Please leave me alone: can daily interaction avoidance serve as a self-regulatory strategy?

We adopt an agentic lens on interpersonal processes at the workplace and refine knowledge of daily withdrawal behaviours. Specifically, we investigate whether daily interaction avoidance can be an agentic and adaptive self-regulatory strategy by integrating assumptions from the model of selective optimization with compensation and social exchange theory. We assumed that intrapersonal fluctuations in anticipated workday characteristics (anticipated work goal importance, interaction costs, task independence, and compensatory effort) prompt employees to avoid interactions during the day, resulting in higher levels of serenity and task focus. We conducted a daily diary study, including three daily surveys for two workweeks (204 employees, 1,406 days). Results provided mixed support for our assumptions by showing that interaction avoidance might be an agentic strategy triggered by some of the anticipated workday characteristics but still results in rather maladaptive consequences. Additionally, a range of exploratory analyses shed further light on the phenomenon of interaction avoidance. Finally, we discuss the theoretical implications of our findings and make suggestions on how refining the conceptualization of interaction avoidance can help move research on interpersonal withdrawal processes forward.