How we benefit from job satisfaction: The moderating effect of informal caregiving on the associations between job satisfaction and physiological and psychological stress.

Job satisfaction and the resource-building processes it supports may have meaningful implications for health and well-being. These processes may work differently for employees who have informal (i.e., unpaid) caregiving duties outside of work. Guided by conservation of resources theory, we examined two indirect stress-buffering pathways in a sample of 799 nursing home workers, measured four times over 18 months. We tested how job satisfaction affects gain strengthening (via higher positive spillover) and loss weakening (via lower work-family conflict), how these processes impact indices of physiological (i.e., C-reactive protein) and psychological (i.e., perceived) stress, and how informal caregiving status may moderate these associations. We did not find strictly distinct pathways by caregiver status, but we did find differential within-person patterns among informal caregivers and noncaregivers. Most relevant for noncaregivers, times of higher job satisfaction were indirectly associated with (a) lower C-reactive protein through times of higher work-family positive spillover and with (b) lower perceived stress through times of lower work-family conflict. When employees (regardless of caregiver status) reported job satisfaction that was higher than their own average, they also reported lower perceived stress and showed lower chronic inflammation than at times when their job satisfaction was equal to or lower than their own average. We discuss theoretical and practical implications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).