What Makes Us Sacrifice Time With Loved Ones?

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If there is one thing that the decades of psychology research have taught us, it is that spending time with friends and family makes you happy (Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004). Having dinner with friends after a long day at work, catching the sunset with your partner, or going on a picnic with your kids on the weekend, not only result in hundreds of pictures in our already exploding Cloud folders, but they fill our time with happiness.

Ask around. How many people think they are spending enough time with friends and family? Among working adults in the United States, very few would say, “Yes, plenty of time.” According to recent surveys, Americans spend less than a single hour of quality time each day with their families (Paul, 2018) and less than an hour each day with their friends in an average week (U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, 2015). Why aren’t we spending enough time with our loved ones? Is it simply because we work too much? My recent work shows that the story is more complicated than simply one of overworked Americans (Hur, Lee-Yoon, and Whillans, 2021).

Instead, one answer lies in the way we spend our time outside of work. Time is limited, and we often face decisions on how to allocate our precious “free” time to different relationships in life. For working adults, the decisions often end up pitting work relationships against personal relationships. Would you go to a happy hour with coworkers or go to your friend’s birthday party? Would you attend a networking event or have a romantic dinner with your partner? Would you play golf with your boss on the weekend or watch your daughter’s soccer game?

I was curious what factors would nudge people one way or the other. That is, what makes people prioritize spending time with their work colleagues and sacrifice time they could spend with their loved ones? Does it simply depend on your personality? My colleagues and I suggest that it may depend on what kind of job you have, and, specifically, how you get paid (Hur, Lee-Yoon, and Whillans, 2021).

Pay-for-Performance Equals Pay-for-Work Relationships?

The performance incentive is one of the most common ways for companies to pay their workers. In the United States, 75 percent of companies employ some form of performance incentives, from sales commissions to quarterly bonuses (Harrison, 2019). One potential psychological drawback of this popular payment system is that it makes us think about monetary rewards constantly (Hur and Nordgren, 2016). When your pay is tied to your performance, you keep thinking about how each decision would lead to more or less money, to calculate how much you are making, and to compare the amount with others.

These constant reminders of monetary rewards also have an impact on how we think about the people around us. If we keep thinking about the goal of making money, we tend to value those who are “useful” in achieving this goal—that is, our work colleagues. My own colleagues and I found that people who receive some kind of performance incentives find their team members, managers, and clients more instrumental (Hur, Lee-Yoon, and Whillans, 2021). This instrumentality leads people to spend more time with their work colleagues, not only at work but also outside of work—going to a happy hour after work or playing golf on the weekends.

Naturally, this comes with the sacrifice of the time that could have been spent with friends and family—the time you take a stroll with your partner, the time you have weekend getaways with kids, and the time you catch up with friends.

Are We Happier With Our Work Relationships?

One optimistic scenario for performance incentives: all the extra time spent with work colleagues actually makes time with them more enjoyable. Possibly, getting drinks or playing sports with our coworkers would turn them into our new BFFs. However, our initial analyses show that is not the case. Even when employees who work under performance incentives spend significantly more time with colleagues and less time with friends and family, they still find greater happiness from spending time with friends and family.

It is possible that the increase in time spent with coworkers did not result in the increase in greater happiness because performance incentives might nudge people to see their coworkers as means to an end. They might interact with their work colleagues in a more strategic, less authentic manner (Belmi and Pfeffer, 2018), preventing a chance to form deep, meaningful relationships.

Together, we want to ask ourselves: First, am I spending enough time with my friends and family? Second, if not, am I prioritizing work relationships at the sacrifice of personal relationships?

It is possible that your work—or more specifically, your pay—is nudging you away from your friends and family without you noticing it.