Current Directions in Ostracism, Social Exclusion and Rejection Research

Selma Rudert, Rainer Greifeneder, Kipling Williams, Selma Rudert, Rainer Greifeneder, Kipling Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351255899
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This edited volume provides an up-to-date review of current research on ostracism, social exclusion, and rejection. The book shows why exclusion and rejection occur, how they affect the excluded individuals, and the consequences they might have for individuals and organizations.

Ostracism, social exclusion, and rejection are common phenomena, both at the individual level, such as ostracism in the classroom or at the workplace, as well as on a societal or even global scale, such as immigration or asylum policies. Examining key concepts such as the long-term effects of ostracism, the developmental and cultural perspective on ostracism, and the detrimental impact that social exclusion may have on individuals and societies, the authors provide an up-to-date overview of the research field and present new conceptual models and methodological approaches. Featuring discussion of promising areas, novel pathways for research, and cutting-edge developments, this is the most comprehensive bringing-together of research on this topic.

The book gives both a broad state-of-the-art overview of the field as well as discussing cutting-edge ideas and promising areas for future research; it is essential for students, researchers of social psychology, and policy makers interested in this field.

1

Understanding common and diverse forms of social exclusion

Eric D. Wesselmann, Corinna Michels, and Alison Slaughter

Humans need each other—they are motivated to forge and maintain stable and long-lasting relationships (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Further, natural selection pressures likely favored individuals who could achieve these goals, avoiding the survival threat posed by social isolation (Lieberman, 2013; Wesselmann, Nairne, & Williams, 2012). In modern times, social relationships afford us various psychological benefits such as social identity, self-esteem, a sense of meaning, and valuable social support in times of stress (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Ellemers & Haslam, 2012; Leary, 1999; Leary & Baumeister, 2000; Williams, 2009). Ultimately, individuals who are well-connected socially fare better physically and psychologically than those who are isolated and lonely (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008).

Unfortunately, this same need for social relationships can become problematic because individuals do not always treat each other nicely. Even the healthiest and most satisfying relationships have occasional conflicts (e.g., Gottman, Coan, Carrere, & Swanson, 1998). Further, evidence from multiple disciplines suggest that societies have devalued, marginalized or otherwise excluded certain members from their ranks throughout history and across the globe (Goffman, 1963; Williams, 2001). There are many reasons why groups would choose to exclude certain people, such as a way of providing clear group identity boundaries, correcting anti-normative behaviors, or protecting themselves from people who threaten the group longevity (Hogg, 2005; Kurzban & Leary, 2001; Robinson & Schabram, this volume; Täuber, this volume; Williams, 2009). Regardless of the reason, targets of social exclusion experience both physical and psychological distress, and in some circumstances (e.g., in isolated or hunter–gatherer societies) exclusion can be a threat to one’s survival (Williams, 2007).

Social exclusion is a broad category encapsulating various types of negative interpersonal experiences in which someone feels kept apart from others physically, emotionally, or otherwise devalued socially (Riva & Eck, 2016; Smart Richman & Leary, 2009). Further, social exclusion violates the general social norm that people should be included socially (Greifeneder & Rudert, this volume). Exclusion experiences may involve someone receiving direct negative attention (rejection-based exclusion) or may involve being ignored in some way (ostracism-based exclusion; Wesselmann et al., 2016). Even though each of these types of experiences has their own situational nuances and expressions, they share some core negative outcomes for excluded individuals. Initially, excluded individuals often experience pain, both at the self-report and neurological level (Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003; Ferris, this volume; Kross, Berman, Mischel, Smith, & Wager, 2011). Many individuals describe these events using visceral language typically used to describe the physical sensation of pain, emphasizing that their feelings were hurt by the experience (Leary, Springer, Negel, Ansell, & Evans, 1998).

Excluded individuals also experience threats to key psychological needs, such as perceived belonging, control, self-esteem, and a sense of meaningful existence (Williams, 2009; see Williams, Hales, & Michels, this volume). Indeed, excluded individuals even report feeling a threat to their overall perceived humanity (Bastian & Haslam, 2010). Exclusion also makes individuals feel devalued socially as if they are unimportant to others (Leary, 1999). This feeling of being devalued may be a key psychological mechanism driving the other negative effects of exclusion (Smart Richman & Leary, 2009). If individuals experience exclusion chronically, they may even develop severe psychological problems such as feelings of alienation, helplessness, depression, and existential meaninglessness (Riva, Montali, Wirth, Curioni, & Williams, 2017; Riva, Wesselmann, Wirth, Carter-Sowell, & Williams, 2014). Both qualitative interviews and correlational research suggest that chronic exclusion may contribute to self-harm and suicidal ideation (Van Orden, Witte, Gordon, Bender, & Joiner, 2008; Williams, 2001).

Unfortunately, everyone will likely experience some type of social exclusion at least once in their lives, and some individuals may experience it frequently—perhaps daily (Nezlek, Wesselmann, Wheeler, & Williams, 2012; Williams, 2001). Frequent exclusion may be because of something specific about the person that makes them interpersonally aversive (e.g., Hales, Kassner, Williams, & Graziano, 2016; Wesselmann, Wirth, Pryor, Reeder, & Williams, 2013), because they live in a social environment where exclusion is a common influence tactic (Poulsen, & Carmon, 2015; Williams, 2001), or because they happen to belong to a stigmatized group (Goffman, 1963; Kurzban & Leary, 2001; Smart Richman & Leary, 2009). In this chapter, we review the research on various types of social exclusion and highlight some of the new ways in which researchers are applying these concepts to understand diverse types of negative interpersonal situations. We then close with some broader questions and ideas relevant to future directions in both theory-building and research on social-exclusion related phenomena.

Rejection-based exclusion

Rejection researchers typically define the construct as direct communication that one is not wanted (Blackhart, Nelson, Knowles, & Baumeister, 2009), and commonly manipulate this in the laboratory by telling participants that someone (or a group) does not want to interact with them (e.g., Twenge, Baumeister, Tice, & Stucke, 2001). These cues do not have to be direct statements: individuals can feel rejected when their interaction partners react to them in an angry or cold manner (Wesselmann, Butler, Williams, & Pickett, 2010; Wirth, Bernstein, Wesselmann, & LeRoy, 2017) or with hurtful laughter (Klages & Wirth, 2014). The conceptual definition of rejection can be extended to involve discriminatory behaviors that make someone feel they are unwanted, either interpersonally or at the societal level (Kerr & Levine, 2008; Major & O’Brien, 2005; Smart Richman & Leary, 2009). Indeed, some definitions of these concepts explicitly involve interpersonal or societal rejection (Goffman, 1963; Kurzban & Leary, 2001).

There are many ways that individuals can reject others via discriminatory behavior. For example, individuals can verbally harass someone by calling them derogatory names (e.g., slurs or animal metaphors; Sue et al., 2007). When individuals use derogatory terms to describe out-group members, they are suggesting these individuals are inferior and beyond the typical moral considerations afforded to humans; in effect, they are dehumanizing them (e.g., Crimston, Hornsey, Bain, & Bastian, 2018; Demoulin et al., 2004; Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, & Jackson, 2008). To our knowledge, no research has directly tested if individuals experience dehumanizing language as a type of exclusion, although a recent study demonstrated that experiencing dehumanizing language intensified the pain of an explicit social exclusion manipulation (Andrighetto, Riva, Gabbiadini, & Volpato, 2016). Thus, it is a reasonable hypothesis that dehumanizing language makes individuals feel excluded and compounds any other exclusion experiences they are experiencing by nature of being stigmatized.

Many stigmatized individuals experience subtle forms of rejection on a daily basis—forms that some researchers call microaggressions (Nadal, 2011; Sue, 2010). These types of behaviors can be verbal, such as someone making rude, insensitive, or otherwise invalidating comments regarding the stigmatized individual’s group, or they can be non-verbal, such as someone purposefully avoiding a stigmatized individual (Nadal, 2011; Sue et al., 2007). Researchers are now explicitly investigating how microaggressions may have similar negative outcomes as other forms of interpersonal rejection (e.g., threats to basic psychological needs; Williams, 2009). For example, one study (Steakley-Freeman, DeSouza, & Wesselmann, 2016) asked bi- and multi-racial participants to complete survey items indicating how often they recalled experiencing various types of microaggressions over the past year. Individuals who reported experiencing more microaggressions also recalled feeling more psychological need threat.

Other studies are addressing these connections experimentally. One study (Wesselmann, Schneider, Ford, & DeSouza, 2018) asked half of the participants to recall a time when they heard an offensive joke about their group (the other half wrote on a control prompt: their experiences yesterday afternoon). Individuals in the offensive joke condition recalled feeling more excluded and psychologically threatened compared with the control group. These effects were mediated by individuals’ recalled feelings of relational value. These findings were replicated using an online community sample. Even though the prompt explicitly asked participants to recall an offensive joke, some participants detailed times in which someone simply “made fun of” their group or otherwise said something offensive. The pattern of results remained the same regardless of the content.

Another study (Wesselmann, Bebel, DeSouza, & Parris, 2018) replicated these results in a sample of transgender participants. Researchers provided participants with a definition of microaggressions (i.e., “behaviors, whether verbal or nonverbal, conscious or unconscious, that put down LGBT individuals”; based on Nadal, 2011) and asked half of them to recall an event that fit this definition (the control group wrote about their experiences the previous Wednesday). Participants’ recalled microaggressions ranged from subtle snubs to explicit hostility, sometimes including several different types of behavior in one event. Some participants in the control condition even had to be excluded...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• 1 Understanding common and diverse forms of social exclusion
• 2 Social ostracism as a factor motivating interest in extreme groups
• 3 About flames and boogeymen
• 4 Exclusion and its impact on social information processing
• 5 Dealing with social exclusion
• 6 How self-talk promotes self-regulation
• 7 Hurt feelings
• 8 Physiostracism
• 9 Observing ostracism
• 10 Workplace ostracism
• 11 Moralization as legitimization for ostracism
• 12 Rejection sensitivity as a determinant of well-being during reentry
• Index