What’s love got to do with it? The spillover and crossover effects of family support on creativity

This study examines the role of spousal love for the work-home dynamics that link coworker family support to the work-related creativity of dual earner couples. Relying on the work-home resources model as conceptual framework, we investigate the work-to-home spillover of coworker family support onto spousal family support, the crossover of family support at home, and the reverse home-to-work spillover of family support onto the creativity of both members of a couple through growth experiences (i.e., family crafting at home for the spouse providing support and flow at work for the partner receiving support). We further test whether spousal love moderates the dynamic mechanisms that connect coworker family support to work-related creativity. Results of an experience-sampling study, whereby 145 dual earner couples completed weekly surveys for six weeks, support our model. We find that on weeks with higher coworker family support, couples report greater family support provision and receipt, which leads to growth experiences and higher creativity at work. We also demonstrate that coworker family support only enables positive work-home dynamics for creativity in case of high spousal love. We conclude that spousal love is a catalyst for work-home enrichment, offering meaningful implications for research on creativity and the work-home interface.