By: shengtian wu
Social rejection (i.e. being excluded and ignore by others) is a common phenomenon that not only leads to increased maladaptive behaviors, but prosocial behaviors. This blog will discuss studies that explored outcomes of social exclusion. Furthermore, an overarching model that explains the effect of experiences of social exclusion, victims’ reactions, and factors those impact victims’ reactions will be presented.
Background
Social rejection (i.e. being excluded and ignored from others) is a common phenomenon in various contexts (Wesselmann, Nairne, & Williams, 2012). Wesselmann and his colleagues suggested that social rejection thwarted four fundamental human needs: a sense of belonging, control to oneself, self-esteem, and meaningful existence. Wesselmann also reported that a long-term exposure to social rejection also leads to depression, physical health problems, and a higher rate of death.
Negative Behavioral Outcomes
It is not difficult to imagine that there should be several negative behavioral outcomes due to a long-term exposure to social ostracism. Literature indicates that social rejection increased aggressive behaviors (Twenge, Baurneister, & Tice, 2001). Twenge and her colleagues assumed that social rejection produces negative emotions because it thwarts one of the human’s basic needs, a feeling of belonging with others. Then, the negative emotions, in turn, create a higher rate of aggressive behaviors. As a consequence of their study, when participants were told that they would live a very lonely life based on a fake personality test, they presented a higher rate of aggression than participants in the future belong condition (e.g., have satisfactory relationships with others in the future) and the misfortune condition (e.g., have accidents in the future).
Another study found that individuals experienced social rejection tended to engage in self-defeating behaviors (Twenge, Catanese, & Baumeister, 2002). This study utilized the faked personality tests’ results to tell participants that they would live a lonely life. As a result, participants in the future-alone condition tended to do a more risky behavior (i.e. tended to select a high risk lottery that leads to a lower cash payout and an aversive experience) than individuals in the future-belonging and misfortune condition. Moreover, participants in the future-alone condition also exhibited a higher rate of unhealthy behaviors (i.e. eat a sweeter snack, engage too much in entertainment, and avoid physical exercise) and shortsighted behaviors (i.e. focus on immediate fun instead of upcoming important tasks) than participants in the other two conditions in another experiment.
Positive Behavioral Outcomes
Several positive outcomes have been mentioned in the literature, such as positive thinking (e.g., Dewall et al., 2011), increased attempts to fit in others (e.g., Mead, Baumeister, Stillman, & Vohs, 2010), tendency to conform and please others (e.g., Dewall, 2010), and perspective-taking behaviors (e.g., Knowles, 2014). This blog only explains the impact of social rejection on perspective taking due to limited spaces.
Knowles found that social rejection encourages individuals to pay more attention to others’ perspectives, as taking another’s perspective tends to help people make friends and maintain a smooth relationship. As a result, participants in the rejection condition (i.e., participants wrote a time when they felt extremely rejected) performed better in perspective-taking tasks (i.e. write letters on their forehead with index finger) than the participants in the acceptance condition (i.e., participants wrote a time when they felt accepted by others). Furthermore, in order to explore the consequences of increased perspective taking, Knowles examined if the enhanced perspective taking predicts higher social memory (e.g., memory on the others’ appearance). As consequences, individuals in the social exclusion condition (e.g., the people in the computer screen did not make eye-contacts with the participants for the most of the times) could remember more details of appearances of the people showed up on the computer during the experiment.
A Multimotivative Model of Social Rejection
Based on the multimotive model, social rejection creates three motives: a higher desire for social connections (with the person who has rejected them but often with those who provide acceptance), antisocial urges to defend or hurt from the source of the social rejection, and avoidance of further rejection and corresponding hurt from rejection (Richman & Leary, 2009). Furthermore, a perception of fairness, possibility of relationship repair, value of the relationship, possibility of other supporting relationships, duration of rejection, and perceived consequences of the rejection were suggested as factors that decide the reactions of victims. For example, a higher perceived unfairness, lower possible the expectations of relational repair, and less valuable the relationships would predict antisocial responses. If the senses of acceptance were not restored for a long time, individuals would suffer from negative mental and physical outcomes. As for pathways for prosocial responses and withdrawal and avoidance, pleaser refer to figure 1 (Richman & Leary, 2009).
Conclusion
Overall, a social rejection immediately creates negative emotions and decreases self-esteem. It also leads to negative and positive behavioral outcomes. While increased aggression and self-defeating behaviors could be observed, a higher perspective taking, positive thinking, increased attempts to fit in, tendency to conform and please others were also found among individuals who experienced social rejection. A multimotive model of social ostracism explains that high perceived cost of rejection, a possibility of alternative relationships, expectations of relationship repair, a high value of the relationship, duration of rejection, and perceived unfairness contribute to the reactions of victims toward social rejection.
References
- DeWall, C. N. (2010). Forming a basis for acceptance: Excluded people form attitudes to agree with potential affiliates. Social Influence, 5(4), 245-260. doi:10.1080/15534511003783536
- DeWall, C. N., Twenge, J. M., Koole, S. L., Baumeister, R. F., Marquez, A., & Reid, M. W. (2011). Automatic emotion regulation after social exclusion: Tuning to positivity. Emotion, 11(3), 623-636. doi:10.1037/a0023534
- Knowles, M. L. (2014). Social rejection increases perspective taking. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 55, 126-132. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2014.06.008
- Mead, N. L., Baumeister, R. F., Stillman, T. F., Rawn, C. D., & Vohs, K. D. (2011). Social exclusion causes people to spend and consume strategically in the service of affiliation. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(5), 902-919. doi:10.1086/656667
- Richman, L., & Leary, M. (2009). Reactions to discrimination, stigmatization, ostracism, and other forms of interpersonal rejection: A multimotive model. Psychological Review, 116(2), 365-383. doi:10.1037/a0015250
- Twenge, J. M., Baumeister, R. F., Tice, D. M., & Stucke, T. S., (2001). If you can't join them, beat them: Effects of social exclusion on aggressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(6), 1058-1069. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.81.6.1058
- Twenge, J. M., Catanese, K. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2002). Social exclusion causes self-defeating behavior. Journal of Personality And Social Psychology, 83(3), 606-615. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.83.3.606
- Wesselmann, E. D., Nairne, J. S., & Williams, K. D. (2012). An evolutionary social psychological approach to studying the effects of ostracism. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, And Cultural Psychology, 6(3), 309-328.