Integrative and Masking Emotion Work: Marital Outcomes Among Dual-Earner Couples

ABSTRACT

This study redresses a gap in the literature concerning the outcomes of emotion work by exploring how both integrative and masking emotion work relate to marital quality and marital conflict. Using data from a random sample of dual-earner couples in a northeastern city in an upper Midwestern state (n = 99 couples), this study explores the emotion-work performance of each partner. The findings show that men’s integrative emotion work is only significantly associated with men’s marital quality, whereas men’s masking emotion work significantly predicts their partner’s marital quality, men’s marital quality, and men’s marital conflict. Women’s integrative emotion work is significantly associated with women’s marital quality and their partner’s marital conflict, whereas women’s masking emotion work predicts women’s marital quality and marital conflict. Altogether, the findings suggest that considering both masking and integrative emotion work helps gain a fuller understanding of how emotion work shapes marital outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• emotion work
• emotional labor
• marital conflict
• marital quality
• marital satisfaction

Notes

A third type, differentiating emotions, which requires workers to display hostility and other negative emotions to customers and clients usually to create fear (e.g., bill collectors acting angry to encourage customers to make payments), seems less relevant to the family context (Hochschild, 1983; Wharton & Erickson, 1993) and is not included in the present study.