Building upon insights generated by social psychological scholarship on equity, emotions, and identity, we use the General Social Survey (1996) Modules on Emotion and Gender and the National Survey of Family and Households (1992—1994) to investigate the relationship between perceived inequity in the household division of labor and emotion. These surveys enable us to assess the degree to which patterns identified in short-term laboratory studies of relative strangers are generalizable to enduring relationships among intimates. We move beyond existing studies that link inequity in the home with depression by incorporating a broader scope of emotions and further by distinguishing between underbenefiting and overbenefiting—i.e., doing what one considers more or less than one’s fair share—and by examining these processes for women and men. We find general support for principles of equity theory: That is, emotions are closely tied to perceived inequity in the division of household labor. Guided by insights from Kemper’s structural interactional theory of emotion and affect control theory, we show that this pattern differs by specific emotions, the direction of the inequity, and the sex of the perceiver. Implications for understanding emotion, equity theory, and family are then elaborated.
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