Crossover refers to how one romantic partner’s experiences and feeling states at work transfer over to the other in the home domain. However, the processes through which crossover occurs are not well understood, particularly concerning the impact of the cognitive evaluation of a partner’s work events on the focal employee’s emotions, as well as how these emotions influence work behaviors. This research draws upon social comparison theory to predict reactions to a romantic partner’s work achievement. Specifically, a partner’s work success was postulated to result in increased (assimilation) or decreased (contrast) self-esteem and self-evaluations in work performance. To predict who will be more likely to experience an increase or decrease in self-evaluations, the individual and relational self-concept levels, work and family centrality, and work and relationship contingent self-esteem were proposed as moderators. This research also considers the impact of social comparison outcomes on emotions (specifically, envy and pride), and the effect of these emotions on performance in an effort-driven task. This study was a survey experiment with full-time employees in romantic partnerships testing a moderated mediation model. Although predictions about emotions and task motivation were not supported, results suggest that the individual self-concept level predisposes individuals to feel lower self-esteem in response to their partner’s work failure. Moreover, individual self-concept level moderated the mediated effect of a partner’s work success/failure on pride, through self-esteem. Findings help further understanding within the work-family literature of how one partner’s work experiences affect the other.
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