“If you keep talking, I’ll leave”: The impact of workplace interpersonal capitalization on contact avoidance

Research on interpersonal capitalization has focused mainly on its positive influence, paying little attention to its dark side. Drawing on affective events theory, we developed a moderated mediation model in which coworkers’ workplace interpersonal capitalization affects employees’ contact avoidance via anxiety, with prevention focus as a second-stage moderator. Data were collected in two waves from 289 full-time employees of organizations in China and path analysis was used to test our hypotheses. The results demonstrated that anxiety mediated the relationship between coworkers’ workplace interpersonal capitalization and employees’ contact avoidance. This positive indirect effect was moderated by prevention focus, such that anxiety had a stronger mediating effect when the level of prevention focus was high (vs. low). The findings of this research identified an important factor that can induce anxiety in employees: colleagues’ frequent sharing of their good news at work. This may elicit not only anxiety but also contact avoidance in employees, particularly those with a low level of prevention focus. The implications and limitations of the research are discussed.