The majority of research on career success has highlighted its positive outcomes, particularly in work settings. However, when it comes to career success in dual-career households, the picture is more complicated. This study sheds light on these complexities by drawing from theory on emotional regulation and the appraisal theory of emotions. We propose that employees may experience both pride in their spouse’s career success and envy when a career success disparity exists, each with distinct implications for their surface acting at home and subsequent behaviors. Using a pre-registered experiment and a multi-wave, multi-source field study, our results showed that employees feel pride in their spouse’s career success, reducing their surface acting at home. At the same time, when employees have less career success than their spouse (i.e., career success disparity), they feel envy, prompting surface acting at home. This surface acting, in turn, heightens employee incivility towards their spouse and enhances their perceptions of family interference with their work. Overall, our research extends theory by demonstrating the complex consequences of employees’ emotional responses to career success in dual-career households.
