundary management proposes that people differ in their preference to segment or integrate life domains. The benefits of segmentation and integration may depend on the fit between the desired and actual boundaries (Kreiner, 2006). More recent analyses of different profiles of boundary management point to the beneficial impact of being able to establish the desired boundaries (Kossek et al., 2012).

According to research on boundary violations (Hunter et al., 2017), the cognitive and affective reactions to boundary violations determine whether such violations result in perceived conflict or facilitation. Boundary violations occur when events in one life domain interrupt ongoing activities in another. The repeated appraisal of boundary violations as obstructing or facilitating goal pursuit (e.g., a friend’s phone call at work reduces time invested in a work goal versus serves a leisure goal) and the associated negative (in case of conflict) or positive (in case of facilitation) affective reactions contribute to the general experience of conflict or facilitation. These links demonstrate how people’s ways of dealing with the boundaries between life domains shape spillover effects across life domains.

Boundary management influences the pursuit of multiple goals; integration can be beneficial, and intrusions can be harmful. In a 20-day measurement burst study conducted within the NCCR LIVES program, Knecht and Freund (2016) investigate the relationship of boundaries with well-being and goal relations in people’s “real” lives by targeting incongruity and integration as two instances of boundaries. Incongruity refers to a mismatch of the location and content of an activity or thought, such as thinking about work during the family dinner or chatting with friends while at work. Integration describes the association of one activity with more than one life domain, such as working with a friend on a new business idea. Participants reported lower goal facilitation and lower well-being in situations of incongruity. Integration pertains to situations in which activities and thoughts belong to more than one life domain (e.g., doing household chores while thinking about a work project). When they combined multiple life domains in this way, participants reported higher well-being, higher goal facilitation, and lower goal conflict.

Models of Spillover on Well-being and Health

Models of spillover conceptualize the links between an interdomain relationship (i.e., both directions of conflict and facilitation) and the domain-specific (e.g., work satisfaction) and domain-unspecific (e.g., health, well-being) consequences of the given interdomain relationship. Overall, there are two competing perspectives that propose different links between the interdomain relationship and the primarily affected domain (i.e., outcomes of the interdomain relationship in the originating or receiving domain). According to the perspective of domain specificity or cross-domain relations (Frone et al., 1992), the consequences of conflict or facilitation primarily concern outcomes in the receiving (rather than the originating) domain (Hunter et al., 2017). Applied to conflict, work interfering with family mainly impairs indicators of well-being in the family domain, whereas family interfering with work mainly hinges on indicators of well-being in the work domain. When one life domain conflicts with another, people experience struggles with fulfilling the demands in the receiving domain, which also impairs well-being in the receiving domain.

According to the perspective of source attribution or matching domain relations (Amstad et al., 2011; Shockley & Singla, 2011), the consequences of conflict or facilitation primarily concern outcomes in the originating (rather than the receiving) domain. Applied to conflict, work interfering with family primarily exerts a negative impact on indicators of well-being in the work domain. Family interfering with work primarily decreases indicators of well-being in the family domain. People attribute the struggles in the receiving domain (e.g., lack of family time) to the originating domain (e.g., high work stress). They negatively appraise the originating domain, which reduces well-being within this domain.

Although the crossover perspective has been more prominent in the literature, meta-analytic evidence favors the more recent source attribution perspective (Amstad et al., 2011; Nohe et al., 2015; Shockley & Singla, 2011; Zhang et al., 2018). In other words, there is more support for within-domain than cross-domain consequences, as people primarily experience the outcomes of conflict and facilitation in the originating domain (e.g., a stronger relationship of work-to-family facilitation with work satisfaction than with family satisfaction). Both perspectives highlight that the outcomes in the primarily affected life domain impact outcomes in the other life domain and domain-general outcomes. However, the empirical evidence mostly builds on cross-sectional data. Meta-analytic evidence from longitudinal studies on work-life conflict cautions against the overinterpretation of the unidirectional impact of conflict on strain, as the relationship between conflict and strain is bidirectional (Nohe et al., 2015). Moreover, both perspectives have only addressed the work-family interface and have largely focused on conflict rather than facilitation (Shockley & Singla, 2011). NCCR LIVES research pursues the goal of advancing research on the largely neglected aspects in the spillover literature by focusing on facilitation (in addition to conflict) and leisure (in addition to work and family) as well as implementing more longitudinal research studies (in addition to cross-sectional studies).

Spillover at the Work-family Interface in Couples

Building on the different perspectives on spillover effects, we focus on spill- and crossover effects in the work-family interface in couples. Boundary management also depends on people’s social environment, such as the life partner or children living in the same household. For parents, in particular, when both partners work, work and family domains are highly intertwined and require frequent coordination between the partners regarding daily activities as well as long-term goals.

Couples form a highly interconnected system that is characterized by extraordinary levels of closeness (Hoppmann et al., 2011). The interdependence of couples and parents in various life domains has been emphasized by theoretical notions such as “linked lives” (Elder, 1994) or in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (1986). From this perspective, a full understanding of spillover requires the consideration of crossover, i.e., that experiences cross over between closely related persons. The spillover-crossover model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2013) posits that one partner’s experiences first spill over from one life domain (e.g., work stress) to another (e.g., marital distress) and then cross over to the other partner and affect partner experiences (e.g., decreased psychological well-being) through personal interactions. Crossover can also occur more directly through identification with the partner and empathetic concern (Westman & Vinokur, 1998). For spillover, crossover encompasses the transmission of negative and positive experiences. Experiencing positive emotions at work (e.g., pride after accomplishing an important task) may spill over and contribute to a good mood at home, which may then cross over to the other partner through positive marital interactions and increase the partner’s feeling of happiness at home (cross-domain crossover) and/or at work (same-domain crossover).

There is ample empirical evidence for spillover between work and family (and leisure), as outlined in the preceding paragraphs of this chapter. Moreover, there is a growing literature establishing negative and positive crossover effects and their underlying mechanisms in couples and parents (see Steiner & Krings, 2016). Several studies have demonstrated how one partner’s negative work experiences (e.g., high workload, time pressure) cross over and affect the other partner’s family functioning and well-being (e.g., marital satisfaction) (e.g., Bass et al., 2009; Shimazu et al., 2009). Although positive crossover has received somewhat less attention in research, the existing evidence also establishes how positive experiences at work (e.g., work enjoyment, feeling supported by one’s supervisor) affect well-being or family functioning (e.g., psychological well-being, positive parenting behaviors (e.g., Costigan et al., 2003; Sanz-Vergel & Rodriguez Munoz, 2013) and the partner’s job satisfaction (e.g., Liu & Cheung, 2015).

Recent evidence suggests that one partner’s attitudes toward family and work (i.e., their beliefs in the ideal behaviors of men and women in society; Eagly, 1987) can also cross over and affect the partner, particularly for dual-career parents. The partner’s beliefs in the traditional division of gender roles are particularly important because they comprise the belief that men are best suited for assuming the work role and women are best suited for assuming the family role (Eagly, 1987; Freund et al., 2013). Indeed, Steiner et al. (2019) have shown that among dual-earner parents, men’s stronger traditional gender role attitudes increased their spouse’s experience of work-family conflict. Men who hold traditional gender role attitudes may frequently express their discontent with their female partner’s engagement at work or withhold support for her performance in her work role, which may ultimately increase their partner’s level of work-family conflict.

Outlook on Future Research on Spillover Effects

In their daily lives, people navigate multiple life domains and face the challenge of simultaneously managing the goals, tasks, and demands in the life domains of work, family, and leisure. The effects of spillover and, in couples, crossover are challenging, and their management in everyday life is highly demanding. This chapter underscores the importance of considering resource dynamics, especially the availability of limited resources (e.g., money, time) and their efficient use (Freund & Riediger, 2001), in understanding well-being and goal attainment from the perspective of spillover effects. Empirical support for the source attribution perspective (Amstad et al., 2011; Shockley & Singla, 2011) suggests that experiencing work-to-family conflict primarily decreases well-being in the work domain (i.e., the originating domain), and family-to-work conflict primarily affects the family domain. In addition, we can infer promising ways to foster successful goal pursuit and well-being in different life domains from research on interdomain relationships (especially different types of conflict and facilitation), multiple goal pursuit, boundary management, and models of spillover effects. For example, NCCR LIVES studies suggest that people benefit from employing the life-management strategies of selection, optimization, and compensation when they pursue multiple goals in different life domains at the same time. Research regarding the best way to draw boundaries between goals, tasks, and life domains is inconclusive. To achieve a more fine-grained picture of spillover effects, future research should emphasize the role of leisure and friends in addition to work and family, interdomain facilitation in addition to interdomain conflict, and crossover in addition to spillover. Moreover, cross-sectional studies (Nohe et al., 2015) dominate this research area, and more longitudinal studies are urgently needed to assess the long-term effects of boundary management, spillover, and crossover. One particularly promising avenue for studying the management of multiple life domains and goals in everyday life is offered by the experience sampling methodology, which captures more accurate insights into the psychological processes of “real” life compared to one-shot assessments of aggregate evaluations of life management strategies. Moreover, we advocate the use of experimentally manipulating boundary management strategies to arrive at causal inferences (Schüttengruber & Freund, 2022). On a stronger empirical basis, interventions can be developed at the individual and organizational levels to increase positive spillover and reduce negative spillover during the resource-demanding phase of middle adulthood. Given these future endeavors, we are convinced that the empirical evidence gathered within the NCCR LIVES research program has already substantially contributed to filling conceptual and empirical gaps in research on spillover. NCCR LIVES studies draw attention to facilitation, the life domain of leisure, and longitudinal research designs. By embedding studies within the NCCR LIVES vulnerability framework, we set the stage for pursuing an interdisciplinary and resource-oriented approach in research on spillover effects across the lifespan.