Although conflict avoidance is a prevalent strategy in managing conflict situation,it has been shown to be detrimental to decision making and organization performance.The current research aims to understand why individuals adhere to conflict avoidance normative practices.It delineates social psychological factors that motivate individuals to adhere to such norm and to dissect the mechanism underlying norm adherence in organizational contexts.Considering conflict avoidance as a normative response to preserve and maintain interpersonal relationships,we reasoned that individuals who are prevention focused are particularly concerned about relationship costs and tend to anticipate negative interpersonal outcomes from direct confrontation.Such concern of relationship cost is particularly salient among those who also have high need for closure.Consequently,they are more likely to avoid direct confrontations.Results across four studies provided convergent support to our hypotheses.This research advanced our understanding of the psychological processes underlying conflict avoidance.