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Control and Anticipation of Social Interruptions: Reduced Stress and Improved Task Performance1

Social interruptions are frequent occurrences that often have distressing consequences for employees, yet little research has gauged their effect on individuals. Participants were exposed to 2 social interruptions as they engaged in a computer task with an accepted performance goal. Participants who were able to anticipate social interruptions performed significantly better than did those who could not anticipate them. Participants who had the opportunity to prevent interruptions reported significantly less stress than those who did not have this opportunity. This reduction in stress resulted even when participants did not take advantage of this opportunity. Implications for job performance and job satisfaction are discussed. Organizational strategies for how leaders can help employees manage social interruptions are suggested. In recent years, as networking within organizations has become more complex, interactive, and interdependent, the social interruption has established itself as a widespread problem (Perlow, 1999). Although managers frequently cite social interruptions as among the most burdensome of workplace realities, research on interruptions has been predominantly limited to the domains of communications, technology, computing, aviation, and cognition, with little investigation by social psychologists or scholars in organizational behavior (for a review, see McFarlane and Latorella, 2002). Specifically, little academic research has investigated the best methods for curtailing the negative consequences of social interruptions. We propose that two basic functions of social perception, control and anticipation, will allow individuals to cope better with the debilitating consequences of these disruptions to work flow and concentration.