Do Work Stressors Relate to Social Support Provision? An Actor-Partner Interdependence Model Among Dual-Earner Couples

Although the benefits of receiving social support are well established, less is known about the antecedents of providing support, particularly to one's partner. As many employees in today's world are members of dual-earner couples, they may face the challenge of dealing with their own work stress while supporting their partner. To extend our understanding of the relationship between work stress and providing social support at home, we conducted a study with 147 dual-earner couples. Bridging the spillover-crossover model and the systemic transactional model, we examined whether individuals facing high work stressors (time pressure and lack of reciprocity) provide less emotional (e.g., signaling empathy) and instrumental (e.g., offering practical help) support and more dysfunctional (e.g., hostile and superficial) support, while receiving more support from their partner. We further explored whether employees' and partners' work stressors interact to predict the provision of social support and whether the hypothesized effects differ across genders. Findings using the actor-partner interdependence model indicated that employees facing higher work stressors tend to provide more dysfunctional support, but not less emotional and instrumental support, while receiving more emotional and instrumental support from their partner. The interaction between employee's and partner's work stressors did not predict social support provision. No gender differences emerged.