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Brief episodes of ostracism trigger immediate pain, thwarted needs, and negative affect. Whereas the immediate effects of ostracism tend to be resistant to moderation, people differ in how quickly they recover. Here we investigated three strategies that may promote recovery from ostracism: prayer, self-affirmation, and distraction. In three experiments we found that all three interventions lead to greater recovery of basic needs satisfaction than a control condition in which participants were allowed to naturally ruminate. While all three interventions lead to a similar amount of recovery, only the effects of distraction condition were mediated by reductions in rumination, suggesting that prayer and self-affirmation promote recovery, but do so through mechanisms other than distraction. In addition, we found that religious commitment to God was associated with greater recovery following prayer, but not self-affirmation. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

The goal of the present study was to examine whether exclusion leads to increased intergroup hostility and stronger fundamentalist religious beliefs. Using Cyberball, we examined how adolescents from different ethnic groups in the Netherlands (of Moroccan, Turkish, and Dutch descent with either Muslim, Christian, or secular beliefs) responded to being included or excluded by ethnic in- and outgroup members. We expected that exclusion by ethnic outgroup members would represent a categorization threat and would result in greater hostility. We hypothesized that exclusion by ethnic ingroup members would represent an acceptance threat and would result in responses that reduce uncertainty and increase one's chances of being accepted by others (e.g., a stronger endorsement of fundamentalist religious beliefs). The results revealed that among all ethnic groups, exclusion by ethnic outgroup members led to more hostility toward the co-players and the co-players' ethnic group than exclusion by ethnic ingroup members. This was mediated by the extent to which people attributed their exclusion to the racist attitudes of their co-players. Among Muslims and Christians, exclusion by ethnic ingroup members led to more support for fundamentalist beliefs. We discuss the theoretical extension that these results provide, and practical issues raised regarding the consequences that may occur through the marginalization of religious and ethnic groups.

In two experiments, ostracized individuals showed more pronounced categorical perception of inclusion- and exclusion-related stimuli. Specifically, ostracism enhanced the ability to distinguish between-category differences (e.g., between happy and angry faces) relative to within-category differences (e.g., between two happy expressions). Participants were socially included or excluded via Cyberball (a virtual ball-tossing task). In Experiment 1, ostracized participants showed greater perceptual acuity in distinguishing between subtly happy and angry expressions combined with a reduced ability to discriminate expressions within each expression category. Experiment 2 found analogous categorical perception effects for targets varying on the dimension of race. Importantly, this effect was specific to social information; categorical perception of non-social objects was not qualified by social exclusion. These results suggest that ostracism exacerbates categorical perception, attuning perceivers to the differences between various inclusion- and exclusion-related categories relative to within category acuity, making the world appear more ‘black-and-white’ than it might otherwise.

Laboratory-based research with university students demonstrates that ostracism is reflexively painful, depletes fundamental needs, and is highly resistant to variations in situational context or individual differences. Employing a representative sample of 614 US White and African American adults, we sought to (1) demonstrate the utility of using Cyberball on a broader non-college sample, and examine (2) whether attributing ostracism to racial prejudice mediates recovery. Participants in an Internet version of Cyberball were either included or ostracized by two other players (both White or both Black), and reported their level of distress before and after making attributions for treatment during the game. Overall, reflexive needs were threatened by ostracism, but more so for Blacks. Whites attributed ostracism to racism when the other players were Black. Blacks attributed ostracism to racism when the other players were White or Black. Within a few minutes, participants reported feeling less distress, but attributing ostracism to racial prejudice impeded their recovery.

Ostracism—being ignored and excluded—is a painful experience with negative psychological consequences. Social psychologists ( Kerr and Levine, 2008 , Spoor and Williams, 2007 ) argue humans have an evolved system for automatically detecting cues of ostracism and exclusion. Detection elicits pain and threats to fundamental needs. We hypothesize simply observing ostracism will cause negative affect and need threat in the observer. Participants observed a three-player Cyberball game; a target player was included or ostracized, and participants were either instructed to take the perspective of this player or given no such instructions. Participants observing ostracism reported negative affect and need threat. Our results indicate that ostracism detection is even more powerful than previously suggested, because vicariously, we feel the pain of others’ ostracism as our own.

Previous research has demonstrated self-reports of lower levels of four fundamental needs as a result of short periods of face-to-face ostracism, as well as short periods of Internet ostracism (Cyberball), even when the ostracizing others are unseen, unknown, and not-to-be met. In an attempt to reduce the ostracism experience to a level that would no longer be aversive, we (in Study 1) convinced participants that they were playing Cyberball against a computer, yet still found comparable negative impact compared to when the participants thought they were being ostracized by real others. In Study 2, we took this a step further, and additionally manipulated whether the participants were told the computer or humans were scripted (or told) what to do in the game. Once again, even after removing all remnants of sinister attributions, ostracism was similarly aversive. We interpret these results as strong evidence for a very primitive and automatic adaptive sensitivity to even the slightest hint of social exclusion.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) is a computer-based categorization task that measures concept association strengths. Greenwald et al. (1998) demonstrated that participants completed the categorizations more quickly when pleasant and flower shared a response key than when pleasant and insect shared a response key, and when pleasant and White shared a response key than when pleasant and Black shared a response key. In Study 1, we reversed the typical IAT effect for flowers and insects, and eliminated the typical IAT effect for White and Black, by changing the affective valence of the stimulus items. In Study 2, we replicated the reversibility effect for an animal and plant IAT, and supported a category re-definition hypothesis. Our results have implications for understanding the IAT, and suggest that the IAT not only measures stereotypic responses, but can also be influenced by individuating information of the stimulus items.

When asked to work both alone and in groups, people exert less effort in groups, a phenomenon we call “social loafing.” Either of two possible strategies could explain this outcome: an allocational strategy where people work as hard as they can overall but conserve their strength for individual trials where work is personally beneficial and a minimizing strategy where the primary motive is to “get by” with the least effort possible. However, an allocational strategy would lead participants who always work in groups to put out as much effort as participants who always work alone, since there is no need to husband strength. Two studies using a sound production task found social loafing even under these conditions, suggesting that allocational strategies are not prevalent. Social loafing seems to occur when people perform together in groups, regardless of whether or not they must also perform alone.