Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 2008, Vol. 13, No.

3, 271282

Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association 1076-8998/08/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/1076-8998.13.3.271

The Interactive Effects of Proactive Personality and Work-Family Interference on Well-Being

Christopher J. L. Cunningham
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Gabriel M. De La Rosa
Bowling Green State University

Proactive personality was expected to moderate the relationship between controllable work and nonwork stressors (e.g., time-based work-family interference) and job/life satisfaction. Moderated multiple regression analyses of survey data from a sample of professionals (N 133) revealed a signicant interaction between time-based family interfering-with work and proactive personality predicting life satisfaction and several main effects offering partial support for the hypothesized relationships ( .05). No other interactions between proactive personality and other forms of work-family interference were observed. The benets of proactive personality may only emerge when personal control over occupational stressors can be exercised. Keywords: proactive personality, work-family interference, personal control, occupational stress

Proactive personality is an individual characteristic that is receiving an increasing amount of research attention as an important individual difference within work organizations. These studies have shown proactive personality to be positively related to job performance (Crant, 1995), the ability to deal with occupational constraints (Parker & Sprigg, 1999), leadership performance (Crant & Bateman, 2000), organizational citizenship behavior (Parker, 1998), and team effectiveness (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999). From an organizations perspective, proactive personality is, therefore, a desirable characteristic for employees to possess. From an occupational health psychology perspective, we wondered if proactive personality might have both positive and negative effects for individuals facing work- and nonwork-related stressors. Pro-

Christopher J. L. Cunningham, Department of Psychology, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; Gabriel M. De La Rosa, Doctoral Candidate in Industrial/ Organizational Psychology, Bowling Green State University. This research was completed while both authors were working toward their doctorates at Bowling Green State University. Many thanks are owed to Dr. Steve M. Jex, Dr. Mike Zickar, the editor, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Portions of this research were presented at the 2006 APA-NIOSH Work, Stress, & Health Conference, Miami, FL and the 2005 Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Los Angeles. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christopher J. L. Cunningham, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 615 McCallie Avenue, 350 Holt Hall, Department 2803, Chattanooga, TN 37403. E-mail: Chris-Cunningham@utc.edu

active personality is closely associated with a persons tendency to seek and enact controlling behaviors when faced with challenging environmental situations (Bateman & Crant, 1993). At rst glance this enhanced perceived ability for control might be expected to facilitate effective coping with stress by trying to control it. This in turn could be expected to lead to reduced strain for more proactive individuals as compared with their less proactive counterparts. However, when highly proactive people attempt to control stressors that are not under any single persons control, the positive effects of proactive personality are less likely to emerge (a boundary condition on proactive personalitys inuence). The present study examines these possibilities, testing the moderating inuence of proactive personality on the relationship between multiple stressors and indicators of strain. The remainder of this introduction is divided into several sections. First, proactive personality is introduced. This is then incorporated into a discussion of control and proactive personality. The third section briey describes the multiple dimensions of workfamily interference included as occupational stressors in the present study. This is followed by a description of indicators of strain. Finally, a summary and the hypotheses are presented.

Proactive Personality
Proactive personality is an individual characteristic that reects a persons tendency to be minimally hindered by situational constraints and maximally empowered to take personal initiative to ensure a positive outcome in whatever environment that per-

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son occupies (Bateman & Crant, 1993). People with high levels of proactive personality characteristically engage in active surveying of their environment, maintain vigilance, and enact behaviors intended to bring about desired outcomes. People with low levels of proactive personality are less likely to engage in these types of behaviors, tending instead to react more passively to their environments (Bateman & Crant, 1993). Taken as a whole, the literature on proactive personality suggests that people with high levels of proactive personality are constantly trying to control their environments actively, rather than letting their environments control them.

Control and Proactive Personality

From an occupational health perspective, proactive personality has the potential to benet individuals directly. More specically, the control tendencies that are characteristic of proactive people may facilitate successful coping with occupational stressors. A proactive person is one who directs his or her behavior to remove ambiguity from a given situation via some form of exercised control in the work environment (Crant, 2000). This tendency toward directing personal energies toward active control in general is likely to improve an individuals ability to handle many sources of occupational stress. Indeed, research has demonstrated a negative relationship between perceived control and the development of negative stress-related consequences at work (Spector, 1986; Troup & Dewe, 2002). An issue that has not received sufcient attention, however, is whether a tendency toward exercising control is always benecial. In addition, there is some evidence that acceptance of external and internal conditions may moderate the effects of having control on mental health and job-related outcomes (Bond & Bunce, 2003). Although higher levels of perceived control at work have been associated with good mental health and positive work-related attitudes (e.g., Terry & Jimmieson, 1999), there is the possibility that attempting to exercise control over occupational stressors that are beyond ones actual control could actually worsen the stress experience (Schweiger & Ivancevich, 1985; Spector, 1998; see also Semmer, 2003). This could increase reported strains by creating frustration (cf., Cong, Spector, & Jex, 2005) and wasting critical personal resources (Hobfoll, 1989) that might have been better spent engaging in some form of emotional or avoidance form of coping (Forsythe & Compas, 1987; Osowiecki & Compas, 1998).

Support for this idea can be seen in stress and control research, which has emphasized that the benets of control over stress are only obtained when a person is able to exercise that control over the specic stressor that is contributing to experienced strain (Spector, 1986, 1998). In situations in which strain is developing due to a combination of stressors or an unidentiable source, efforts toward control may be wasted or at the least misdirected. There are often times when a persons actual ability to control occupational stressors is limited by objective features of the stressor itself or other factors in the work or nonwork environment. Research has also illustrated how certain individual characteristics can further complicate the relationships among stressors, control, and strain. As one example, control appears to facilitate coping with work stressors only for individuals who have a high level of self-efcacy in their ability to actively address the particular stressor (if control is made available to people with low self-efcacy the situation can worsen; Schaubroeck & Merritt, 1997; Jex & Bliese, 1999). Other research suggests that differences in an individuals cognitive processing might impact the relationship between stressors and strains. In particular, the way in which stressors are appraised (i.e., as challenging/positive or threatening/negative; Boswell, Olson-Buchanan, & LePine, 2004) may have an impact on development of multiple strains (Hobfoll, 1989; Semmer, 2003). The impact of workplace stressors on any given individual likely depends therefore, on underlying personal control tendencies and dispositional characteristics, as well as the actual controllability of the stressor itself.

Work-Family Interference
There are a seemingly innite number of occupational stressors to be studied. When the question revolves around stressor controllability though, attention needs to turn to the specic nature of stressors. Initial studies have already demonstrated that the emotional experience associated with a stressor can inuence the appropriate or effective coping strategies an individual should employ when trying to cope (Harvey, Blouin, & Stout, 2006). Highly affective stressors, such as those resulting from discordant social or intimate personal interactions are likely to be more complex and less controllable than more cognitive ones such as work demands, which may be more easily resolved or handled via the strategies common to proactive individuals. Occupational stress research is increasingly focusing on stressors that span multiple life roles, espe-

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cially those associated with interference between work and family or nonwork role demands (Bragger, Rodr guez-Srednicki, Kutcher, Indiovino, & Rosner, 2005; Frone, 2003). Three main forms of workfamily interference have been identied: time-, strain-, and behavior-based conicts that may develop from work-to-family and family to-work (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Together these six dimensions highlight the reciprocal and multidimensional nature of the more general stressor of workfamily interference. The six forms of work-family interference incorporated in the present study represent a rather complex set of occupational stressors. No research to our knowledge has yet considered the moderating inuence of proactive personality on the relationship between these dimensions of work-family interference and occupational strain. There is, however, related support for this type of relationship from research that has shown other personality characteristics such as ve-factor model traits, Type A behavior, and negative affectivity, to be direct antecedents or intervening variables contributing to strain (Kinnunen, Vermulst, Gerris, & Ma kikangas, 2003; Wayne, Musisca, & Fleeson, 2004). Both time- and strain-based forms of work-family interference are conceptually linked to theories of scarcity and the resource drain (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000). Time-based interference stems from an inability to meet expectations in one role due to a need to handle responsibilities associated with another role (e.g., time spent meeting work role demands leaves less time available for meeting family-based demands, creating a potential source of conict). Meeting these time demands draws on a persons limited supply of time resources. For these reasons, proactive behaviors (e.g., scheduling, prioritizing, goal setting) are likely to be most effective when dealing with time-based stressors. Strain-based interference develops when the varied negative psychological and physical consequences of stress (e.g., strains such as exhaustion, stress-related illness, frustration) in one role reduce ones ability to function effectively in another role. This type of work-family interference in particular illustrates the resource drain perspective, in which managing strains brought on by heavy work or family demands may reduce an individuals ability to handle new problems that arise in either domain. Although proactive behaviors might help to reduce the amount of resource drain, they are unlikely to prevent the consequences of strain-based conict because this form of work-family interference can also

develop by other mechanism. In particular, strainbased work-family interference can also be explained by the theoretical metaphor of spillover (Barnett, 1994; Crouter, 1984), which suggests that conict arising from such interference in one role domain may carry over into another domain, potentially creating conicts for the person within that second role. Spillover theory can also be used to explain the development of behavior-based forms of workfamily interference. As an example, an individual who engages in high levels of control within the workplace, in an effort to cope with a stressful work environment, may carry these behavioral tendencies into the family environment and attempt to fully control that situation when stress arises in this domain. Behavior-based conict arises when those behaviors easily transfer, but their effectiveness does not. Spillover of stress, and its associated negative affect and strains, is a more complicated phenomenon than simple usage of limited resources. The myriad factors that can inuence the degree of spillover and the persistence of experienced stress across role boundaries are not well understood by researchers and they are certainly not well understood by the average person who needs to cope. For these reasons, it is unlikely that proactive behaviors would be as helpful for strain- and behavior-based forms of work-family interference as they would be for time-based forms.

Occupational Strains
These six forms of work-family interference have been shown to have negative effects on working individuals general well-being (Carlson, Kacmar, & Williams, 2000). To reect both the work and nonwork domains included in the present study, two commonly researched forms of occupational strain were assessed. Job satisfaction was considered as an indication of a persons general positive attitude regarding his or her work environment (Spector, 1997). Previous research has found job satisfaction to be inuenced by affect (Ilies & Judge, 2002), personality (Ilies & Judge, 2003), and job characteristics (Fried & Ferris, 1989). In the present context, job satisfaction is an important construct as it has been shown to covary with many other well-being and performance-related outcomes such as organizational commitment (Mathieu & Zajack, 1990), frustration, and anxiety (Jex & Spector, 1996). Given our current emphasis on proactive personality and its inuence over the effects of work-family boundary-spanning stressors, it was also important to consider a broader indicator of a persons well-being

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(i.e., one that extends beyond the job context). Thus, we also assessed participants life satisfaction, as the extent to which individuals view their lives positively or associate it with happiness and well-being (Judge, Boudreau, & Bretz, 1994). As with job satisfaction, past research has found life satisfaction to be negatively inuenced by a variety of role and general situational workplace stressors (Judge et al., 1994; Kossek & Ozeki, 1998).

lenges to overcome and opportunities to satisfy multiple contingencies. As such, we would expect proactive personality to be a benecial individual characteristic when this type of occupational stressor is present. Hypothesis 2a: The negative relationship between time-based work-to-family interference and job and life satisfaction will be weaker for individuals with a high, as opposed to low, level of proactive personality. Hypothesis 2b: The negative relationship between time-based family-to-work interference and job and life satisfaction will be weaker for individuals with a high, as opposed to low, level of proactive personality. Alternatively, strain- and behavior-based forms of work-family interference are more likely to result from highly emotionally charged encounters in the home or work domain (especially when these encounters involve loved ones at home or close peers within the workplace). In these types of situations the control tendencies of a highly proactive person are unlikely to improve the situation, given the fact that a greater number of factors (other peoples needs/ demands, emotions, developing psychological and physical strains) may be involved than is the case with time-based forms of conict (Harvey et al., 2006). Hypothesis 3a: The negative relationship between strain- and behavior-based work-tofamily interference and job and life satisfaction will be equal for individuals with high, as opposed to low proactive personality. Hypothesis 3b: The negative relationship between strain- and behavior-based family-towork interference and job and life satisfaction will be equal for individuals with high, as opposed to low proactive personality.

The Present Study

As already mentioned, our expectation was that proactive personality would be associated with active control-related behaviors that could be more or less benecial, depending on the nature of the stressors involved (Harvey et al., 2006). When stressors have a clear origin and are more cognitively oriented (e.g., time demands across work and family roles), high levels of proactive personality should be benecial. Alternatively, when stressors are more complex, emotionally based (Harvey et al., 2006), or linked with other individuals emotions (e.g., strain or conict between work and nonwork role demands) high proactive personality may not be as inuential. As such, there may be some stressors against which proactive personality should not be expected to determine who fares better than whom. The following hypotheses are built upon this rationale. First, all dimensions of work-family interference (the occupational stressors in the present study) were expected to demonstrate negative relationships with both indicators of strain. Proactive personality was not expected to have a direct relationship with job or life satisfaction. Hypothesis 1: Dimensions of work-to-family and family-to-work interference (time-, strain-, and behavior-based forms) will demonstrate negative relationships with job satisfaction and life satisfaction. In many ways, time-based forms of work-family interference may be effectively addressed by the effective time-management and planning behaviors that are associated with the highly proactive personality. For example, through forward-thinking communication, multitasking, and effective scheduling, the multiple role time demands from work and family domains can often be more effectively satised. From this perspective, it is likely that proactive individuals (i.e., those who actively look out for solutions) may view time-based forms of work-family interference as chal-

Method Participants and Procedure

Participants were full-time faculty members in industrial-organizational psychology departments from universities across the United States. Recruitment emails and survey packets were distributed to 557 individuals. Following a reminder e-mail, 133 complete responses were received (24% response rate). Ninety percent of respondents were either tenured or tenure-track, and 92% had been a faculty member for

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at least 2 years (with 70% having more than 6 years of experience). Of these respondents 41.4% were female and 77% were 50 years of age or younger (the largest percentage, 41%, being between 31 and 40 years of age). Reported annual household income was greater than $100,000 for 62% of respondents. On average participants reported being responsible for 1.49 dependents (i.e., young children or elder adults; SD 1.37). Approximately 54.1% of respondents also had spouses who worked more than 35 hours per week (the commonly used minimum number of hours for full-time employment in the United States).

Measures
Demographic information. The demographic characteristics reported above were measured with single categorical items. Three characteristics were included in the analyses as potential control variables. Respondents self-reported gender was included as a control variable because of its demonstrated role in previous work-family conict research (i.e., to account for potential asymmetry in the prevalence of experienced work-family interference for women vs. men; Pleck, 1977; Westman, 2002; but, see Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1992 for evidence suggesting more symmetrical work-family interference). Spousal employment (i.e., whether he or she worked more or less than 35 hr per week) was included with the expectation that the multiple forms of work-family interference might be more strongly experienced by individuals who also must juggle additional conicts from their spouse (i.e., dual-earner family consequences; Barnett, 1994). Also, marital status (i.e., married/living as married vs. single) was included based on previous studies that have shown marriage to be positively related to life satisfaction and also the ability to cope with various stressors (a built-in support system; Adams, King, & King, 1996; Gove, Hughes, & Style, 1989). Work-family and family work interference. Six dimensions of work-family interference (time-, strain-, and behavior-based work-to-family and family-to-work interference) were assessed with 18 items from the Carlson et al. (2000) measure. Responses were made on a ve-point scale (Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree). Higher scores on a particular dimension indicate higher levels of that form of work-family interference in a respondents life. In the present study, all subscales demonstrated acceptable internal consistencies: (a) time-based work-to-family interference (e.g., I have to miss family activities due to the amount of time I must

spend on work responsibilities .81); (b) timebased family-to-work interference (e.g., The time I spend on family responsibilities often interferes with my work responsibilities .82); (c) strain-based work-to-family interference (e.g., When I get home from work I am often too frazzled to participate in family activities/responsibilities .87); (d) strain-based family-to-work interference (e.g., Due to stress at home, I am often preoccupied with family matters at work .87); (e) behavior-based workto-family interference (e.g., The problem-solving behaviors I use in my job are not effective in resolving problems at home .81); and (f) behaviorbased family-to-work interference (e.g., Behavior that is effective and necessary for me at home would be counterproductive at work .91). Proactive personality. Seibert, Crant, and Kraimers (1999) 10-item proactive personality scale was used to measure this construct (e.g., If I see something I dont like, I x it, or I am always looking for better ways to do things, adapted from Bateman & Crant, 1993). Responses were made on a ve-point scale (Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree), such that higher scores represented higher levels of proactive personality ( .83). Job satisfaction. Participants rated their satisfaction with their jobs by indicating whether each of 18 adjectives/descriptive phrases (e.g., Pleasant, Better than most, Undesirable) described their jobs (the Job In General scale from the Job Descriptive Index; Ironson, Smith, Brannick, Gibson, & Paul, 1989). Responses were made with a three-option scale of Yes, No, or ? if a respondent was unsure. Internal consistency was high ( .91). Life satisfaction. Participants responded to eight opposing sets of adjectives descriptive of their satisfaction with life (e.g., Interesting vs. Boring, Enjoyable vs. Miserable). Responses were made on a seven-point scale (anchored with each pair of adjectives), such that higher scores reected higher levels of satisfaction with life (as indicated by a rating closer to the more positive word in each word pair). This is a commonly used life satisfaction measure that relates to an individuals affect or mood (e.g., Quinn & Shepard, 1974). In the present study these items demonstrated high internal consistency ( .93).

Results
An alpha level of .05 was used for all statistical tests. Table 1 displays descriptive statistics for the

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variables under study. All variables demonstrated adequate normality except for job satisfaction. Before entering this variable into the analyses it was transformed by squaring it (i.e., a form of power transformation recommended by Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken, 2003, for reducing negative skew). This transformation resulted in an ination of the scale of the job satisfaction scores, but this had no effect on the analyses other than to increase the relative size of the regression coefcients in analyses involving this outcome variable. With respect to the correlations, the pattern of relationships mirrors that observed by other researchers in studies that included similar variables (Adams et al., 1996; Kossek & Ozeki, 1998). For instance, job and life satisfaction were both signicantly and negatively related to perceived strain-based work-to-family and family-to-work interference. Time-based work-to-family interference demonstrated a negative relationship with job satisfaction only. Spousal employment was negatively related to personal job satisfaction and females were more likely to report a higher degree of life satisfaction. Proactive personality also demonstrated a signicant and negative relationship with time-based family-to-work interference. A fair amount of intercorrelation among the dimensions of work-family

interference was also observed, but previous studies have shown these multiple dimensions of workfamily interference account for separate variance in overall work-family conict (Carlson, Derr, & Wadsworth, 2003; Carlson et al., 2000). Marital status, gender, and spousal employment were also signicantly correlated with several of the study variables, supporting their inclusion in the analyses as covariates. Both regression analyses were performed with and without these control variables included and the only observed differences were with respect to the overall variance accounted for (higher when the controls were retained). Because of this, the following results are based on the full model analyses, which included all control variables. Regression analyses followed the steps outlined by Cohen et al. (2003) for obtaining accurate standardized estimates. This included: (1) standardizing all predictor variables; (2) calculating all cross-product terms between the standardized stressors and proactive personality scores; (3) entering these standardized scores into a hierarchical regression analysis; and (4) reporting the unstandardized weights from this analysis. To clarify the nature of the identied interaction the interaction plotting procedure outlined by Cohen et al. (2003) was used. In the present study this translated into plotting the regression of the

Table 1 Descriptive Statistics and Intercorrelations Among Study Variables

Variable
a

SD

10

11

1. Marital status 0.83 0.38 2. Genderb 0.41 0.49 .06 3. Spousal 0.54 0.50 .42** .31** c employment 4. Time-based WFI 8.35 3.20 .10 .10 .01 5. Time-based FWI 8.17 3.01 .22** .23** .12 .32** * 6. Strain-based WFI 8.20 3.17 .14 .22 .11 .55** .28** 7. Strain-based FWI 5.45 2.60 .10 .15 .10 .11 .41** .29** ** 8. Behavior-based 7.77 2.35 .10 .00 .11 .28 .52** .37** .26** WFI 9. Behavior-based 7.26 2.74 .04 .05 .10 .18* .11 .33** .15 .57** FWI 10. Proactive 35.24 5.36 .19* .05 .07 .05 .20* .07 .04 .11 .11 personality d ** ** ** 11. Job satisfaction 2,288.62 675.40 .03 .08 .12 .24 .02 .29 .24 .03 .12 .03 12. Life satisfaction 45.58 7.78 19* .16 .29** .08 .03 .27** .25** .12 .16 .02 .65** Note. N 132133. WFI work-to-family interference; FWI family-to-work interference. a Coded 1 married/living as married, 0 single. b Coded 1 female, 0 male. c Coded 1 spouse works 35 hours per week, 0 spouse works 35 hrs per week. d Transformed by squaring raw score due to skewness of raw score distribution. * p .05. ** p .01.

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dependent variable on the independent variable at three levels of the moderator (using its M and then / 1 SD from that M). Over and above the three control variables already mentioned, with respect to Hypothesis 2a, no significant interaction between time-based work-to-family interference and proactive personality was observed predicting either job or life satisfaction. A signicant main effect of time-based work-to-family interference was observed when predicting job satisfaction, 190.92, p .01, partially supporting Hypothesis 1. Time-based family-to-work interference was found to interact with proactive personality in predicting strain, 2.15, p .01, but only when the criterion was life satisfaction (accounting for an additional eight percent of the variance in this criterion over the control variables and main effects alone). This evidence therefore partially supported Hypothesis 2b. These results are summarized in Table 2 and illustrated in Figure 1. From these results, it is evident that as time-based family to-work interference increases, its relationship with life satisfaction also increases, but this relationship is only positive for those with higher (as opposed to lower) levels of proactive personality.

Hypotheses 3a and 3b proposed that the moderating inuence of proactive personality observed with time-based work-family interference would be weakened or absent when associated with strain- or behavior-based work-family interference from either direction (i.e., proactive personality would either fail to buffer the relationship between these stressors and strain). No signicant interactions or main effects involving proactive personality were identied (see Table 3), but the small sample size (and therefore limited power) precluded us from strongly testing the null effect element of these hypotheses (Cashen & Geiger, 2004). Thus we considered these ndings as tentative support. As additional support for Hypothesis 1, a main effect of strain-based work-to-family interference was found on job satisfaction, 213.81 p .01, and life satisfaction, 1.66, p .05. Strainbased family-to-work interference also was signicantly related to job satisfaction, 143.70, p .05, and life satisfaction, 2.01, p .01. Finally, behavior-based work-to-family interference demonstrated a positive relationship with job satisfaction, 153.26, p .05. Full results from this analysis are summarized in Table 3.

Table 2 Standardized Coefcients From Hierarchical Regression Analysis With Time-Based WFI/FWI and Proactive Personality as Predictors of Job and Life Satisfaction
Job satisfactiond Variable Step 1 Marital statusa Genderb Spousal employmentc Step 2 Time-based WFI Time-based FWI Proactive personality (PP) Step 3 Time-based WFI PP Time-based FWI PP R2 F Adjusted R2 F 1 163.89 41.55 201.13 2 268.16 45.81 222.49 190.92** 42.16 32.94 3 219.97 31.35 242.67 189.90** 54.88 42.61 74.11 84.47 0.03 2.22 0.07 2.26* 1 2.11 1.50 3.32* Life satisfaction 2 2.21 1.70 3.31* 0.63 0.04 0.47 3 2.59 1.55 3.95* 0.57 0.25 0.43 0.42 2.15** 0.09 6.79** 0.14 3.73**

0.02 1.01 0.00 1.01

0.07 3.31* 0.05 2.19*

0.10 4.50** 0.07 4.50**

0.01 0.51 0.06 2.48*

Note. Standardized coefcients reported here are the unstandardized regression weights calculated from standardized scores as recommended by Cohen et al. (2003). WFI work-to-family interference; FWI family-to-work interference. a Coded 1 married/living as married, 0 single. b Coded 1 female, 0 male. c Coded 1 spouse works 35 hrs per week, 0 spouse works 35 hours per week. d Transformed by squaring raw score due to skewness of raw score distribution. * p .05. ** p .01.

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52 50

Life satisfaction

48 46 44 42 40 Low
Time-based FWI

Low PP Moderate PP High PP

High

Figure 1. Proactive personality moderates the relationship between time-based FWI and life satisfaction. Figure was plotted using the interaction plotting procedure outlined by Cohen et al. (2003). In this gure this translates into plotting the regression of life satisfaction on time-based family-to-work interference at three levels of proactive personality (the M of proactive personality and then / 1 SD from that M). FWI family-to-work interference; PP proactive personality.

Discussion
Taken together, the present ndings provide preliminary support for the notion that proactive personality can play an ameliorating role in the occupational stress process, but that its relevance can depend on the nature of the stressors themselves (as boundary conditions). Given the theoretically and statistically signicant nding of proactive personality as a moderator of the stressstrain relationship, the present study improves our understanding of the role of individual differences in the study of occupational stress research. The predicted presence and absence of moderating effects highlights the importance of appropriately parsing a construct such as work-related stress into more theoretically meaningful dimensions. When stressors develop from more controllable origins (i.e., when they are based on time demands), highly proactive people may be protected from developing certain forms of strain. In the present study this was illustrated by the signicant interaction between proactive personality and time-based familyto-work interference, a stressor that challenges people to engage in more efcient juggling of demands within and across work and nonwork roles (Hypothesis 2b). Perhaps personal initiative, forward thinking, careful planning, and efcient functioning (common proactive cognitions and behaviors) could help people prevent time-based family-to-work conicts from developing. This in turn may translate into an enhanced

sense of control over these forms of work-family interference among highly proactive people. We did not observe a signicant interaction between time-based work-to-family interference and proactive personality (Hypothesis 2a), and expect that this is also due to a lack of actual control over work-based time demands when compared to what may be perceived as more exible family-based time demands. Future studies will test these possibilities more fully. The opportunity to effectively exercise personal initiative and control in response to time-based family-to-work interference may also help an individual feel more satised in general with his or her job and life. Although additional research is needed, it is plausible that highly proactive individuals experience higher levels of satisfaction in situations that require them to demonstrate creative problem solving skills or personal initiative (e.g., multitasking, efcient scheduling) when solving both personally relevant (i.e., nonwork responsibilities) and professionally relevant problems (i.e., work responsibilities). As hypothesized, however, proactive personality did not appear to be a consistent source of benecial moderation between occupational stressors and strains. In the present study this was most visible with our results from the strain- and behavior-based forms of work-family interference (Hypotheses 3a and b). In these analyses, strain-based work-to-family and

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Table 3 Standardized Coefcients From Hierarchical Regression Analysis With Strain- and Behavior-Based WFI/FWI and Proactive Personality as Predictors of Job and Life Satisfaction
Job satisfactiond Variable Step 1 Marital statusa Genderb Spousal employmentc Step 2 Strain-based WFI Strain-based FWI Behavior-based WFI Behavior-based FWI Proactive personality (PP) Step 3 Strain-based WFI PP Strain-based FWI PP Behavior-based WFI PP Behavior-based FWI PP R2 F Adjusted R2 F 1 163.89 41.55 201.13 2 227.16 178.10 179.30 213.81** 143.70* 153.26* 66.08 5.08 3 175.35 179.28 152.72 236.73** 125.14* 160.59* 88.98 5.83 81.77 29.08 12.44 65.21 0.02 0.89 0.12 2.51** 1 2.11 1.50 3.32* Life satisfaction 2 2.48 3.01* 2.88 1.66* 2.01** 0.74 0.66 0.73 3 3.08 2.74 2.92 1.70* 1.80** 0.72 0.75 0.59 0.78 0.10 0.68 0.05 0.03 0.99 0.18 3.43**

0.02 1.01 0.00 1.01

0.16 4.64** 0.13 3.33**

0.10 4.50** 0.07 4.50**

0.14 4.39** 0.18 4.66**

Note. Standardized coefcients reported here are the unstandardized regression weights calculated from standardized scores as recommended by Cohen et al. (2003). WFI work-to-family interference; FWI family-to-work interference. a Coded 1 married/living as married, 0 single. b Coded 1 female, 0 male. c Coded 1 spouse works 35 hrs per week, 0 spouse works 35 hrs per week. d Transformed by squaring raw score due to skewness of raw score distribution. * p .05. ** p .01.

family-to-work interference, as well as behaviorbased work-to-family interference, demonstrated main effects on the outcome variables, but these effects were not moderated by the presence of proactive personality. An interesting area for future study is whether a proactive persons tendency to indiscriminately exert controlling behaviors predisposes him/her to higher levels of strain when confronting complex occupational stressors that are beyond direct personal control. Research has determined that when aspects of an environment cannot be controlled, emotion-focused coping techniques may be more effective than problem-focused coping techniques (i.e., a lack of goodness-of-t between coping and control; Forsythe & Compas, 1987; Osowiecki & Compas, 1998). The problem-focused nature of highly proactive individuals, however, may run counter to this nding of adaptability; there are times when being less proactive might be more adaptive (cf., Semmer, 2003). This has also been shown with respect to stress from the inherently uncontrollable process of organiza-

tional acquisition, where an internal locus of control may contribute to higher levels of stress than an external locus of control (Schweiger & Ivancevich, 1985). Related research suggests that lack of actual control may be more damaging for people with high, as opposed to low, self-efcacy, because the former are more likely to blame themselves for an inability to cope with a situations demands (Schaubroeck & Merritt, 1997). Although the present study was a preliminary investigation of the moderating inuence of proactive personality, we expect that high levels of this individual characteristic may actually exacerbate the development of strains within highly proactive people who face uncontrollable stressors. The reason for this is that less proactive people may be less likely to approach uncontrollable stressors as challenges and focus instead on avoiding them when possible. This may explain the more constant level of life satisfaction observed in Figure 1, but this assertion will need to be further studied.

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Limitations, Future Research, and Implications

Several study limitations need to be acknowledged. The rst and second limitations were that we relied on cross-sectional data collected from a single sample of professionals in academic departments. This type of data prevented us from making causal inferences and indeed future studies in this area (and in most research on occupational stress) will benet from considering the occupational stress process longitudinally. The nature of our data also may have lead to inated relationships among the multiple selfreported measures. This limitation is further related to a potential lack of generalizability of our ndings, given the use of a single sample. We cannot dismiss these limitations, but we feel that if they were extremely serious we would have observed abnormal patterns of relationships among the stressors and strains and this was not the case. Also, though we acknowledge that the inuence of sample composition is a critical study design issue (cf., Kossek & Ozeki, 1998), there is no particularly clear reason that the present relationships between stressors, strains, and proactive personality should differ between the present participants and other upper-middle class professionals who work with a certain degree of autonomy. A nal limitation was the unfortunately small sample size. This combined with the omnipresent unreliability in the measurements of stressors and strains may have limited our power to detect the complex interaction effects that we hypothesized (Cohen et al., 2003). We addressed this concern in part by separately analyzing each hypothesized relationship with a robust hierarchical moderated regression procedure. However, the limited sample size also prevented us from fully testing Hypotheses 3a and 3b as null effects (i.e., that there would be no moderation of proactive personality), which would have required a much larger sample to achieve ideal power levels (Cashen & Geiger, 2004). These limitations will need to be addressed in future studies, as will the replication of this work with more diverse samples of participants. Despite these limitations, we plan to undertake (and would like to see others engage in) additional research that considers proactive personality as an important intervening variable in the occupational stress process. We also see an important area of research developing around the accuracy with which individuals are capable of judging the actual control-

lability and origins of occupational stressors they experience. Such work could eventually translate into effective stress and strain reducing interventions. Although preliminary, we feel there are several practical implications of the present ndings. The primary implication is that proactive personality appears to be an important individual characteristic inuencing the relationship between psychology, individual differences, and occupational health. Additional research along these lines may be able to foster development and testing of interventions that can teach people how to operate in a more proactive fashion when facing controllable stressors in their work and nonwork lives. Proactive personality likely operates in conjunction with other individual characteristics such as conscientiousness and self-efcacy, as well as situational factors including level of job autonomy and interdependence. Future research needs to more fully develop the proactive personality construct as a cognitively and behaviorally inuential individual characteristic. We nd the present results encouraging and important in that they remind us that not all individuals are impacted by stress in the same way.

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Received July 17, 2006 Revision received May 1, 2007 Accepted June 8, 2007 y

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