great thank you guys so much for
inviting me through this talk I'm really

excited to be here and to share with you
guys a little bit about the research

that I'm very passionate about
so the talk I'm about my research in

general and then we'll take a really
deep dive into the work that I have

looking at work and family issues and
how those affect our physiological

health and physiological activity and
then we'll finish up with some ideas

that I have for kind of where I want to
take this line of research so first a

little bit about Who am I as a
researcher I consider myself a working

family researcher so that means that I
study how people manage their working

family responsibilities and I think a
lot of people care about this we know in

the scholarly literature there's been a
lot of interest particularly in recent

years on this topic we also know that
kind of people everywhere care about how

to balance work and family this is a
common topic of conversation and people

are often interested when I say that's
that's kind of what I study

we also see work family issues
highlighted in the news particularly in

high-profile business people and we know
that workers are increasingly asking for

better work/life balance from their
organizations so organizations are

starting to really care about this issue
and then we see even on a national level

right countries are being rated on how
how well they address work family

balance issues as an indicator of
country success and well-being so in a

lot of different levels we care about
work and family and of course this is

for really good reason we know that work
family issues are important for our

psychological health and well-being they
affect things like how much we sleep and

the kinds of foods that we eat we also
have some emerging evidence including

some of what I'll be presenting today
that work family matters for our

physiological health and well-being and
then work and family are both social

domains right so how we manage work and
family affects our relationships with

our supervisors
and with our children so with that in

mind my research really tries to help
people lead healthy working family lives

right so I have a couple of different
domains that I study to meet this end

the first is really research that kind
of links work in family issues with

health right and so by health I really
do mean kind of broad health so

psychological health physiological
health health behaviors and I also study

both acute and more chronic or long-term
health outcomes in addition to just

making those basic connections and why
they occur I also look at how people can

take control of their own work family
management so what are strategies that

we can use as an individual to more
successfully navigate work and family so

to that end I look at negotiation
between couples meaningfulness in work

and family and time allocation between
work and family domains and then another

thread that kind of underlies a lot of
my research is giving a voice to

underrepresented populations so for
example I've done work on student

workers shift workers single mothers
looking at child outcomes and then

looking at non-us contexts so to really
try and kind of highlight population

specific issues so most of what I'm
going to be presenting today falls

within this kind of first bubble here
looking at work family and health and in

particular we'll be diving into the work
that I have that looks at physiological

activity and physiological health now in
order to answer this question of how

does work affect our health I rely on
the allostatic load model to guide my

thinking so we'll kind of dig into that
first so you can kind of get an idea of

where I'm coming from the allostatic
load model is a more modern theory of

stress it basically suggests a pathway
by which our everyday psychological

experiences eventually manifest in
long-term disease and illness so one of

the cornerstones of the allostatic load
model is this idea of a low stasis which

essentially suggests that our body
reacts to the environment right when we

experience something we have a reaction
and over time those reactions can

accumulate and develop into allostatic
load or wear and tear on the body

brain that results from that Alice
stasis process now there's a multi-step

kind of model that explains this so what
happens we first have some kind of

stressor event and I'm an industrial
organizational psychologist and so

naturally this is usually something
about work right so we might have

workload we're gonna have time pressure
let's just say you get in an argument

with your boss right
so we then react to that event so that

might look like you getting angry or
frustrated that might look like elevated

blood pressure or heart rate or it might
look like you reaching for a glass of

wine at the end of the day when you go
home right now let's say you keep

getting in those arguments with your
boss right

so it starts occurring over and over
again what we start to see is a lack of

adaptation and recovery so you might
still be thinking about that argument

even when you're at home several hours
later or you might have prolonged heart

rate recovery such that it takes you
several minutes hours to kind of

physiologically calm down from that
interaction or maybe you are

consistently reaching for that glass of
wine or to at the end of the day now

again with repeated exposure we start to
see kind of longer-term more kind of

chronic outcomes so you see elevated
immune biomarkers hypertension elevated

cholesterol right so changes in your
resting state and then of course this

predisposes us to longer term disease
and illness things like psychological

disorders mortality cardiovascular
disease that kind of thing so this is

the process that I use to kind of frame
my questions in this area and

specifically a lot of my questions
revolve around how and when working

internal stressors are associated with
physiological health so the studies that

I'm going to present for you today
the first looks at more long-term health

outcomes so linking chronic work
stressors to behavioral and metabolic

health we're then going to take it in
and start to look at more acute reaction

so specifically looking at couple
negotiations and how those elicit

physiological and psychological
responses and then will kind of take it

to the field and look at how those work
family conflicts change our physical and

psychological activity throughout the
day so the first study that I have for

you is on challenge and hindrance
stressors this is an archival data study

where we use the Mitas to look at
longer-term implications of work stress

this is something that hopefully is
nearing publication we have under third

round of review at Journal occupational
health psychology so the purpose of this

was to really understand how chronic and
challenge and root stressors are related

to behavioral and metabolic health in
the industrial organizational and

occupational health literature we've
over the years discovered many different

kinds of workplace stressors right
there's a lot of stuff that stresses us

out so everything from an abusive boss
to high workload to time pressure to may

be bureaucratic red tape that may or not
be provided by the IRB so these things

they are generally considered toxic for
our health and well-being

right they're bad they make us
frustrated and and they're associated

with psychological strain but actually
in early 2000s Kavanaugh and colleagues

came out with a theory that says maybe
all these work stressors are not

necessarily the same thing and we might
actually be able to categorize stressors

into two groups there are challenges
which are stressors that are stressful

but at the same time they have a silver
lining because they help us to achieve

our goals and they might motivate us so
these are things like time pressure or

workload on the other hand we might have
Hendren stressors so these are things

again stressful to experience but they
don't have a silver lining and in fact

they just make it harder to accomplish
our goals and so these are very kind of

frustrating stressors things like maybe
having an abusive supervisor or

experiencing that bureaucratic red tape
now when we look at outcomes typical

outcomes associated with stressors
things like job satisfaction burnout

performance what we find is that those
hindering stressors are associated just

like we'd expect so
the experience entrances you're less

satisfied you perform worse and you're
more burned-out than if you didn't have

those dressers right but when we look at
challenges we see a very different

pattern such that they're positively
associated with job satisfaction and

performance and while they tend to also
be positively associated with burnout

those relationships are much weaker than
what we would see with hindrance

dressers so we looked at this and we
noticed well but a lot of a lot of these

studies are based on self-report
psychological kinds of constructs

especially when we're thinking about
health and we know that health is

multifaceted
right it includes physiological and

behavioral health as well so what we
wanted to know is do these challenge

hindrance distinctions generalize to
other kinds of health outcomes in

addition we saw that most of this
research was cross-sectional self-report

survey certainly there are
methodological issues there that could

be kind of influencing our conclusions
and so we wanted to see do these kinds

of relationships also hold over time so
based on our allostatic load model

because we have chronic stressors in
this study we were looking at more

chronic secondary mediators here
specifically we focus on metabolic risk

this is was for a couple of reasons one
there's there's not a whole lot on

physiology and workplace stressors from
the IO literature but we do have suggest

that metabolic struck metabolic the
metabolic system is perhaps most

consistently affected by workplace
factors as opposed to things like the

cardiovascular system or immune markers
in addition we know that metabolic risk

is really important right it's low it's
linked to a lot of endpoints that we

care about in our society things like
cardiovascular disease and diabetes and

so we wanted to address an outcome that
had important practical meaning so we

paired that with the challenge and
hindrance stressor framework we

predicted that both challenges and
hindrances would be positively

associated with metabolic risk but those
relationships would be weaker when we're

looking at challenges as compared to
endurance stressors in addition we

wanted to incorporate those primary
mediators now because we're looking at

more chronic exposure where
operationally

operationalizing these as kind of health
habits right so do you regularly smoke

your tendon your frequency of alcohol
consumption and then your frequency of

high-fat high food or high-fat
high-sugar food consumption and again

consistent with that challenge hindrance
model we suggest that both of these are

going to be associated with these kind
of behavioral coping mechanisms but that

those relationships would be stronger
for hindrances compared to challenges

and that then of course would be linked
back to metabolic risk completing an

indirect Association so we dug into the
- dataset we used data from the second

wave of Midas our sample was generally
half male half female about middle-age

mostly white well-educated in a variety
of jobs the midis procedure starts off

with a general survey phase so everyone
gets a telephone survey and then a

written survey this is where we got our
measures of challenge and hindrance

stressors and demographics then people
had the option to opt into sub studies

including the biomarker study so
everyone in our study participated also

in the biomarkers study between four and
sixty two months after that initial

general survey the biomarker study was a
two-day one-night clinic visit so here

participants had a physical they had you
know a health health checklist they

indicated their smoking alcohol
consumption and high-risk eating habits

and then they had indicators of
metabolic risk measured so these were

things like glucose cholesterol BMI kind
of thing so we tested our hypothesis

using a path analysis as you can see
testing both direct and indirect

associations between our stressors and
metabolic risk factors I have the graph

with all the numbers the numbers are
small you probably don't want to see

them but if you do I can show them to
you later

what's important is what we found right
so we did indeed find that hindrances

are relatively more detrimental than
challenges so specifically hindrances

were more strongly associated with
unhealthy eating compared to challenges

and hindrances were associated with
smoking whereas hindrance or whereas

challenges or not right and so this
suggests that yes that those challenge

hindrance dimensions do kind of
generalize beyond just psychological

health and well-being and they
generalize over time we also saw that

those health behaviors are really
important for linking challenges and

hindrances with metabolic risk so just
the correlations were not significant

generally between work stressors and
metabolic risk but the indirect

associations were so hindrances were
associated with metabolic risk through

unhealthy eating and challenges were
actually associated with metabolic risk

through alcohol consumption one of the
things that we found we analyzed this

model 10,000 different ways all of these
10,000 different ways high risk eating

emerged as a really consistent robust
mediator which suggests that high risk

eating might be a key intervention
factor right so when you think of foods

that organizations might offer you might
want to just stick with healthy foods

similarly employees can take
responsibility themselves and just kind

of pack themselves healthy food ferb for
lunch alternatively we can target at the

source in terms of hindrance factors so
reducing interruptions in the workplace

or things like you know training your
supervisors make sure they're nice to

their employees so we don't trigger this
process and then finally so one of the

indirect associations that I mentioned
that was actually countered our

hypothesis was that challenges were more
strongly associated with alcohol

consumption right which was then
associated with less metabolic risk

actually so I'll just walk this through
so you have a challenging day at work

right then you're more likely to drink
glass of wine and then you have better

metabolic health so I like this I mean
I think this is pretty cool so it

suggested then yeah yeah so that's a
good question

it is more frequent alcohol consumption
so it was number of days per week right

it was like the number of servings per
week essentially so how often are you

consuming alcohol per week so it is not
just yes/no it is a continuous scale

hello
so actually one caveat thank you one

caveat
so we tended to have the range of

alcohol consumption in our sum and our
sample was actually pretty small so it

was mostly down on that lower end of the
scale so I don't know that we can

generalize to say at that upper end of
the scale where you would see the same

thing so we know alcohol is curvilinear
Lee associated with metabolic risk so

maybe maybe not quite that far yeah

that's a good question we did run
analyses controlling for socio-economic

factors and everything still came in

time pressure yeah no yeah so we did not
look at interactive effects the

correlation between the two is like 0.11
and that's pretty consistent there's

like small positive correlation
generally in other studies too so that's

certainly possible although having one
doesn't necessarily mean you have the

other yeah

yeah
so we to the most people were within a

year and we did do a lot of analysis
around does that time lag matter how

does that matter
like we control for that if we will use

it as a moderator and basically we found
that it like whenever we put it in the

model it was non significant yeah that's
that's a good point

yeah that's a good question I'm not sure
we didn't look at that possibility it

certainly could be that way and the
measure doesn't capture like whether or

not this was a social thing and I didn't
try controlling for social support but

maybe be interesting yeah

yeah all right here's where I've gotta
escape we're gonna look at my many many

slides so yes we've got the measures
right here so you can see here we've got

three items for challenges so working
intensively does your work demand a high

level of skill or expertise how often
you have to initiate things where as

hindrances were more a lot of these were
interpersonal issues right so I'm using

sexual slurs or jokes being ignored
being interrupted so they're very and we

did a lot we did a lot of pry we have
multiple pilot studies on kind of

validating these measures and we did
find that they're aligned with other

measures of challenges and hindrances so
we're pretty confident that these are

solid yeah so so the challenge starts
our framework there's challenge

challenge entrance framework basically
says those kinds of appraisals don't

matter there are kind of objectively
challenging things and objectively

hindering things but there's been some
research challenging that and looking at

for example appraisals of those
stressors and the results on that are

kind of mixed some hindrances tend to be
pretty consistently like hindrances some

challenges are a little bit more
wishy-washy for the reasons that you're

mentioning yeah and we didn't assess
perceptions here in our validation work

we did and we found these were generally
perceived as challenges versus dresser

or hindrances but
definitely be a factor yeah Samantha's

study actually has a lot of getting at
concepts of personal control it looks to

me like you're challenged entrance items
vary with respect to the degree of

internal control of individuals yeah so
you have powerful others those two the

hindrances that are actively piling on
adding to your woes harassing you

whatever the challenge side you have a
lot of parents control over how you were

allocated in your work to get up to
speed to meet the child yeah so are

these effects significant control that's
a good question so I did not control for

locus of control I can tell you in
developing the study we had other other

items in here which we thought were
representative of challenges but they

were much more confounded with control
exactly like you're mentioning and I

think part of it is that that's part of
what makes these challenges instead of

hindrances right that you can do
something to they're motivating for

performance so I can tell you that with
those more control items in there we

found essentially the same pattern of
results as we're finding here so I don't

know how much of a difference it will
necessarily make and maybe you know even

controlling for that that might just
explain why challenges are better like I

don't know that unnecessarily undermine
our conclusions here but rather kind of

elaborate on why they might be coming
out

just not they're just more relaxed about
not coping with hindrances uh so it's

it's possible but I would think that
because these really well so it's

possible we actually have another
another study that I'm not discussing

that looks at sleep and the same like
challenge hindrance with the Midas data

set and I can tell you in those analyses
we did control for personality and it

didn't make a difference now that's not
our same outcomes that we have here and

so so it could possibly make a
difference but honestly I think we're

probably same find about the same thing
it doesn't really matter all right let

me move on but that's exciting that you
guys are interested

cool thanks hopefully I'll be ready for
your public consumption soon all right

okay so for this next study we kind of
wanted to hone in a little bit more and

look at more kind of acute reactions
right so this is a couple on

decision-making this is a lab based
study that we're currently still running

the money is about to run out so we will
be done very soon but for now what I

have for you are some preliminary
analyses that I just presented last

month at the academy of management so in
moving to this study we're moving from

focusing on kind of work and health to
more of a focus on work family and

health and in the work family literature
we often study a concept called

work-family conflict this basically
happens when you have work stuff and you

have family stuff and you can't always
get everything done right they sometimes

conflict with one another and so your
work might make it difficult to do

everything that you want to for your
family or vice-versa

so we have a lot of research on
work-family conflict this concept was

developed in the 80s it's one of the
most popular concepts that we have we

know work family conflict is associated
with lots of stuff we care about working

family success health behaviors
psychological well-being and then to

some extent physical and physiological
health now my

this research is done from a level space
perspective and by that I mean we give

people a scale and we say on a scale of
one to five how much we're family

conflict do you have right so really
what we're getting out here are general

perceptions of work family conflict so
what I'm gonna argue and what these

studies are going to demonstrate is that
this is great

rights great for establishing kind of
basic relationships looking at between

person's associations but we don't
actually know what these measures are

tapping into right because as work
family a conflict occurs on a daily

basis it's actually an episode right we
have an event so you're at work and you

receive a phone call from the school and
now you have to deal with something you

know maybe your child is sick and so you
have to deal with that it is an event

that has a start and an end and you have
to work to resolve that event so what

I'm going to argue in what these studies
are going to demonstrate is that really

an episodic focus kind of yields a lot
more insight into the experience of that

work family conflict and what is that
like so that's we're going to focus on

is episodes again digging into single
experiences and this is great because we

can get more at issues of causality we
can understand the worker experience and

we can understand how those episodes are
nested within time and related to other

time varying experiences so when we
experience a work-family conflict

episode I would argue there's usually a
decision to be made right so if you get

that phone call from your child's school
you have to decide am I going to leave

work and go take care of my child or am
I going to try and work out some other

situations so that I can keep working
and somebody else takes care of what's

going on there in addition a lot of
these decisions are not made in

isolation but with our partners right
and so it's important to consider we're

talking about work family as it is
experience it's important to consider

the individuals decision-making but also
how they make those decisions with their

partners so the purpose of this study
was really to dig into that experience

and understand what happens when couples
negotiate or family decisions for the

purpose of honing in on a specific
population we are just looking at

heterosexual couples without children
here so decision-making work family

decision-making specifically is a
process where you're making a decision

about work or family that affects the
alternative domain so this looks much

like that you know child example where
you're working you receive a call from

the school and you have to decide what
are you going to do right this is

thought to underlie many work-family
conflict events so we can often think of

work family conflict as a decision and
we know there's not a whole lot of

research on work-family conflict
decision-making but we do know that

there are a couple of different kinds of
decisions that we might make so that

child example it's an example of a daily
decision - these are things that are

more transient they kind of come and go
we resolve them relatively quickly in

contrast you might have anchoring
decisions so these are very big work

family decisions that kind of set the
stage for all of those little decisions

so for example where your spouse might
apply to jobs and what kind of jobs

you're going to take right those set the
stage for your context managing work and

family so when we started thinking about
okay what are we going to expect during

these decision-making episodes we've
course turned the literature into theory

and theory suggests that work family
conflict is stressful right and this is

for a couple different reasons it's not
a pleasant thing right by definition

it's a hindrance so you're thwarting
performance either in the work and/or in

the family domain they're considered to
be an effortful to navigate so you have

to think they might involve you know
emotional labor they might involve you

drawing upon social resources and they
might be unexpected and social in nature

which we know is important for eliciting
physiological stress responses in

addition we've gotten a lot of again
between person's levels based research

that says where family conflict
perceptions are associated with things

like anxiety depression stress so we
suggested that okay based on this when

couples are negotiating decisions we
should see that's a little bit stressful

right so maybe we see elevated heart
rate we see steady or heart beat so

lower heart rate variability
and we see elevated anxiety and threat

in addition we wanted to look again at
this as as a couple

this is one of the very few studies to
consider decision-making within the

couple context and so an interesting
question is you know do members of the

couple experienced that decision
similarly right or are there perhaps

differences such that men and women are
reacting to these discussions

differently and we know that there are
differences in both work and family by

sex right so women tend to do more at
home and men tend to be more objectively

successful in their careers so maybe
it's something about this negotiation

process it's experienced differently
between men and women so we decided to

compare and we thought well maybe
because women feel more pressure to

adhere to gender norms it's going to be
a stressful experience for them or at

least more stressful than their male
peers so we expect that women will have

higher cardiovascular and psychological
strain during those decisions

we brought childless committed couples
into our lab they filled out a pre lab

survey we then hooked them up to all
kinds of stuff the EKG skin conductance

they got sociometric badges they're
being videotaped it's a very involved

lab setup and we then take a baseline
measure where they have just a

discussion with the researcher to kind
of get baseline measures of

cardiovascular activity and activity
with those sociometric badges and then

they negotiate three different scenarios
so a daily decision and anchoring

decision and then a decision that they
come up with

so we instruct them to come up with
something that's important to their

everyday lives
maybe something they frequently

negotiate or something that they know
they're going to have to negotiate in

the near future just to get a decision
that's definitely kind of tailored to

them and then of course their debriefing
compensated so a couple examples of our

scenarios that we give them this top
left one is an anchoring decision so

baby
definitely anchoring sets the stage for

work family decisions in the future as
compared to caring for an aging family

member where you might have to provide a
little bit of care in the coming months

to help your aging
- broke her hip so Metro's that I'm

going to present here our heart rate and
the root mean squared standard deviation

between heart beats heart rate
variability essentially these are all

scored and independently audited and
then we have state anxiety and threat

after each scenario so we found the
opposite of our hypothesis so you see

the baseline here has higher we have
higher average heart rate during

baseline sessions compared to anchoring
daily or couple decisions and those

couple generated decisions in fact had
the lowest heart rate on average

compared the other sessions when we look
at heart rate variability we similarly

see the opposite pattern so when couples
are negotiating that couple generated

decision we see higher heart rate
variability compared to a baseline

session when we look at state anxiety we
do see similarly that couple decision

comes comes out again so people are more
anxious when they're negotiating the

couple generated decision compared to
the other decisions and then we did just

compare to see are these statistically
significant levels and each of them are

and similarly we see threat is highest
for that couple generated decision so

thankfully some consistencies although
not all in the direction we expected

there was no effect of sex on heart rate
and heart rate variability but there was

a main effect of sex on anxiety so women
were more anxious across these different

negotiation scenarios compared to their
male partners the effect was not

significant for threat but running in
the same direction so some kind of

takeaways here we did not see the
expected kind of fight-or-flight

reaction while covers are negotiating
decisions I think what we saw is more

indicative of self-regulation and this
is in combination with those threatened

anxiety reactions right so they report
feeling threatened or anxious and that's

at the same time they have lower heart
rate variability or higher heart rate

variability I'm sorry
which indicates that they're feeling

emotions and maybe effort fully
regulating those while they're

negotiating decisions the fact that we
found the strongest results for that

couple generated scenario also has
important methodological implications so

I think this was the obviously the most
realistic and relevant scenario and it

suggests that when we do vignettes in
the lab especially around work family

issues which many decision-making
studies have and we probably want to use

vignettes that maybe are generated by
the couple right and that are relevant

for the couple and if we use kind of
vignettes that we made we might not be

getting the same kinds of reactions we
also found that females experience more

negative effect again maybe this is
contributing to why we see male type

decisions and then there's a lot more to
explore here we've got a lot of data so

I'm excited to dig in yeah yeah so are
what the couples generate daily versus

anchoring we could so I haven't I
haven't dug into that qualitative data

at all we have we've got their responses
we've got what they came up with their

person for their scenario and certainly
we could do that to compare daily and

anchoring that they came up with yeah so
they had two minutes to write down their

own individual response and then they
had eight minutes to discuss and arrive

up at an agreed upon solution we did a
lot of piloting around the timing and

that tended to be good most couples are
done before they eight minutes

very rarely do we like run up against
the time

because we find ways to sort of balance
things yeah so if yep save both members

of the couple at work and the alarm goes
off and says your water heaters exploded

yeah I totally agree with you and
actually there is there so there are a

few studies on this one is an experience
sampling study and it does suggest that

people flip so like when you prioritize
work over family the next time you'll

prioritize family / work and it wasn't a
couple study but that could potentially

be because people are negotiating with
their partner to change right who takes

care of what yeah it would be really
interesting to look at this to take this

more to inexperience family context and
look at it over time as it unfolds Anker

were two so they're randomized there
were two potential daily ones and two

potential anchoring ones the other
anchoring one was a new job so new job

opportunity but you have to move what
are you guys going to do and the other

daily one was date night but it was also
work-related so it was like you had this

special date night planned but surprise
work call and you have this like thing

you have to do what are you gonna do so
those were a little bit more work

focused

potentially yeah we there is certainly
so there's certainly some

generalizability issues here right in
terms of saying that this is what

actually happens in real life I'm not
sure we probably have some selection

bias in here because couples are really
going to fight are probably not gonna be

so much in here good IRB would not be
pleased but yeah that's definitely a

potential issue and maybe why we see
eight minute resolution times okay so

I'm gonna move on to the last study but
we can talk more about this if you guys

want and so this last study very near
and dear to my heart is my dissertation

and I loved my dissertation still even
years later so this what I'm presenting

for you today is material that it were
splitting into two different studies to

the first actually as a second round
under review Journal of applied

psychology and then the second my
wonderful student Kate is helping me to

publish right now so the purpose of this
was really to understand when we're

family conflicts occur and what happens
during and after that work family

conflict so it's similarly taking the
last question we looked at but studying

it in the field right using an
experience sampling methodology so the

first question that I wanted to tackle
because we're studying work family

conflicts in the wild I wanted to see if
we can predict when these things happen

right and so to do that I used border
and boundary theory which basically

suggests that we have work stuff and we
have family stuff and those are

separated by time and space boundaries
right so for example you might mostly

work during the day between the hours of
9:00 and 5:00 and maybe you do most of

your work at home and similarly we do
family stuff in certain times at certain

places now on a daily basis we often
transition in between those roles so for

example I might leave here walk home
transition into my family role so this

process is considered to be
effortful right and that it involves

time it might involve physical activity
it might involve cognitively switching

emotionally switching and so this is
suppose to be an effortful process and

sometimes we don't make it all the way
right so maybe you're at home saying

hello to your loving spouse and you're
trying to listen to them but you just

can't stop thinking about reviewer 2
then annoying comment that they left on

my review and so as a result now you're
not paying attention to your spouse and

what happens if you have a work-family
conflict spouse is like you're not

paying attention to me I know you're not
focusing and so complicated but you're

not meeting your family responsibilities
because you're distracted by work so I

predicted based on this theory that
we're gonna see work family conflicts

when people transition so when people
report trance or transitioning in terms

of space between work and home spaces
and when people tasks switch or switch

time between work and family
I also for this study honed in on

standard our workers and standard our
workers tend to have an ebb and flow to

their week that's pretty regular
so should you go to work in the morning

you leave in the afternoon you start the
workweek on Mondays and you end the

workweek on Fridays so I predict that
these are kind of larger kind of more

daily weekly rhythm transition times
where we're gonna again be likely to see

conflict events now in addition to
predicting that onset I wanted to look

at again acute reactivity surely we will
see that work family conflict is

stressful at some point and so I again
predicted when we have a work family

conflict we're going to see an increase
in heart rate and blood pressure as well

as negative effect and fatigue and
because again we're looking at these in

the wild I wanted to look at not only
synchronous reactivity to those episodes

but also change over time after those
episodes so how does that affect you the

rest of the day
there are a couple of patterns that we

might expect we might expect that you
react and then just kind of recover

throughout the rest of the day we might
expect that you react and then stay

elevated over time or we might expect
that you have no response

right I didn't formally hypothesizes
because the

the interpretation is a little bit
ambiguous but I considered it and when

interpreting my results in addition we
might see accumulation effect so maybe

if you just have one we're family in
conflict it's not a big deal I can

handle that nice
you know partner gets a little bit mad

at me because I'm distracted but it's no
big deal we move on like ten minutes

later but what then happens if it
happens again yeah you know 30 minutes

later and then maybe again later that
night and then maybe again or again

right and so at this point you've got a
lot of work family conflict happening

all within a fairly short amount of time
so does this accumulation of work-family

conflict events change our again
negative effect fatigue and heart rate

and blood pressure throughout the day so
to do this I used an experience sampling

methodology I recruited participants
from a local community through variety

of flyering methods we met with everyone
in person for a 1-hour baseline session

where they filled out demographics they
then were trained on a little blood

pressure heart rate ambulatory monitor
and we trained them on the study

procedures the next Monday or Wednesday
randomly assigned they began the

experience sampling study so for the
first three days they filled out a

survey every two hours starting at 8
a.m. and ending at 10 p.m. so this

allowed us to get at those nice kind of
change trajectories throughout the day

and because we didn't want to burn
people out we just had one survey per

day at the end of the day for the last
four days of the week so this allowed us

to capture when work family conflicts
are happening throughout an entire week

but also allowed us to get those more
fine-grained change analyses for the

first few days so fortunately for me we
had a pretty good compliance so half of

my vitamins completed absolutely
everything perfectly

most people completed most stuff and
then compliance across the days again

generally pretty good
so no steep drop-offs there we do have a

multi-level model here so as in the
previous study we use multi-level

modeling accounting for three levels of
nested data time points within days

within individuals so what we see here
is essentially the results of a

multi-level logistic we're
rushon found support for my hypothesis

yeah so when people transitioned between
work and family tasks they were between

seven and eight times more likely to
also report a work-family conflict event

similarly when they transition between
work and family locations they were

between two and four times more likely
to experience a work-family conflict

event compared to non transition times
we also saw partial support for those

morning and afternoon transitions and
interestingly this was in a specific

direction so it mattered which way you
were transitioning so in the morning as

you're transitioning into work you're
more likely to experience a family to

work conflict this makes sense family's
interfering with your ability to start

working and similarly in the afternoon
we see the opposite trend so as you're

trying to transition into the family we
see increased likelihood of worked

family conflict and then there was no
significant difference for Monday Monday

versus other days or Friday versus other
days possibly it could happen because

you might have like telecommuting for
example right where you're working in

the home domain yeah possibly okay in
the interest of time I'm gonna skip

these very specific things we only found
one significant pattern that was

consistent with my hypotheses that was
this beautiful pattern where when we're

family complet happens we see increased
fatigue that then kind of recovers and

then you see goes along its merry way
just increasing at a linear rate that

would be expected throughout the day so
most of the reactivity and recovery

hypotheses did not come out as expected
instead we saw a lot with accumulation

so it's not one more family conflict
event but when you experience multiple

that we start seeing changes in a
psychological strain and systolic blood

pressure in particular

so in general we did see that
work-family conflict occurs during

transitions not a whole lot of support
for cardiovascular wreck reactivity and

not a whole lot of support for this idea
of one work-family conflict event as

eliciting kind of the traditional stress
reaction right instead what we see is

that as work-family conflict events
accumulate we start to see changes in

psychological and physiological strain

it's a good question so we had a hundred
and fourteen work two family conflicts

and 124 family to work conflicts

yeah like two thousand three hundred
something like 36 was the number of

within person observations so 106 people
reported like two thousand some odd

observations of those 114 were work to
family conflict experiences and 124 were

family to work complex experiences yeah
and that's actually one of the things

that we're finding in the episodic
literature right this is I think

probably the fifth or sixth study to try
and look at this in an experience

sampling context and what we see is that
they're really not that common right you

may be experience a couple week if that
it's certainly less common than you

would have thought just offhandedly
beforehand given the way we talk about

them in the literature based on those
more levels based measures

yeah yeah that's a great question
so I did not I wanted to look at

duration but the measurement would have
just been horrendous so I did not tackle

duration I did however tackle intensity
so for every work-family conflict event

people then reported more information
about their conflict so I specifically

had them report how distressing is this
event how much did it interfere with

your plans how much did it interfere
with your goals and then I also have

some data on like social others involved
so this is essentially the scale points

right from from very slightly or not at
all to extremely and what you can see

here across the events is that they're
generally not super distressing right so

even when we look directly at those
appraisals people are not really

appraising these as stressful yeah yeah
that's yeah that's it so I kind of we

got at that so um this was a checklist
of work-family conflict events based on

other qualitative work family conflict
events work we did also though measure

chronic work family conflict and I did
run some analyses looking at you know

controlling for work-family conflict
chronic conflict or using that as a

moderator so do we see stronger
reactions when people are experiencing

more chronic conflict or is it an
adaptive thing where they actually

experience weaker reactions it didn't
actually nothing really came out there

yeah did you guys come across any like
sort of interactive like compounding

effect
like in one day say like in the morning

when you transition to from family to
work you experience what family

conflicts and then maybe at work you
know or then at work you know you get

that call and kid is sick you need to
pick them up whatever and then does the

occurrence of maybe more conflicts
throughout the day sort of like make the

later ones yeah
so the accumulation analyses were trying

to get at that right and looking at as
the number increases throughout the day

do we see changes I did not look to see
if like so I dug into this a little bit

and that if people reported multiple
conflicts within the last two hours I

looked at that again as like a predictor
or an interaction with you know how

stressful this is and again I didn't
really find much there yeah yeah it's a

tipping point yeah yeah so actually at
so I don't know how to test that and I

think we would need a little bit more
digging in at perhaps the couple level

actually because I think a lot of these
conflicts there is like a set routine

right like a like a like a
troubleshooting framework that couples

negotiate and that you follow so this
conflict occurs well I already know what

to do because we've had this conflict
and so I'm gonna follow my set

troubleshooting routine and so perhaps
it's when that routine gets disrupted

that then we see kind of more extreme
conflict events I agree I don't know how

to quite capture that but I think it
would be really interesting

it's possible procedure yeah get it to
you yeah

so we talked a lot a lot about the
design and this is actually we submitted

something to sigh up on like best
practices and doing this kind of work

and I think so does to say one of the
other presentations is talking about

this specific issue the reason that we
ended up going with the time design is

because with working on conflict you're
probably not going to report it in the

middle of your conflict right so either
way it would be retrospective and one of

the objectives here too
you know I kind of thought that complex

were happening a little bit more often
than we were seeing in previous

literature and I did find a little bit
higher frequencies here and so I wanted

to I wanted to make sure that everyone
was reporting everything that was

happening although I think with an
event-based simple you're you're right

you would get at more extreme conflicts
that people like really recognize like

oh this was terrible and I spent like
you know an hour trying to figure out

what to do here and it was very
stressful I think you would get more of

those events with an event based
sampling yeah

that's true but I think if it was I
think to Howard's point you're trying to

get it more kind of emotional episodes
or those kind of hired like the tipping

point episodes and so if that's what
you're trying to capture I think that

that would be appropriate
you would probably also capture it using

this design but then you would also
capture all of these other conflicts

that are like not big deals so I think
it would depend on your purpose right if

you're trying to get every conflict or
just kind of the big stuff there has a

real specific cost associated with it if
you're a salary worker or if you've got

personal leave time it's a very good
it's an inconvenience sometimes or it

just means you have to work more you
know on the weekend or whatever it gets

you know or work harder but it's very
different for people who literally have

to take time off of work to handle a
conflict or if it's an emotional

conflict that's that means they've got a
timeshare a multitask that conflict I'm

not sure I agree with you I agree to you
so much this is actually where a lot of

the work that I did in my Master's was
trying to focus on low-income workers

and trying to see I actually my thesis
was a commencer ability test to see do

these measures actually work the same in
low-income shift worker populations as

when we use them in these more
traditional populations we found the

answer was yes but I think that's
because the levels based measures are so

general same thing here I think these
measures are so general that they they

can be used to capture those what we're
missing are those intricacies that

you're discussing on what factors into
that decision right what does that

actually look like and I think that that
would be an interesting next step

one of the things I'd really like to do
is look at how for example money

influences our work family
decision-making and that's going to be

very different for a shift worker
compared to a salaried worker so I

wholeheartedly agree with you and I
think that's a step that we need to take

this yeah yeah so that's a good that's a
very good point these are mostly kind of

theoretically focused what is actually
happening I think that they help to set

the foundation for theoretical
implications so you know if we are

seeing that one work-family conflict
event is like not such a big deal

whereas multiple accumulated events are
a big deal then that would suggest

things like recovery are really
important right for managing working

families so stopping that accumulation
process

similarly understanding when work family
conflicts occur is important for

designing interventions right so it's a
very basic question but then it helps us

to understand well you know is flex time
really effective if people are still

making transitions right or or maybe
flex place is more effective because

then you're not really location
switching between work and family so I

think that there are practical
implications but perhaps that this is

one step away from more directly making
that connection but it does help to set

the foundation that's an option I don't
know I recommend that option

yeah stresses that most of us could
begin to comprehend yeah that's a that

is the million-dollar question I will
get back to ya the way work is I mean

for some people their their work is so
stressful that they don't have the

luxury even worried

yeah well more difficult to I would say
they're more difficult to access yeah

some of it yeah so there are there I
could built the frequencies most of

these conflicts are more time-based
conflicts but some of them are

psychological complex an individual
difference level the tendency to

ruminate and then see if at level one
yeah yeah I think that would be really

interesting and certainly pulling an
individual one of the comments that we

got when trying to publish it that was
looking at this issue of like not

everybody is the same so what kind of
individual difference factors might

predict variance in how people are
reacting to conflict events so I do

think that's an important future step to
take this right now that we've kind of

established a baseline yeah

yeah yeah yeah so so kind of two
comments on that one is that there is so

an emerging construct is tell oppressor
and so the extent that you feel pressure

to constantly be on the job over your
phone over the computer even when you're

at home so that is something that
researchers are starting to look at and

but then to actually your point kind of
highlights something that I recently so

we're writing a grant to study just work
we're family issues and single mothers

particularly around how can we possibly
build resilience through everyday

recovery behaviors and one of the things
that you look to in the literature is

you can't find anyone saying that things
are more stressful for like in terms of

work family so you can't find anything
that says you know single mothers have

more work family conflict than not
single mothers and I think that's

because of the issues that we raise
right so it depends largely on the

occupational context it depends on
different aspects of your family context

and so it's difficult to kind of make
blanket statements like certain

populations are more stressed than other
populations because really there's a lot

that goes into that yeah not here no I
would consider like work family conflict

by definition is a hindrance because
your wording performance in one domain

so you're hindering yourself so are you
by definition it's a hindrance but I

have not I have now run the validation
work to show that

school play or our senior infants first
steps does this all seem like challenge

stressors to me as opposed a hindrance
stress mmm

time prize well but see then you're
focusing on the time pressure you're

taking on the you're focusing on the
taking on extra responsibilities so it's

not the work family conflict that you're
talking about it's the challenge

interesting potentially all right so I
think we're actually out of time but

thank you everyone
this was wonderful