Ostracism, Exclusion, and Rejection

Kipling D. Williams, Steve A. Nida

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315308456
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie en psychologie

Ostracism, Exclusion, and Rejection examines research into the related phenomena of ostracism, exclusion and rejection. Most individuals have experienced both sides of the coin: being ostracized and ostracizing others. People experience mild forms of ostracism on a daily basis, but some endure years and decades of being the social outcast. How does it feel to be shunned, left out, not wanted? Research suggests that even the mildest and briefest forms of ostracism are painful and have downstream consequences to our feelings of social connection. Longer-term ostracism has devastating consequences on individuals' health and well-being.

This innovative compilation covers how being cast out affects the brain and body chemistry, feelings and emotions, thoughts and beliefs, and behaviors. In addition to the primary focus on targets of ostracism, researchers also examine the motives and consequences of ostracizing. Social scientists from social psychology, developmental psychology, neuroscience, communication science, cross-cultural psychology, and anthropology tackle these questions with cutting-edge methods and provocative theories. A key volume for all in those fields, this book also presents applications from the schoolyard to the workplace, and sounds a much-needed call for further research on this universal behavior of all social animals.

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INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

Kipling D. Williams and Steve A. Nida

Ostracism—being ignored and excluded—has been occurring for as long as there have been social animals; the term itself emerged in Athens as early as 487 BC, referring to ostraka, shards of pottery on which votes were taken to expel individuals. As noted by Williams in his book, Ostracism: The Power of Silence (2001), forms of ostracism—many of them institutionalized—exist in virtually every culture.

Themes of social exclusion, rejection, and estrangement are ubiquitous in movies, literature, and music—and thus reflect our common experience. From the domain of classic American cinema, for instance, consider James Dean’s character in Rebel without a Cause, Jim Stark, a social misfit who is shunned by most of his schoolmates. Then there is Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart’s character Rick Blaine, whose open bitterness toward Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa, his former lover who resurfaces, reflects the deep and unrelenting pain caused by her abandonment of him a year or so earlier. More recently, the disturbing book (and subsequent film) We Need to Talk about Kevin explores the relationship between social disengagement and mass killings. The list of popular songs about romantic rejection is seemingly endless: The Beatles’ I’m a Loser, Patsy Cline’s Crazy, the oft-recorded I Heard It through the Grapevine … and the list goes on and on. Paul Simon even tells us how to execute an act of romantic rejection in his Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover. In fairy tales, we note that Snow White and Sleeping Beauty have been isolated for some reason, and Cinderella is treated as an outcast and forbidden from attending the ball. Even in nursery thymes we find the example of Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater—who has decided to impose ostracism on his wife, separating her from this rest of the world by putting her away inside a huge pumpkin! In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge feels the frustration of not being seen or heard when he visits the past, Brer Rabbit becomes so angry when ignored by the Tar Baby that he resorts to aggression, and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man first suffers, then exploits his invisibility to white men. Indeed, almost all of us can remember an unpleasant episode from our own childhood (or even more recently) in which we were rejected or intentionally excluded by our peers.

It is somewhat surprising, then, that social and behavioral scientists did not begin to acknowledge and study this behavior until late in the second half of the twentieth century. The first compendium of research devoted to ostracism was a special issue of the journal Ethology and Sociobiology, edited by Gruter and Masters and published in 1986. In their volume, animal behaviorists and ethologists, biologists, anthropologists, legal scholars, economists, neuroscientists, developmental psychologists, political scientists, and sociologists presented mostly qualitative and case study examinations of ostracism. Notably absent from this excellent introduction to a focused examination of ostracism across many domains were chapters written by social psychologists, or experimentalists in any domain.

Within social psychology, a confluence of three labs produced a sudden interest in ostracism, exclusion, and rejection (more will be said about the distinctions among these terms a bit later). In 1995 Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary published a powerful and seminal article, “The Need To Belong.” Here, they laid out compelling evidence that, like water and food, people needed belonging—social connections with at least a few others—in order to survive physically and psychologically. In their respective labs, they began publishing articles on exclusion (Baumeister’s term) and rejection (Leary’s term), both emanating in part from the need-to-belong foundation. About the same time, Kip Williams began publishing theory and experimental research on ostracism (the term he uses), showing the powerful effects of brief encounters with others, typically strangers, in which the individual is ignored and excluded in a seemingly trivial context. In addition to this intersection of research interests, there may well have been a Zeitgeist in which social scientists coalesced around a focused interest in the phenomenological, physiological, affective, cognitive, and behavioral consequences of ostracism, exclusion, and rejection.

Since about 1994, however, this complete lack of experimental research has been addressed many times over by psychologists in social, developmental, clinical, and cognitive psychology, as well as those in affective neuroscience. In this Handbook, we cover the extensive explosion of research on ostracism, exclusion, and rejection over the last 20 years, conducted by some of our most prolific social scientists.

Overview of Chapters

Broad Theories

The first group of chapters establishes the basic foundations of research and theory on ostracism, exclusion, and rejection. The later chapters display many of the valuable insights that have really moved the foundational work forward, making it truly meaningful.

In Chapter 2, Dongning Ren, Andy Hales, and Kip Williams lay the foundation for this volume as they review and organize the basic psychological research on ostracism that has evolved over the last two decades. They begin by defining ostracism as “being ignored and excluded,” an intentionally broad definition that encompasses not only ostracism in its extreme forms, but also the common and often subtle ways in which it occurs on a daily basis. Central to their chapter is a presentation of Williams’s (2009) temporal need-threat model of ostracism. This theoretical statement, which has guided much of social psychology’s empirical research on the topic, proposes that the effects of ostracism take place at three different stages. The initial reaction to ostracism is reflexive, occurring quickly and indiscriminately. The second, reflective stage produces behavioral consequences that may be intended to help the ostracized individual reconnect with the group, or may lead the person to lash out against the perpetrator(s) of the ostracism; furthermore, motivational, cognitive, and physiological effects may also result. The third stage, resignation, addresses the impact of continuing, long-term ostracism. The authors present convincing evidence to support this conceptualization, and they conclude their chapter by reflecting on what we can do to mitigate ostracism’s adverse effects.

In Chapter 3, Levi Baker and Roy Baumeister present evidence for the central role that self-regulatory capacity plays in causing and altering the course of reactions to exclusion. Research shows the devastating effects of exclusion on human health and performance across many domains. Why such a consistent and strong impairment? Baker and Baumeister argue that exclusion saps substantial resources that are ordinarily devoted toward motivating individuals to achieve their goals. This leaves excluded individuals to rely on impulsive, often problematic behaviors. Their model proposes that individuals who are already suffering from self-regulatory failures are at particular risk when excluded. Additionally, failures of self-regulation can also lead to exclusion by others, thus thrusting the excluded individual into a vicious downward spiral.

In Chapter 4, Mark Leary looks back at 25 years of theory and research on interpersonal rejection. One of the pioneers in this area, Leary examines the effects of interpersonal rejection on people’s motivation and emotions. Connecting his seminal paper with Roy Baumeister on the need to belong with both his theory on relational value (and devaluation) and his influential theory of self-esteem—Sociometer Theory—Leary traces the development of interest on interpersonal rejection from the early 1990s to the present. He provides a fascinating “big picture” analysis of where we began, what we have accomplished, and where we are going in the pursuit of understanding the complex consequences of rejection and exclusion.

Micro-Level Analyses

The next set of chapters examines the neurological and physiological concomitants of ostracism, social exclusion, and rejection. How does being ignored, excluded, and rejected affect our brain? How do certain genetic predispositions and hormones affect our response to ostracism?

In Chapter 5, Kristina Tchalova and Naomi Eisenberger examine the research on the neural substrate overlap between physical and social pain. Early theorizing by Jaap Panksepp in the 1970s led not only to the emergence of affective neuroscience, but also to notions that social organisms suffer and experience pain when separated from important others. Fueled by an oft-cited neuroimaging study (Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003) indicating that both social and physical pain produce activation in the same brain areas, empirical evidence has been accumulating for nearly two decades to suggest that the two forms of pain share to a significant extent a common neurobiological infrastructure—an idea commonly referred to as “pain overlap theory.” The authors discuss the likely evolution of such a shared system, and they offer compelling explanations for its adaptive value and the associated implications. The authors review the literature that documents areas of overlap between social and physical pain within the neural architecture, offering extensive and compelling research into how similar social pain is to physical pain, and how these relate to reactions to ostracism and rejection.

In Chapter 6, Ellie Jin and Robert Josephs present the accumulated research on the physiological consequences of social rejection. The authors not only cover acute reactions to short-term rejection manipulations, but also review longer-term chronic reactions to social rejection. Their chapter includes research on threat responses as measured by hormonal responses (e.g., epinephrine, cortisol, testosterone, progesterone), as well as physiological concomitants of long-term social rejection in terms of social anxiety, depression, and immune responses. Ostracism and rejection researchers were quick to embrace neuroscience approaches, and this chapter provides an excellent resource on this research to date.

Intra-Individual Level of Analysis

We next present three chapters that deal with how experiencing rejection, exclusion, or ostracism affects the inner world of the individual. How are the excluded individual’s emotions affected, especially anger, and does this increase the probability of aggression? How does being the outsider affect the individual’s way of thinking about themselves? How does ostracizing others impact the self?

In Chapter 7, Nathan DeWall, Brian Enjaian, and Sarah Bell present an overview of correlational and experimental research examining the causal link between being excluded, feeling angry, and reacting aggressively. Early analyses of news articles and diaries by Mark Leary show that the majority of school shooters experienced some form of rejection or social exclusion immediately prior to their rampages. Groundbreaking experimental work by Jean Twenge, Roy Baumeister, and colleagues showed a causal link between certain types of social exclusion and various measures of aggression. Since then, a large number of studies have examined this link and uncovered boundary conditions that moderate when aggression is more or less likely in response to exclusion. The authors present an excellent overarching examination of the accumulated research on exclusion and aggression.

In some ways, the beginning of psychology’s interest in being ignored and excluded, can be found in William James’s definition of the “social self”—where we understand who we are, based on how others react to us. He indicated that being unable to use others’ reactions because they are acting as if the person does not exist would be devastating, even “worse than bodily torture” (James, 1890/1950; pp. 293–294). It should be no surprise then, that the self is central to the understanding of how being excluded and rejected affects us. In Chapter 8, Cindy Pickett and Yanine Hess present a thorough review of the research that examines the self as it relates to social exclusion. The self—which includes self-concept, self-esteem, self-consciousness—are affected emotionally and cognitively by experiencing social exclusion, and aspects of the self can bias, filter, and buffer such exclusion experiences. Their coverage includes an examination of how varying levels of narcissism can alter perceptions and reactions to exclusion, to how these experiences affect our motivation to engage in self-enhancement.

In Chapter 9, Lisa Zadro, Alexandra Godwin, Elena Svetieva, Nisha Sethi, Rose Iannuzzelli, and Karen Gonsalkorale remind us that it is very likely that our own most memorable experiences with ostracism have been not when we were perpetrators, but when we were its targets. Their chapter in this volume considers ostracism from the target’s perspective. Because the use of ostracism is so common, they argue, there must be some benefits for the perpetrator—and they do indeed offer evidence to indicate that ostracism is usually motive-driven, often aiming to punish. Lisa and her colleagues examine not only why people ostracize, but also who does so as well as why and when they do it. They also take a look at the impact of using ostracism on the four needs that are threatened by ostracism—belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence. Given the rather limited amount of research on the sources of ostracism, their chapter also presents some methodological suggestions intended to encourage a broader analysis of ostracism and to enhance the external validity of research on the topic.

Interpersonal Levels of Analysis

The next three chapters focus on relationships among people in the context of ostracism, exclusion, and rejection. The social implications of being outcast provide some of the most interesting reasons for concern by theorists, researchers, and the layperson alike.

In Chapter 10, Shira Gabriel and Jennifer Valenti present a strong case for just how flexible humans can be in their efforts to satisfy the powerful need to belong, suggesting that people are so hard-wired to develop connections with others that we can find those relationships even in the absence of actual human beings. They define “social surrogates” as either human or non-human targets with which someone is connected psychologically, but not physically. Although they are mere facsimiles of actual social relationships, these symbolic bonds with others can and often do function just as real relationships do in serving to fulfill our belongingness needs. There are different types of social surrogates, they argue: a parasocial relationship is in action, for example, when one maintains a strong interest in a celebrity and reads frequently about that person on websites or in magazines; one can use social worlds as a surrogate, such as when one becomes engaged with the characters in a favorite TV series; reminders of others (e.g., photographs viewed on Facebook) can also function as social surrogates. The authors present compelling evidence that all three types of surrogates can protect us against the pain of rejection and isolation.

In Chapter 11, Danu Stinson, John Holmes, and Theresa He discuss a special and particularly powerful matter: rejection within the context of romantic relationships. Rejection at the hands of a romantic partner is painful, and it compromises cognitive functioning. With deep roots in our evolutionary history, the romantic relationship is a vital bond—and humans are thus strongly motivated to avoid rejection. To accomplish this, people employ a number of self-regulatory mechanisms in the cognitive, affective, and behavioral domains not only as they attempt to initiate romantic relationships, but also as those relationships continue. According to these authors, one’s level of “relational security/insecurity” plays a central role in how people use these mechanisms. Also considered in this chapter are some possible interventions that insecure individuals could use as buffers aga...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• 1 Introduction and Overview
• 2 Ostracism: Being Ignored and Excluded
• 3 Alone and Impulsive: Self-regulatory Capacity Mediates and Moderates the Implications of Exclusion
• 4 Motivational and Emotional Aspects of Interpersonal Rejection: Twenty-Five Years of Theory and Research
• 5 The Shared Neural Substrates of Physical and Social Pain
• 6 Acute and Chronic Physiological Consequences of Social Rejection
• 7 Only the Lonely: The Curious Case of Exclusion and Aggression
• 8 Social Exclusion and the Self
• 9 Creating the Silence: Ostracism from the Perspective of the Source
• 10 Social Surrogates and Rejection: How Reading, Watching TV, and Eating Comfort Food Can Ease the Pain of Social Isolation
• 11 Rejection in Romantic Relationships
• 12 Ostracism from a Cross-Cultural Perspective
• 13 Ostracism in Children and Adolescents
• 14 Normative Exclusion and Attraction to Extreme Groups: Resolving Identity-Uncertainty
• 15 Workplace Ostracism
• 16 Social Media and Ostracism
• 17 Anthropological Aspects of Ostracism
• 18 Social Exclusion, Ostracism, and Rejection Research: Where Do we Go from Here?
• Index