The crossover of work engagement between working couples: A closer look at the role of empathy
This study by Bakker & Demerouti (2009) looks at how people who are married or in a relationship affect each other's feelings about work. They found that if one person is really happy and involved in their job, their partner might start feeling the same way too. But being able to understand your partner's feelings (called perspective-taking) is what really makes this happen. Feeling empathy, which is caring about your partner's feelings, doesn't seem to have the same effect.
Some of the key insights of this paper are:
When one person in a couple is excited about their job, it can make the other person excited too.
If a woman in a couple tries to understand her partner's perspective, it can help her excitement about work spread to him.
Feeling empathy, or caring about someone else's feelings, doesn't really change how excitement about work spreads between partners.
When men are excited about their work, they tend to do well in their job tasks and also go beyond what's expected of them.
Companies should encourage their employees to be excited about their work because it not only helps the individual but also their partner to do well at work too.
When one person gets really into their work, it can affect their partner in good and bad ways. The good part is that both people might feel more motivated and energetic about their jobs. This can make them do better at work and feel happier overall. But sometimes, if one person is really stressed or tired from work, it can make their partner feel the same way. This can make their relationship harder and might even make them both do worse at work. So, it's important for both people to know that their work feelings can affect each other. They should try to balance work and home life and help each other out when things get tough.
Perspective-taking means putting yourself in someone else's shoes to understand how they feel or see things. It's like imagining what it's like to be them. In a study, they found that when people are good at perspective-taking, it helps them understand and care about how their partners feel about their work. So, if someone is good at seeing things from their partner's perspective, they're more likely to be affected by how their partner feels about their job.
Perspective-taking and empathy are like cousins, similar but a bit different. Perspective-taking is when you try to understand how someone else sees things and how they feel about them. It's like putting yourself in their shoes and thinking about what they're going through. Empathy is a bigger concept that includes both understanding someone's feelings and actually feeling those feelings yourself. So, when you have empathy, you not only get what someone else is going through, but you also feel it in your own heart.
This study found that perspective-taking is more about thinking and understanding, while empathy is about both understanding and feeling. They also found that when it comes to how people feel about their work, perspective-taking is more important than empathy. This means that being able to understand someone else's point of view was more helpful than feeling their emotions in certain situations.
Simply, when men really like their jobs and put a lot of effort into them, they usually do well at the things they're supposed to do at work (like their normal tasks). But they also tend to do extra stuff that helps out their co-workers or the company, even if it's not part of their job description. This shows that when men are excited and dedicated to their work, they usually do great at both their regular tasks and at helping out in other ways.
This study also found that when one partner in a couple is really into their work, it can rub off on the other partner. And if someone is good at seeing things from their partner's point of view, they're even more affected by how enthusiastic their partner is about work. So, couples who support each other's excitement about work can actually do better at their own jobs. This can also help companies because when both partners in a couple are happy and engaged at work, they tend to perform better. But, it's important for couples to be careful when talking about tough topics or things that might cause problems in their relationship because being too understanding about those things might actually make things worse.