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Ostracism puts individuals in a vulnerable position as they are desperate to regain attention. As a result, ostracized individuals often value attention and acknowledgment. We examined whether ostr...

Does social exclusion hurt more when an audience is present to witness it? Theories of reputation management and evolutionary fitness suggest that an audience would intensify the negative effects o...

Considerable knowledge about ostracism's impact comes from research using Cyberball, an online ball-tossing game. In Cyberball, the inclusion condition is the control condition, to which ostracism is compared. The assumption is that Cyberball-inclusion is not affirming and represents an expected level of inclusion. However, without a no-inclusion control condition, it is unclear whether inclusion elevates need satisfaction, whether ostracism depresses need satisfaction, or both. We introduce Cybertree-a control condition designed to provide a similar experience to Cyberball without inclusion. Individuals playing Cybertree did not differ from included individuals in terms of feeling ostracized, level of need satisfaction, and mood. Both Cyberball inclusion and Cybertree differed significantly from ostracized individuals. We conclude that Cyberball inclusion is a reasonable control group for Cyberball ostracism but discuss research questions that may benefit from the use of Cybertree.

Ostracism (being excluded and ignored) is a painful experience, so why do individuals ostracize others? Previous research suggests individuals often ostracize those who are deviate, but not always. We posit that there may be two types of deviation, burdensome and non-burdensome, and the former is most likely to be ostracized. Study 1 manipulated burdensome deviation by programming a group member to perform more slowly (8 or 16 sec.) than others (4 sec.) in a virtual ball-toss game. Participants perceived slower players as more burdensome and deviate than normal speed players. Additionally, participants ostracized (gave fewer ball tosses to) the slowest player. Study 2 examined participant responses to both burdensome deviation (8- and 16-sec. players) and non-burdensome deviation (goth appearance). Participants again perceived the slower players to be burdensome and deviate, and ostracized them. They perceived the goth player to be deviate but not burdensome and did not ostracize this player.

Ostracism is a negative interpersonal experience that has been studied primarily in laboratory settings. Moreover, these studies have focused primarily on how people feel when they have been ostracized. The present study extended this research by investigating ostracism as it occurs in daily life, focusing on how people feel about ostracizing someone. Using a method modeled after the Rochester Interaction Record (RIR), for two weeks, 64 participants (adults residing in the community) described what happened each time they ostracized someone. The questions in the diary were based on Williams's (2001) need-threat model of ostracism. Most ostracism episodes were directed toward people of equal status, and participants reported lower levels of belonging but higher levels of control after ostracizing someone. Punitive ostracism was associated with more positive outcomes for the source than when people ostracized someone for other reasons.

We explored the concurrent and subsequent cognitive consequences of the experience of gender counter-stereotypic emotions. Participants experiencing gender counter-stereotypic emotions were expected to display less emotional expression and demonstrate poorer cognitive performance when in the public condition than when in the private condition. Seventy-one women and 66 men completed an anger- or sadness-inducing task privately or publicly. Participants completed two cognitive tasks: one during and one after the emotion-induction task. Participants exhibited poorer performance during and following gender counter-stereotypic emotions only in the public condition. Direct evidence for greater suppression of gender counter-stereotypic emotions in the public conditions was not obtained. These results suggest that the same public emotional events may be differentially cognitively depleting depending on one's gender, potentially contributing to the perpetuation of stereotypes.

Researchers find that social and physical pain overlap in acute episodes. In this article, we hypothesize that social and physical pain overlap in chronic conditions as well. To support this hypothesis, we reviewed the literature and introduced the Integrated Chronic Pain Model (ICPM), which posits that chronic social and physical pain overlap in their psychological antecedents and consequences. Specifically, the ICPM proposes several common factors that play a role in the onset and maintenance of both social and physical chronic pain and indicates that both forms of pain persistently impair self-regulatory resources and threaten the same basic psychological needs. © 2014 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

The Bullying and Ostracism Screening Scale (BOSS) is a brief self-report measure for detecting bullying and ostracism in pediatric populations. Preliminary psychometric studies with 426 children 10–14 years old from pediatric clinics and schools yielded a promising measure with screening sensitivity superior to parent report. Additional analyses with 1076 students support BOSS factor structure and utility. Bullying and ostracism were significantly correlated with self-reported depression and threats to self-esteem, belonging, control, and meaningful existence. The BOSS is a cost-effective instrument for health care professionals wishing to screen for bullying and ostracism in pediatric populations with somatic, academic, emotional, and behavioral issues.

In adults, experiences of social exclusion have been shown to not only adversely affect mood and threaten primary needs, but also to disrupt cognitive processes. The aim of this study was to provide an initial test of the effects of social exclusion on cognitive processes in children (N = 55; aged 8–12 years). Ostracism was simulated experimentally using the Cyberball paradigm—a computer-based ball-throwing game that participants believed they were playing with two peers over the internet. Following this, participants were administered subtests from the Working Memory Test Battery for Children. Girls who were ostensibly ignored during the game demonstrated poorer cognitive performance than those who were included by their co-players, while boys did not. Findings are discussed in relation to those previously reported in adult research and evidence of gender-specific correlates of relational aggression in children and adolescents.

Ostracism, the act of ignoring and excluding, is a universally applied tactic of social control. Individuals who detect ostracism often change their behaviors to be readmitted into the group, even if it means becoming excessively socially susceptible to influence. We tested whether ostracized individuals are more socially susceptible to a subsequent influence attempt. In this study, 65 undergraduates were randomly assigned to a 2 (Inclusion or Ostracism)×3 (Compliance tactic: foot‐in‐the door, target request only, door‐in‐the‐face) between‐participants design. The participants played Cyberball and were either included or ostracized, and then they were approached with a request to donate money. Despite no differences between the three tactics, ostracism increased compliance across all request types. Our discussion focuses on the implications for ostracism‐induced social susceptibility. This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0519209 awarded to the third a...

Stealing thunder is a dissuasive tactic that involves volunteering self-incriminating information before another party does. This study investigated how the impact of stealing thunder on mock-juror judgments varied with the processing resources available to mock-jurors. Stealing thunder, thunder and no thunder conditions were contrasted under conditions that were conducive to central route processing (high elaboration) or only permitted peripheral processing (low elaboration). Results indicated that stealing thunder reduced the likelihood of guilty verdicts under peripheral, but not central route, processing conditions. Further, it appeared to do so by eliciting positive perceptions of source credibility that were then used as a peripheral cue supporting the arguments of the source.

Research and current events have illustrated the importance of teaching students about the consequences of being ostracised—excluded and ignored—by others. But how can the importance of ostracism be conveyed in a meaningful and engaging fashion? We designed a role‐play train ride demonstration (the “O” train) to teach high‐school and university students how it feels to be ostracised and to ostracise others. Students are assigned the roles of sources or targets of ostracism during a simulated train ride. Targets are initially included in spirited discussion, then ostracised by the sources for the remaining 4 minutes. A survey of students and teachers indicated that the train ride provides genuine insights into the power of ostracism above other teaching methods. To conduct the evaluation of the train ride for purposes of reporting results in a publication, we submitted an application to, and received permission from, Macquarie University’s Institutional Review Board.We would like to thank Tim Bates, Trevor...

Over the course of 5 consecutive days, each author agreed to be ostracized for a day at work by the other four coauthors. All coauthors’ offices were in close proximity and were located solely on a single floor and wing of their academic building. Each morning, the name of that day's ostracized individual was drawn, and a scarlet letter “O” was placed above that individual's office door. Ostracizers were instructed to ignore the “Os” by not looking at them, speaking to them, or responding to anything they said. Open-ended individual event-contingent diaries were kept to record participants’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors each time they were reminded of the ostracism. Despite foreknowledge and consent, attributional confusion surfaced and strong aversive reactions were reported. Findings are framed in terms of Williams's (1997) model of ostracism

Two studies were conducted to explore the role of illness stereotypes in appraisals of health threat. The results of Study 1 indicated that a substantial proportion of questionnaire respondents believed that high blood pressure (BP) is associated with positive personal characteristics (e.g., persistence) whereas a smaller proportion believed that high BP is associated with negative characteristics. In addition, more favorable stereotypes were correlated with lower ratings of the seriousness of high BP. Study 2 examined the effects of experimentally induced illness stereotypes on the health-related judgments of subjects who received false feedback on a test of their BP. The results revealed a significant effect of illness stereotypes on health-threat appraisals of high BP. Subjects who were led to believe that high BP was associated with achievement and competence perceived high BP as a less serious threat to health than did subjects who believed high BP was associated with less desirable traits. In additi...

According to social impact theory (Latane, 1981), increasing the strength characteristics of a source of influence should result in increased influence on the target. Using two compliance paradigms, we suggest that this social impact prediction may hold true only when the underlying motive for compliance is due to some form of external impression management (as is hypothesized for the door-in-the-face technique). In this case, the strength of the source should, as Latane; predicted, intensify the effect. If, however, compliance is due to an internal motive, such as self-perception (as is hypothesized for the foot-in-the-door effect), we predict the source's strength characteristics will have little or no effect on compliance, even though the resulting compliance is due to the source's request. The results of a door-to-door zoo donation study lent support to both hypotheses. Implications for social impact theory and domain seeking are discussed.

A sizable body of research indicates that people tend to put forth less effort when performing in groups than when alone, a phenomenon called social loafing. However, archival data suggest that swimmers actually perform better when swimming in relays than when swimming in individuals events. Physical factors contributing to this difference were controlled in an experiment in which the degree of identifiability of swimmers' times and type of event (individual vs. relay) were manipulated. A significant interaction between these two variables resulted, supporting previous social loafing findings. Swimmers recorded significantly better times in relays than individually when identifiability was high but tended to perform more poorly in relays under conditions of low identifiability.