With or Without You? People Feel More Autonomous Alone Than During Social Interactions

Social interaction is widely considered to bolster well-being and fulfill fundamental relatedness needs. However, much less is known about potential costs of social interaction, such as loss of autonomy. Here, we test a potential relatedness–autonomy tradeoff by comparing feelings of connectedness and autonomy when people were socially interacting versus not. College student participants completed experience sampling method (ESM) self-reports (N = 352, 10,046 observations) of their momentary social interactions, feelings of social connectedness, autonomy, and positive affect. We found that people report lower autonomy when interacting with others compared to when alone. This is especially true for people higher in trait attachment avoidance. However, interaction partner matters: people report higher autonomy during interactions with romantic partners compared to when alone. Our study findings provide ecologically valid evidence for a tradeoff between relatedness and autonomy during social interactions with non-romantic others.