Do interactions matter? Assessing the role of job characteristics interactions on employee well-being.

= 100,000) stratified by industry, gender, age, and employment status. We compared the out-of-sample predictive performance of models capturing main effects (linear mixed-effects models) with models capable of modeling complex interactions (boosting algorithms). The inclusion of interaction effects did not improve predictive accuracy beyond models based solely on main effects. These findings challenge the validity of buffer and boost effects as global mechanisms across jobs and organizations, as interactions among job characteristics did not meaningfully contribute to predicting either burnout or work engagement. Instead, job characteristics appear to exert only additive effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).