Dispositional Coping,Personality Traits,and Affective Style Relating to Conflict between Work and Family Domains

Relations between dispositional characteristics (e.g., personality traits, affective style, and coping styles) and work-family conflict (WFC) and family-work conflict (FWC) were investigated. Participants were employed adults recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Results showed conscientiousness and extraversion related to emotion-focused coping (EFC), positive affect positively related to problem-focused coping (PFC) and EFC, and neuroticism related to avoidance-focused coping (AFC). Additionally, AFC, conscientiousness, and negative affect related to FWC, and positive affect related to more WFC. Results highlight the importance of personality and affect relating to dispositional coping, yet coping styles added little to understanding of conflict. Overall, finding that negative affect and AFC related to conflict suggests that interventions that target these dispositional traits would likely be beneficial to reducing conflict between domains.