It may be a family's policy to keep work issues away from the home, but a new study suggests what happens at home, in particular between spouses, may be affecting a lot of what happens at the office.

Put another way, when it comes to pay raises, promotions and other measures of career success, it appears the husband or wife at home holds great sway over what opportunities ultimately pan out, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

"Our study shows that it is not only your own personality that influences the experiences that lead to greater occupational success, but that your spouse's personality matters too," Dr. Joshua Jackson, assistant professor of psychology and lead author of the study, said in a news release.

He added that although people supposedly marry "for better for worse, for richer for poorer," the new research is of the first to actually demonstrate the personality traits of the spouse we choose may play a role in determining how successful we are at work.

"The experiences responsible for this association are not likely isolated events where the spouse convinces you to ask for a raise or promotion," Jackson said. "Instead, a spouse's personality influences many daily factors that sum up and accumulate across time to afford one the many actions necessary to receive a promotion or a raise."

Findings from the study -- which, over a five-year period, examined nearly 5,000 married people ranging in age from 19 to 89, with both spouses working in about 75 percent of the sample -- will be included in a future edition of the journal Psychological Science

Jackson and co-author Brittany Solomon, a graduate student in psychology at WU, analyzed data on study participants who took a series of psychological tests to assess their scores on five broad personality characteristics -- openness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and conscientiousness.

The researchers then tracked the on-the-job performance of working spouses using annual surveys designed to measure occupational success, self-reported opinions on job satisfaction, salary increases and the likelihood of being promoted.

It was found workers who scored highest on measures of occupational success tended to have a spouse with a personality that scored high for conscientiousness, regardless of whether or not both spouses worked and no matter if the working spouse was male or female.

Jackson and Solomon also tested several theories for how a spouse's personality traits, especially conscientiousness, might influence their partner's performance at work.

They discovered having a conscientious spouse contributes to workplace success in three ways: First, through a process known as outsourcing, the working spouse may come to rely on his or her partner to handle more of the day-to-day household chores, such as paying bills, buying groceries and raising children; workers also may likely emulate some of the good habits of their conscientious spouses -- taking traits such as diligence and reliability into the workplace to handle challenges there; and, finally, having a spouse that keeps your personal life running smoothly may simply reduce stress and make it easier to maintain a productive work-life balance.

While previous research with romantic partners demonstrated a bad experience in one social context can bleed over into another, the Jackson/Solomon study went farther and suggested such influential spousal behaviors exist day-in and day-out and exert a subtle, but important, influence on the performance of the working spouse in environments far removed from their home lives and spouses.

The study also revealed some interesting insights about what goes into choosing romantic partners.

While previous research suggests that people seeking potential mates tended to look for partners who score high on agreeableness and low on narcissism, the new study suggests that people with ambitious career goals may be better served to seek supportive partners with highly conscientious personalities.

"This is another example where personality traits are found to predict broad outcomes like health status or occupational success, as in this study," Jackson said. "What is unique to this study is that your spouse's personality has an influence on such important life experiences."