| Work-family conflict occurs when role pressures from the work and family domain are mutually incompatible in some respect.That is,participating in the work(family)roles make it difficult to effectively participating in the family(work)roles.Work-family decision-making concerns how individuals intentionally allocate their personal resources to one role over another under specific work-family conflict incidents,based on consideration of other roles.Previous studies have found that personal cues such as role salience,anticipated regret affect the individuals’ role choices during confronting specific work-family conflict incidents.However,the influence of personality traits on role choices under work-family conflicts has been rarely discussed.Workaholism is characterized as a tendency to overwhelm in work and unable to separate from it.Individuals with high workaholic tendency usually devote time and energy to their work roles beyond expectations,causing a neglecting of family and other life roles.Research has found a positive correlation between workaholism and the perceived severity of work-family conflict.That is,the higher the workaholism tendency,the higher the level of ongoing or chronic work-family conflict individuals perceived.This suggested a close relationship between workaholism and work-family conflict.However,we cannot know how workaholism affects individuals’ role choices during in specific work-family conflict episodes.Although some researchers have explored the psychological processing of work-family conflict and called for new research methods to investigate the potential cognitive processing of work-family conflict,empirical studies on the psychological processing are still lacking.In this study,we used functional magnetic resonance imaging(f MRI)to investigate the neural mechanisms of work-family conflict decision-making.On the one hand,this investigation can improve our understanding of the relationship between the brain and work-family decision-making.On the other hand,combined with the existing knowledge of brain function,we can improve the understanding of the psychological processing of work-family decision-making.At the same time,combining with work-family conflict episode processing theory and findings related to work-family decision-making,we conclude that processes including error detection,conflict monitoring,episodic memory/autobiographical memory retrieval,situational simulation,value assessment,self-evaluation and theory of mind may involve in work-family decision-making.Experiment 1 combined with time-based work-family decision-making task to examine the influence of workaholism on role choices of individuals under specific work-family conflict episodes.A total of 30 full-time college teachers were recruited to participate in the experiment.The Dutch Work Addiction Scale(DUWAS)was used to measure the workaholic tendency of individuals.In the time-based work-family decision-making task,participants were instructed to choose between a work and family activity which are scheduled to occurred simultaneously,and to evaluate the conflict feelings during the decision-making process after the choice in each trial.The results of partial correlation analysis showed that,after controlling for gender,the workaholic score was positively correlated with participants’ work preference,suggested that the higher the workaholic tendency was,the more likely it was to choose work in the work-family conflict situations.In Experiment 2,we used the time-based work-family decision-making task and f MRI technique to investigate the neural basis of work-family decision-making.Sixty college students were recruited to participate in the experiment.Participants were asked to complete a time-based work-family decision-making task and color word judgment task during the f MRI scan.Same as Experiment 1,in the work-family decision-making task,participants were compelled to choose between engaging in a work activity and a family activity that was scheduled to coincide by a button press in each trial and evaluate their conflict feeling during decision-making.In the color word judgment task,participants had to decide which of the two sentences presented on the computer screen contained the color words by a button-press and evaluate their conflict feeling during the decision-making.Based on the conflict ratings and choice frequencies in a pilot study,in the formal experiment,work-family conflict was divided into three different conditions,including the high conflict condition,low conflict condition with high work frequency and low conflict condition with high family frequency.The conjunction analysis of three work-family conflict conditions showed an increased activation in default mode network(DMN)areas,including the dorsal and ventral medial prefrontal cortex,anterior cingulate cortex,posterior cingulate cortex,temporoparietal conjunction area and the lateral anterior temporal cortex.Combining regions’ functions,our results suggested that work-family decision-making may involve cognitive processes such as self-evaluation,episode or autobiographical memory retrieval,theory of mind and episode simulation process,providing empirical examination to related theories in the work-family conflict domain.Furthermore,results of comparisons between high and low conflict conditions showed an increased activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in the high conflict condition.Our research suggests the influence of dispositional factor on individuals’ role choice during specific work-family conflict episodes,which can inform individuals to make more optimal decisions,thereby promoting work-family balance.We also examined the neural basis of work-family decision-making,advanced our understandings of the relationship between the brain and work-family conflict,and extending findings in the field of decision-making neuroscience. |
