“Darling, you won’t believe what happened at work today” : a diary study on sharing work events among dual-earner couples

Abstract

After work, employees often share their work experiences with their partners, yet the consequences of these work-related conversations remain poorly understood. In this study with dual-earner couples, we investigate the daily consequences of sharing positive and negative work events with a partner regarding both employees’ and their partners’ affect and work-related self-esteem. Throughout a workweek, 73 heterosexual dual-earner couples completed questionnaires after work and at bedtime. Dyadic multilevel analyses showed that sharing positive work events was positively associated with employees’ positive affect but not with partners’ positive affect. Sharing negative work events showed no significant association with the negative affect of either employees or partners. While sharing positive work events was not associated with employees’ self-esteem, it was negatively associated with partners’ self-esteem. Furthermore, sharing negative work events was negatively associated with partners’ self-esteem, but did not affect employees’ self-esteem. Our study extends existing research on work-related conversations, considering self-esteem as an outcome and adopting a dyadic perspective.