Role identity salience and boundary permeability preferences: An examination of enactment and protection effects

- People prefer permeable role boundaries to enact salient roles in other domains.
- People prefer impermeable role boundaries to protect salient roles from cross-role intrusions.
- The enactment effect is stronger than the protection effect.
- These effects generalize beyond the domains of work and home.
- Exploratory analysis suggests that people prefer cross-role intrusions only from highly salient roles.

We examined two boundary management phenomena-the preferred enactment of a highly salient role across different domains through increased boundary permeability, which we call the enactment effect, and the preferred protection of a highly salient role from extra-role intrusions through decreased boundary permeability, which we call the protection effect. This study examined how role identity salience relates to boundary permeability preferences in the context of three salient roles: work, home, and military reserve. By incorporating three roles, we were able to determine whether the enactment and protection effects generalize to multiple domains. Based on a sample of 1758 surveys completed by Marine reservists, we found consistent support for enactment preference of a highly salient third role across multiple roles, protection preference of highly salient roles against permeations from a third role, and the dominance of the enactment effect as compared to the protection effect. We suggest that co-activation of roles explains why the enactment effect dominates the protection effect. Additionally, exploratory cluster analysis identified five role identity salience profiles that were consistent with the dominance of the enactment effect and also revealed the protection effect to have differential preferences for extra-role intrusions.