How Do Instant Messages Reduce Psychological Withdrawal Behaviors?—Mediation of Engagement and Moderation of Self-Control

Abstract

Enabling people to send and receive short text-based messages in real-time, instant messaging (IM) is a communication technology that allows instantaneous information exchanges. The development of technology makes IM communication widely adopted in the workplace, which brings a series of changes for modern contemporary working life. Based on the conservation of resource theory (COR), this paper explores the mechanism of workplace IM communication on employees’ psychological withdrawal, and investigates the mediating role of work engagement in the relationship and the moderating role of self-control. Using the experience sampling method (ESM), a 10-consecutive workdays daily study was conducted among 66 employees. By data analysis of 632 observations using SPSS and HLM, results found that: (1) IM demands had a positive relation with emotion and cognitive engagement. (2) Emotion and cognitive engagement were negatively correlated with psychological withdrawal. (3) Emotion and cognitive engagement mediated the relations of IM demands and psychological withdrawal. (4) Self-control moderated the relationship between emotional engagement and psychological withdrawal.