Social Exclusion and Rejection Research-Routledge

CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN
OSTRACISM, SOCIAL EXCLUSION,

AND REJECTION RESEARCH
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
perspectives 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 develop-
ments, 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 dis-
cussing 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.
Selma C. Rudert is Junior Professor of Social Psychology at the University of

Koblenz and Landau, Germany. In her research, Selma C. Rudert investigates social
group processes with a specific focus on social exclusion in groups.
Rainer Greifeneder is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Basel,
Switzerland. His research focuses on various aspects of social cognition, such as the
experienced ease or difficulty of thinking, or how individuals construe, experience,
and react to social exclusion.
Kipling D. Williams is Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences at Purdue
University, USA. His research focuses on ostracism, social influence, and intragroup
processes.
Current Issues in Social Psychology
Series Editor: Johan Karemmans
Current Issues in Social Psychology is a series of edited books that reflect the state of
current and emerging topics of interest in social psychology.
Each volume is tightly focused on a particular topic and consists of seven
to ten chapters contributed by international experts. The editors of individual
volumes are leading figures in their areas and provide an introductory overview.
The series is useful reading for students, academics, and researchers of social
psychology and related disciplines. Example topics include: self-esteem, mind-
fulness, evolutionary social psychology, minority groups, social neuroscience,
cyberbullying and social stigma.
Power and Identity

Edited by Denis Sindic, Manuela Barret, and Rui Costa-Lopes
Cyberbullying: From Theory to Intervention
Edited by Trijntje Völlink, Francine Dehue, and Conor Mc Guckin
Coping with Lack of Control in a Social World
Edited by Marcin Bukowski, Immo Fritsche, Ana Guinote, and Mirosław Kofta
Intergroup Contact Theory: Recent Developments and Future Directions
Edited by Loris Vezzali, and Sofia Stathi
Majority and Minority Influence: Societal Meaning and
Cognitive Elaboration
Edited by Stamos Papastamou, Antonis Gardikiotis, and Gerasimos Prodromitis
Mindfulness in Social Psychology
Edited by Johan C. Karremans and Esther K. Papies
Belief Systems and the Perception of Reality
Edited by Bastiaan Rutjens and Mark Brandt
Current Directions in Ostracism, Social Exclusion, and Rejection Research
Edited by Selma C. Rudert, Rainer Greifeneder, and Kipling D. Williams
New Directions in the Psychology of Close Relationships
Edited by Dominik Schoebi and Belinda Campos
CURRENT DIRECTIONS
IN OSTRACISM, SOCIAL
EXCLUSION, AND
REJECTION RESEARCH
Edited by Selma C. Rudert,

Rainer Greifeneder, and Kipling D. Williams
First published 2019
by Routledge
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© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Selma C. Rudert,
Rainer Greifeneder, and Kipling D. Williams; individual chapters,
the contributors
The right of Selma C. Rudert, Rainer Greifeneder, and Kipling D.
Williams to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of
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CONTENTS
Contributors vii
1 Understanding common and diverse forms of social exclusion 1

Eric D. Wesselmann, Corinna Michels, and Alison Slaughter
2 Social ostracism as a factor motivating interest in extreme groups 18

Kipling D. Williams, Andrew H. Hales, and Corinna Michels
3 About flames and boogeymen: social norms affect

individuals’ construal of social exclusion 32
Rainer Greifeneder and Selma C. Rudert
4 Exclusion and its impact on social information processing 49

Heather M. Claypool and Michael J. Bernstein
5 Dealing with social exclusion: an analysis of psychological

strategies 65
Susanna Timeo, Paolo Riva, and Maria Paola Paladino
6 How self-talk promotes self-regulation: implications for

coping with emotional pain 82
Ariana Orvell and Ethan Kross
7 Hurt feelings: physical pain, social exclusion, and the

psychology of pain overlap 100
Laura J. Ferris
vi Contents
8 Physiostracism: a case for non-invasive measures of arousal

in ostracism research 120
Ilja van Beest and Willem Sleegers
9 Observing ostracism: how observers interpret and respond

to ostracism situations 136
Selma C. Rudert and Rainer Greifeneder
10 Workplace ostracism: what’s it good for? 155

Sandra L. Robinson and Kira Schabram
11 Moralization as legitimization for ostracism: effects on

intergroup dynamics and social cohesion 171
Susanne Täuber
12 Rejection sensitivity as a determinant of well-being

during reentry 190
Michael J. Naft and Geraldine Downey
Index 205
CONTRIBUTORS
Bernstein, Michael J.
Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA
Claypool, Heather M.
Miami University, OH, USA
Downey, Geraldine
Columbia University, NY, USA
Ferris, Laura J.
The University of Queensland, Australia
Greifeneder, Rainer
University of Basel, Switzerland
Hales, Andrew H.
University of Virginia, VA, USA
Kross, Ethan
University of Michigan, MI, USA
Michels, Corinna
University of Cologne, Germany
Naft, Michael J.
Columbia University, NY, USA
viii Contributors
Orvell, Ariana
University of Michigan, MI, USA
Paladino, Maria Paola

University of Trento, Italy
Riva, Paolo
University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
Robinson, Sandra L.
University of British Columbia, Canada
Rudert, Selma C.
University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
Schabram, Kira
University of Washington, WA, USA
Slaughter, Alison
Miami University, OH, USA
Sleegers, Willem
Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Täuber, Susanne
University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Timeo, Susanna
University of Padova, Italy
van Beest, Ilja

Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Wesselmann, Eric D.
Illinois State University, IL; USA
Williams, Kipling D.
Purdue University, IN, USA
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 selec-
tion pressures likely favored individuals who could achieve these goals, avoid-
ing the survival threat posed by social isolation (Lieberman, 2013; Wesselmann,
Nairne, & Williams, 2012). In modern times, social relationships afford us vari-
ous psychological benefits such as social identity, self-esteem, a sense of mean-
ing, 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 physi-
cally 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 mem-
bers 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, cor-
recting 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 nega-
tive interpersonal experiences in which someone feels kept apart from others
2 Eric D. Wesselmann et al.
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 exist-
ence (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 deval-
ued socially as if they are unimportant to others (Leary, 1999). This feeling of
being devalued may be a key psychological mechanism driving the other nega-
tive effects of exclusion (Smart Richman & Leary, 2009). If individuals experi-
ence exclusion chronically, they may even develop severe psychological problems
such as feelings of alienation, helplessness, depression, and existential meaning-
lessness (Riva, Montali, Wirth, Curioni, & Williams, 2017; Riva, Wesselmann,
Wirth, Carter-Sowell, & Williams, 2014). Both qualitative interviews and cor-
relational 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 per-
son 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 research-
ers are applying these concepts to understand diverse types of negative interper-
sonal 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.
Understanding forms of social exclusion 3
Rejection-based exclusion
Rejection researchers typically define the construct as direct communication that
one is not wanted (Blackhart, Nelson, Knowles, & Baumeister, 2009), and com-
monly 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 man-
ner (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 soci-
etal 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 indi-
viduals use derogatory terms to describe out-group members, they are suggest-
ing 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 intensi-
fied the pain of an explicit social exclusion manipulation (Andrighetto, Riva,
Gabbiadini, & Volpato, 2016). Thus, it is a reasonable hypothesis that dehuman-
izing language makes individuals feel excluded and compounds any other exclu-
sion 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, insensi-
tive, or otherwise invalidating comments regarding the stigmatized individual’s
group, or they can be non-verbal, such as someone purposefully avoiding a stig-
matized individual (Nadal, 2011; Sue et al., 2007). Researchers are now explic-
itly 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 microag-
gressions over the past year. Individuals who reported experiencing more micro-
aggressions 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 offen-
sive. 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 partic-
ipants 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 defini-
tion (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 from analyses
because they recalled experiencing events similar to those found in the micro-
aggressions condition. Regardless, participants who recalled microaggressions
reported experiencing more negative psychological outcomes than participants
in the control condition. Similar to the offensive joke studies, perceived rela-
tional value mediated the negative effects of microaggressions on psychologi-
cal needs. Collectively, these studies provide promising, yet preliminary evidence
that microaggressions can be considered forms of interpersonal rejection. Future
research on these topics will help develop further both the links between rejec-
tion and discrimination, as well that of microaggressions—a construct that is still
relatively new theoretically and empirically (Lilienfeld, 2017).
Emerging research: sexual objectification

Sexual objectification involves being treated as an object for someone else’s pleas-
ure, rather than as a full human being (Bartky, 1990; Fredrickson, Roberts,
Noll, Quinn, & Twenge, 1998). Individuals commonly feel objectified when
they experience various forms of sexual harassment or are in environments that
encourage hyper-sexualization (e.g., Fairchild & Rudman, 2008; Lindberg,
Grabe, & Hyde, 2007; Tiggemann & Boundy, 2008). Even nonverbal behav-
ior such as someone leering can be a type of objectification (Calogero, 2004;
Gervais, Holland, & Dodd, 2013). Most research focuses on sexual objectifi-
cation of women, though some research demonstrates that men can also feel
objectified (Hebl, King, & Lin, 2004; Martins, Tiggemann, & Kirkbride, 2007).
Preliminary data suggest that sexual objectification may make individu-
als feel excluded; participants who watched a digital confederate stare at their
body experienced more need threat and feelings of exclusion when compared
with participants who only received eye-contact (Dvir, Kelly, & Williams,
2017). If non-verbal forms of objectification like leering can make women feel
excluded, it is likely that other forms of objectification (e.g., cat-calls, exposure
to a hyper-sexualized environment) may too. Further, researchers argue that
chronic exposure to objectification can lead women to internalize this perspec-
tive and self-objectify, leading to various negative psychological outcomes such
as body shame and disordered eating (Fredrickson et al., 1998; Quinn, Kallen, &
Cathey, 2006). Researchers interested in self-objectification may also consider
assessing outcomes relevant to exclusion research, especially chronic outcomes
(i.e., alienation, depression, helplessness, and meaninglessness; Williams, 2009).
Ostracism-based exclusion
Even though people find it aversive to be insulted or told they are unwanted,
negative attention still provides some social acknowledgment. Indeed, social
norms generally dictate that people acknowledge each other’s presence (Geller,
Goodstein, Silver, & Sternberg, 1974). When individuals are not acknowledged
and treated as if they do not exist, they find the experience deeply unsettling
(Williams, 2001). William James (1890/1950) famously noted that being treated
as if one were non-existent would be a “fiendish punishment...from which the
cruelest bodily tortures would be a relief ” (pp. 293–294) because at least nega-
tive attention would be better than no attention at all. A few empirical studies
support the general idea that negative attention may be better than being unac-
knowledged (Rudert, Hales, Greifeneder, & Williams, 2017; Zadro, Williams, &
Richardson, 2005), though this premise certainly should be investigated further.
Regardless, being ignored (i.e., ostracized socially) is a powerful message that
one is unwanted and unworthy of inclusion. Early experiments operationalized
ostracism in strong, ubiquitous ways. Researchers had participants interact with
confederates either in face-to-face or over the Internet in real time. The confed-
erates either included participants or ignored them during the interactions (e.g.,
Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000; Williams et al., 2002; Williams & Sommer,
1997). Other researchers have manipulated ostracism in asynchronous e-based
environments, such as text messaging (Smith & Williams, 2004) or social net-
working platforms (Wolf et al., 2014). Across all of these studies, ostracized par-
ticipants reported more feelings of being ignored and psychological need threat
compared to included participants.
Researchers designed these previous paradigms in order to maximize inter-
nal validity; yet ostracism in everyday life outside of the laboratory may occur
in subtler and more ambiguous ways. Even if these everyday experiences are
subtle or ambiguous, people will still likely find them aversive (e.g., Nezlek
et al., 2012). For example, people may feel ostracized when they discover they
had not been given relevant social information that others had received (e.g.,
Jones, Carter-Sowell, Kelly, & Williams, 2009), or when others are speaking
in front of them in a language that they do not understand (e.g., Dotan-Eliaz,
Sommer, & Rubin, 2009). People even feel ostracized when they encounter ref-
erences to pop culture topics (e.g., musicians, celebrities) that they are unfamiliar
with (Iannone, Kelly, & Williams, 2016).
Researchers have theorized that people find subtle forms of ostracism aver-
sive because humans have likely evolved to be sensitive to any cue that their
social relationships are in danger; these cues help calibrate one’s expectations
for social inclusion and motivate attention toward social threats (Kerr & Levine,
2008; Wirth et al., 2017). For example, studies have shown that a lack of eye
contact and, in some cases, staring through someone as if they do not exist,
can increase feelings of social disconnection and ostracism (e.g., Wesselmann,
Cardoso, Slater, & Williams, 2012; Wirth, Sacco, Hugenberg, & Williams,
2010). Other research suggests that even uncomfortable silences in communica-
tion may impact feelings of social connection negatively (Koudenburg, Postmes,
& Gordijn, 2011). Finally, individuals can feel ostracized when someone uses
language that implicitly excludes specific social categories (e.g., gendered lan-
guage; Stout & Dasgupta, 2011).
Emerging research: smart phones and ostracism

Smart phones have become ubiquitous tools in people’s everyday lives (Smith,
2015), with many researchers, policymakers, and laypeople wondering how
these devices are changing the nature of human life and social relationships (e.g.,
Campbell & Kwak, 2011; Okdie et al., 2014). People use smart phones for many
reasons and in many contexts, such as public areas—even when in the face-to-
face presence of their companions (Finkel & Kruger, 2012). However, how does
using smart phones in the presence of others influence the dynamics of face-to-
face interactions? In people’s attempts to stay as socially connected as possible
via these devices, do they risk alienating the relationship partners in their midst?
Researchers have used both correlational and experimental methods to inves-
tigate these questions. When peoples’ interaction partners use a smart phone
(or other technology) during face-to-face interactions, they often report feel-
ing less satisfied with the quality of their social connections (e.g., Kushlev &
Heintzelman, 2018; McDaniel & Coyne, 2016a, 2016b). In popular lexicon,
people often refer to this experience as being phubbed (combination of “phone”
and “snubbed;” Roberts & David, 2016). Phubbing behavior can be contagious,
prompting the target to use their smart phone as well (Chotpitayasunondh &
Douglas, 2016; Finkel & Kruger, 2012). This behavioral contagion could poten-
tially become a vicious cycle of social withdrawal that over repeated interactions
may have deleterious long-term effects on the relationship.
Given that many people report purposely phubbing someone as a way to avoid
them (Smith, 2015), it is likely that this behavior may become culturally defined
as a subtle type of social exclusion. Three recently published articles support this
general idea. An in vivo study provided preliminary evidence that participants
who were phubbed by a confederate experienced feelings of ostracism, especially
if they disliked technology (Gonzales & Wu, 2016). Another study demonstrated
that participants who took the perspective of a phubbed character in a video
reported experiencing threats to the same basic psychological needs threatened
by other types of social exclusion (Chotpitayasunondh & Douglas, 2018). Other
research found that individuals recall feeling ostracized and experiencing basic
need threat when being phubbed, and this effect was mediated by perceived
relational devaluation (Hales, Dvir, Wesselmann, Kruger, & Finkenauer, 2018).
These recent studies suggest that researchers interested either in social exclu-
sion broadly or the effects of smart phone use in social interactions should forge
collaborations to generate future hypotheses. For example, why does phubbing
behavior become socially contagious? Social exclusion research might sug-
gest two different (and perhaps complementary) motives. If an individual feels
excluded when phubbed by an interaction partner, the individual may choose to
use their own smart phone as a way of subtly withdrawing from the painful inter-
action and distracting themselves (Hales, Wesselmann, & Williams, 2016; Ren,
Wesselmann, & Williams, 2016). Additionally, the phubbed individual may use
the opportunity to connect with others in their social network and fortify their
threatened needs (Gardner, Pickett, & Knowles, 2005), or to protect their ego
by demonstrating to others (or themselves) that they are not bothered by being
phubbed (Bernstein et al., 2013; see also Timeo, Riva, & Paladino, this volume).
Future areas for theoretical development

Comparing different types of exclusion
Thus far, we have reviewed the extant (and emerging) literature on diverse types of
social exclusion. Whether these experiences are extreme or subtle, involve explicit
negative social attention or a distinct lack of attention, they each evoke similar neg-
ative outcomes (e.g., pain, anger, sadness, psychological need threat; Wesselmann
et al., 2016). These empirical overlaps are interesting given that Williams (2009)
has argued that ostracism is uniquely painful among other types of exclusion since
it involves being ignored. The overlap among various types of exclusion suggests
that, at least regarding subjective feelings of being ignored, individuals may not
differentiate between rejection- and ostracism-based exclusions.
Researchers should consider how this overlap may matter theoretically when
developing hypotheses about the various types of exclusion and their ultimate
effects. For example, rejection- and ostracism-based exclusions may simply influ-
ence individuals negatively in a manner of degree. Negative attention may be
harmful, but no attention at all may be worse. The few studies that have directly
compared negative attention to outright ostracism suggest that individuals who
receive the former experience fewer negative effects (e.g., threatened basic needs)
than those who experience the latter (Rudert et al., 2017; Zadro et al., 2005).
Regardless, future researchers should consider directly comparing various forms
of social exclusion in order to investigate general patterns of negative outcomes,
as well as to investigate if certain outcomes are affected more by one type of
exclusion than others (e.g., does ostracism have a greater effect on meaningful
existence than rejection?).
Additionally, these distinctions may help researchers further unpack other
murky areas in the literature, such as when and why individuals are more likely
to respond to exclusion with either pro- or anti-social responses. Many research-
ers have provided data demonstrating that excluded individuals respond aggres-
sively, even to individuals who had nothing to do with the exclusion (e.g.,
Twenge et al., 2001); paradoxically, other researchers provide data demonstrat-
ing that excluded individuals respond pro-socially as well (see Williams, 2009
for review). One way of clarifying these conflicting behavioral patterns is to
examine how each behavior may help individuals cope with exclusion. Williams
(2009) argues that individuals who prize belonging and esteem needs should
focus on responding pro-socially as a way to secure their inclusionary status in
future interactions, and individuals who prize control and meaningful existence
needs should focus more on anti-social responses in order to re-establish control
and receive attention. If ostracism-based exclusion experiences have a stronger
effect on certain needs (e.g., meaningful existence) than rejection-based experi-
ences, then it is possible that individuals may respond more aggressively to the
former and more pro-socially to the latter. To our knowledge, no published
studies have directly compared the effects of these different types of experiences
on pro- vs. anti-social behavioral outcomes (but see Molden, Lucas, Gardner,
Dean, & Knowles, 2009 on other relevant social outcomes). Regardless, this is
one of many areas that may yield interesting results when researchers directly
compare exclusion types and any potential differential affective, cognitive, and
motivational effects.
Examining connections between social exclusion

and other aversive experiences
There are other types of aversive interpersonal experiences that future research-
ers should consider when integrating social exclusion experiences. For example,
individuals likely feel excluded when a potential romantic partner turns them
down, or when a current romantic partner either breaks up with them or cheats
on them with another person. The first is an outright rejection, the second is a
dissolution of an extant romantic relationship, and the third provides at least an
existential threat to that relationship. All three situations should provoke feelings
of social pain and other negative outcomes found in established forms of social
exclusion (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Baumeister, Wotman, & Stillwell,
1993; Kavanagh, Robins, & Ellis, 2010; Zhang, Liu, Li, & Ruan, 2015). Further,
researchers should consider how the context of romantic relationships may inten-
sify traditional rejection effects. Being told one is not wanted in a relationship,
even a one-time laboratory interaction, is painful (e.g., Twenge et al., 2001); hav-
ing a romantic overture rebuffed is likely worse than being told one is unwanted
by a stranger or potential friend (e.g., Pass, Lindenberg, & Park, 2010).
Explicit romantic rejection may even cross into the ostracism domain if it
extends beyond a one-time event and involves feeling chronically isolated from
someone. For example, someone who monitors their former partner’s public
social network activity and sees that person moving on with their life may feel
more ignored and isolated than if their communication with that person had
ended with relationship dissolution (Safronova, 2015). This may be related to
the general concept of unrequited love—loving someone who does not return the
love—which may also be considered a form of social exclusion (Baumeister et al.,
1993; Smart Richman & Leary, 2009). It is reasonable to hypothesize that some-
one experiencing unrequited love feels ignored by the object of their affection,
especially if they see their beloved having other romantic relationships.
Another interesting phenomenon that could be considered relevant to social
inclusion and exclusion is social support. Social support is an umbrella term that
includes various types of behaviors focused on providing assistance to someone
perceived to be in need of help (Burleson & MacGeorge, 2002). Social sup-
port occurs in both formal (e.g., therapy) and informal (e.g., social interactions
with friends and family) contexts (Burleson & Homstrom, 2008). There are
many types of social support ranging from giving someone tangible assistance
(e.g., money) or advice, to providing empathic emotional support, validating the
person’s experiences, and assuring them of their value to the support provider
(Arora, 2008; Goldsmith, 2004). Baumeister and Leary (1995) argued that the
availability of social support is a key aspect of the need to belong. Further, social
support availability symbolizes to individuals that they are valued by their rela-
tionship partners (whether they be romantic, familial, or friendships; Goldsmith,
2004). A common way in which support is enacted in social relationships involves
sharing one’s problems with a partner, and this sharing can be crucial for coping
(Goldsmith, 2004). Further, mutual sharing of self-disclosure and social sup-
port—both receiving and giving—often strengthens feelings of closeness and
value in social relationships (Collins & Miller, 1994; Crocker, Canevello, &
Brown, 2017; Sprecher & Hendrick, 2004).
In order for social support to be effective, the support needs to match what
the recipient wants and has to be received positively; if there is a mismatch or the
recipient perceives the support as threatening in some way, it may have harmful
effects (Bolger & Amarel, 2007; MacGeorge, Feng, & Thompson, 2008). For
example, sometimes people tell the recipient how she or he should feel or think
about a stressful or traumatic incident, rather than simply acknowledging and
validating that person’s actual feelings and perspectives (e.g., “Don’t feel sad.”
or “It could always be worse.”). These mishandled attempts at support (some-
times called cold comfort) are usually well-intentioned but are often experienced
by recipients as attempts to minimize or invalidate their experiences (Burleson,
2003; Coyne, Wortman, & Lehman, 1988). Given the importance of quality
social support for one’s feeling of belonging and relational value, it is likely that
cold comfort may itself be experienced as a form of social exclusion which leads
to similar negative outcomes. Interestingly, cold comfort may become a cycle
of exclusion, initially making the recipient feel excluded before causing them
to subsequently withdraw from the source in future social interactions (e.g.,
Holmstrom, Burleson, & Jones, 2005).
Conclusion
Humans have a psychological need to forge meaningful and stable social connec-
tions with others, and they suffer both physically and psychologically when this
need is not satisfied. In this chapter, we reviewed various ways that individuals can
have their social connections threatened, broadly grouped under the term social
exclusion. We highlighted two general types of exclusion experiences: rejection-based
and ostracism-based. The former type of exclusion involves direct negative attention
that communicates one is unwanted, and the latter type is characterized primarily
by being ignored in some way. Regardless of exclusion type, these experiences lead
to similar negative outcomes, including a subjective feeling of being ignored even
when the exclusion is rejection-based. In addition to reviewing the published liter-
ature on diverse forms of social exclusion, we highlighted some emerging research
on topics that should also be considered by social exclusion researchers. We believe
that future theorizing and empirical research will be enriched by taking a more
comprehensive view of social exclusion and its overlapping outcomes.
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2
SOCIAL OSTRACISM AS A
FACTOR MOTIVATING INTEREST
IN EXTREME GROUPS
Kipling D. Williams, Andrew H. Hales, and Corinna Michels
In August of 2014, Jake Bilardi, an 18-year-old Australian citizen, traveled to

Iraq, apparently seeking to join the Islamic State. On March 11, 2015, he took
his own life in a suicide-bombing attack. Shortly after, reports emerged that in
high school Bilardi had been regarded as a social outcast (Coletta & Carney,
2015). In this chapter, we will explore the possibility that Bilardi’s experiences
as an outcast were not incidental to his attraction to such an extreme group; we
ask whether being ostracized is not just painful, but also a type of experience that
would motivate people to be more interested in extreme groups.
What do we mean by extreme groups? Certainly, what sounds extreme to
one person may not necessarily sound extreme to another (Bilardi himself may
not have viewed the Islamic State as extreme, for example). For our purposes, a
group, viewpoint, or social movement will be considered extreme if it deviates
from what most people would consider normal. While groups can be extreme on
a virtually infinite number of dimensions, we will focus here on groups that sat-
isfy one or more of the following: 1) hold extreme views, 2) take extreme actions
in support of their views, or 3) impose extreme demands on group members.
Overview
Ostracism has been documented to trigger a number of unpleasant and trou-
bling outcomes; people who are ostracized experience literal pain (Eisenberger,
Lieberman, & Williams, 2003; Ferris, 2019), negative affect (Williams,
Cheung, & Choi, 2000), threat to fundamental needs (Williams, 2009), and
aggression (Williams & Wesselmann, 2011). In this chapter, we explore evi-
dence suggesting that, in addition to these negative outcomes, ostracism also
leaves people vulnerable to being recruited into extreme groups or attracted to
extreme causes.
Ostracism and extreme groups 19
Radicalization and extremism are important topics that have received much
attention in recent years (e.g., Victoroff & Kruglanski, 2009). Undoubtedly, they
are complicated phenomena with no single simple cause. Reported contributing
factors include religious beliefs, political grievances, and historical context. The
goal of this chapter is to focus on social exclusion as one particular psychological
variable that plays a role in preparing people to embrace extremist ideologies. It
is not the only factor that contributes to extremism, but we believe there is good
reason to think that it can play an important role in the process.
To begin, we introduce the temporal Need-Threat Model of Ostracism
(Williams, 2009) as a framework for considering the interplay between social
exclusion and extremism. Next, from the perspective of this model, we consider
three attributes of extreme groups that might make them particularly attrac-
tive to people who have been ostracized: 1) extreme groups are better able to
resolve the uncertainty that is aroused when someone is ostracized, 2) extreme
groups are more entitative, and 3) extreme groups are more able to make a
noticeable impact.
Temporal need-threat model of ostracism

Ostracism—being ignored and excluded—is a painful event that threatens the
need for belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence. According
to the Temporal Need-Threat Model of Ostracism (Williams, 2009), reactions
to ostracism can be understood as unfolding in three sequential stages.
First, in the reflexive stage, the targets of ostracism detect that they are being
ignored and excluded, and this triggers immediate feelings of pain and negative
affect, threatening the need for belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful
existence. One might expect these outcomes to occur only in cases where ostra-
cism is particularly severe or meaningful (perhaps because it lasts a long time,
or comes from a particularly close or important other). However, studies find
that ostracism is reflexively painful even under circumstances when it should
not logically hurt (although, see Greifeneder & Rudert, 2019, for a discussion of
moderating factors). For example, merely being excluded from an online ball-
tossing game threatens basic needs, even when it lasts only a few minutes, and
the other players are strangers who the target has never met, and never will meet
(Williams et al., 2000). Ostracism threatens basic needs even when it is believed
to be delivered by a computer (Zadro, Williams, & Richardson, 2004), or by
a despised outgroup (Gonsalkorale & Williams, 2007). It is even threatening
when it is financially beneficial to be included (van Beest, & Williams, 2006).
Additionally, seemingly innocuous behaviors can also threaten the needs of oth-
ers, such as avoiding eye contact (Wirth, Sacco, Hugenberg, & Williams, 2010;
Wesselmann, Cardoso, Slater, & Williams, 2012), attending to one’s phone dur-
ing a face-to-face conversation (Hales, Dvir, Wesselman, Kruger, & Finkenauer,
2018), and using pronouns that exclude the gender of one’s audience (Stout &
Dasgupta, 2011; for an overview, see Wesselmann, Michels & Slaughter, 2019).
20 Kipling D. Williams et al.
Why would it be the case that ostracism hurts even under such minimal con-
ditions? The dominant explanation is that a quick and crude system for detecting
ostracism would have been evolutionarily advantageous (Wesselmann, Nairne,
& Williams, 2012). Ostracism represents a very serious threat to survival (those
who are ostracized would be more vulnerable to predation and forgo the benefits
of group living such as shared resources and cooperative hunting). It also rep-
resents a serious threat to reproductive fitness (those who are ostracized would
not have access to mates; Brown, Young, Sacco, Bernstein, & Claypool, 2009).
Because the costs of failing to detect ostracism would have been great, it is theo-
rized that humans evolved a system for detecting ostracism that is biased in favor
of over-detecting false signals of ostracism, as opposed to the costlier error: failing
to detect an actually intended instance of ostracism (Eisenberger & Lieberman,
2005). This finding is supported by neurological evidence showing that the same
brain regions that respond to physical pain also respond to ostracism (Eisenberger
et al., 2003; Ferris, 2019) and that agents that numb physical pain also numb the
pain of ostracism (e.g., DeWall et al., 2010; Hales, Williams, & Eckhardt, 2015).
It appears that a social pain detection system evolved by piggybacking on top of
an already existing physical pain detection system (MacDonald & Leary, 2005).
The pain of ostracism, though sharp, is not necessarily permanent. People
quickly begin to assess the situation, attempting to recover their threatened psy-
chological needs in the second, reflective stage. During this stage, people begin to
make attributions for what caused the ostracism and try to determine the severity
of the threat. If ostracism is social death, then the reflective stage has been lik-
ened to a social autopsy, in which people consider the events and behaviors that
may have precipitated the ostracism (Hales, 2017).
While immediate responses to ostracism tend to be strong in the reflexive
stage, situational and personality factors can affect how quickly participants
recover in the reflective stage. For example, while ostracism is immediately
threatening to people who are both high and low in social anxiety, following a
delay, only those who are high in social anxiety report continued need-threat
(Zadro, Boland, & Richardson, 2006). Situational factors can affect responses to
ostracism in the same way: immediate reactions to ostracism are equally strong
regardless of the group membership of the other players. However, following a
delay, people experience less recovery of basic needs if they were ostracized on
the basis of a permanent, rather than temporary, group membership (Wirth &
Williams, 2009). Finally, certain behaviors during the reflective stage have been
shown to affect the amount of recovery, with people faring better if they avoid
ruminating (Wesselmann, Ren, Swim, & Williams, 2013), or if they engage in
prayer, self-affirmation, or other strategies (Hales, Wesselmann, & Williams,
2016; Timeo, Riva, & Paladino, 2019). Distanced self-talk may also be a useful
strategy (Orvell & Kross, 2019).
Because people in the reflective stage are motivated to restore their threatened
psychological needs, ostracism can lead them to behave in ways that are generally
prosocial and cooperative, essentially going-along-to-get-along (Robinson &
Schabram, 2019). For example, people who are ostracized are susceptible to
three types of social influence: conformity to group judgments (Williams et al.,
2000), compliance with requests (Carter-Sowell, Chen, & Williams, 2009), and
obedience to authority (Riva, Williams, Torstrick, & Montali, 2014). Similarly,
changes in cognitive processing have also been identified (Claypool & Bernstein,
2019), with people experiencing ostracism or exclusion having better memory
for social information (Gardner, Pickett, & Brewer, 2000), being better able to
identify smiling faces (a source of inclusion; Bernstein, Young, Brown, Sacco &
Claypool, 2008), and less likely to rely on stereotypes when making judgments
about potential sources of affiliation (Claypool & Bernstein, 2014). While these
outcomes are generally considered adaptive, we will see that this increased open-
ness to influence may leave ostracized people vulnerable to recruitment into
extreme groups (Wesselmann & Williams, 2010).
Threats to belonging and self-esteem motivate these affiliative behaviors, but
ostracism also threatens the need for control and meaningful existence. When peo-
ple are especially motivated to restore these two needs, responses to ostracism may
take the form of aggression (Warburton, Williams, & Cairns, 2006; Williams, 2009).
In these cases, it may be more important for people to be noticed than to be liked
(e.g., Rudert, Hales, Greifeneder & Williams, 2017). Consistent with this reasoning,
perpetrators of school shootings are very likely to have had a precipitating his-
tory of being excluded or bullied (Leary, Kowalski, Smith, & Phillips, 2003), often
reporting a desire to be noticed and remembered as their motivating goal. Again,
we will see that these desires for control and meaningful existence may leave people
vulnerable to recruitment into extreme groups or movements which are willing to
take action that is impactful enough to be noticed by others.
Finally, if people are unable to re-fortify their basic needs, they will proceed
into the final, resignation stage of ostracism, where they experience feelings of
alienation, unworthiness, learned helplessness, and depression (Riva, Montali,
Wirth, Curioni, & Williams, 2016; Riva, Wesselmann, Wirth, Carter-Sowell,
& Williams, 2014).
Need-threat model and interest in extreme groups

Given that ostracism motivates people to restore their threatened needs, it fol-
lows that people would be more open to groups of all sorts (including extreme
groups) after being ostracized. Gardner and colleagues (2000) suggested a helpful
food analogy. Just as someone who is starved might consider eating something
that would ordinarily be unappealing, so too can being starved of social inter-
action lead people to consider social affiliations that would otherwise be unap-
pealing. Based on this analogy, one could draw what we call the indiscrimination
hypothesis: Ostracism increases interest in affiliating with extreme and moderate
groups to roughly the same extent.
In contrast to this assumption, there may be reasons to expect that being
ostracized leads not only to a tolerance for extreme groups but a preference for
extreme groups. For the remains of this chapter, we will consider evidence con-
sistent with this extreme group preference hypothesis: Ostracism increases interest
in affiliating with groups overall, but more so with groups that are extreme.
A minimum observation for either hypothesis is that ostracism at least causes
increased interest in groups that are extreme. Is that the case?
In order to directly test whether ostracism can cause an increased interest
in extreme groups, using Cyberball, we experimentally manipulated ostracism
in two experiments (Hales & Williams, 2018). In the first study, after playing
Cyberball, participants had a conversation with a confederate who presented
himself as a member of a campus group that advocates for the reduction of tuition
and uses extreme methods to do so (such as blockading campus). Participants
then completed a short survey, ostensibly for the group to be able to gather infor-
mation. Those who were ostracized expressed a greater willingness to attend a
meeting of this group. In the second study, participants played Cyberball and
then responded to a measure probing their openness to joining a gang, which
was defined for them as “a group of people who spend a lot of time together,
normally engaged in delinquent acts. They have a strong sense of identity and
are affiliated with a specific cause.” Again, those who were ostracized expressed
greater openness to gang membership. This is an important step in showing that
ostracism can increase interest in extreme groups; however, on its own it does
not distinguish between the indiscrimination hypothesis and the extreme group
preference hypothesis. Accordingly, research has yet to adequately and directly
test the extreme group preference hypothesis.
Increased interest in extreme groups might follow from the fact that extreme
groups are better able to resolve uncertainty, tend to be perceived as more enti-
tative, and are more likely to make an impact. The research reviewed below
addresses these three functions of extreme groups and is consistent with the
extreme group preference hypothesis. However, it does not yet include a critical
test demonstrating that ostracism increases interest in extreme groups more than
other groups.
Reduced uncertainty
More extreme groups provide certainty and may help the excluded individual
to compensate for resulting uncertainty about the self. This aspect of extreme
groups may make them especially attractive to someone who has been ostra-
cized, assuming, in a first step, that ostracism causes feelings of uncertainty.
Indeed, research shows that the experience of social exclusion can be highly
ambiguous and induce uncertainty about a number of different elements of
the self and situation (Chen, Law, & Williams, 2010; Hales & Williams, 2018;
Williams, 1997). Here we consider three types of uncertainty brought on by
ostracism (although there are almost certainly more).
First, when facing exclusion, the excluded individual’s first reaction might be
to wonder whether what transpired is even something that they should think of
as ostracism (Greifeneder & Rudert, 2019). For example, imagine that you are
about to talk to a group of friends you see down the hall. As you come closer to
them, they suddenly turn around and enter an adjacent room leaving you alone.
One possibility is that they did not want to talk to you. However, as you were
still far away from them, it might be that they just did not notice you. This ambi-
guity of what happened resembles the first type of uncertainty that can arise in
the context of exclusion: the uncertainty regarding whether or not the exclusion
actually took place. If you were to find out that they did not see you, you will
probably realize that you have not been excluded from the group. Still, what if
they purposefully excluded you?
This is where the second type of uncertainty in the context of ostracism
comes into play: excluded individuals will be wondering about why they were
excluded (see Chen et al., 2010; for further discussion of motives of ostracism,
see Robinson, 2019, and Rudert & Greifeneder, 2019).
The lack of a clear reason for why one was excluded has been shown to
increase the threat to one’s fundamental needs (Sommer, Williams, Ciarocco,
& Baumeister, 2001). It was found that not being able to attribute a specific
reason to the exclusion rendered the experience more painful. Consequently,
when facing exclusion characterized by low causal clarity, it has been shown that
individuals work harder on a following group task as a way of compensating for
part of the need-threat (Williams & Sommer, 1997).
In addition to uncertainty about 1) whether or not the ostracism occurred and,
2) why it occurred, those ostracized may experience a third type of uncertainty:
self-uncertainty. Consider again the example of friends purposefully excluding
you. Facing the loss of group membership, you might start wondering what is
wrong with you, who you are, and what you want.
Based on Hogg’s uncertainty–identity theory (Grant & Hogg, 2012; Hogg,
2007) an individual’s identity can be conceptualized as the product of one’s group
memberships. When individuals belong to a social group, they identify with this
group and know who they are based on the characteristics associated with the
group. Groups provide a group prototype which one can identify with that gives
orientation for how to behave, think, and feel. In line with this, being part of a
social group has shown to provide a social identity that increases certainty about
the self (Hogg, 2012; Hogg & Wagoner, 2017).
Conversely, if group membership is denied, such as in the case of ostracism,
self-uncertainty increases and people start questioning who they are (Stillman &
Baumeister, 2009). From a theoretical perspective, exclusion increases feelings of
meaninglessness and control (Twenge, Catanese, & Baumeister, 2003; Williams,
2007). Situations that lack meaning and control are believed to induce higher
levels of self-uncertainty.
That ostracism increases self-uncertainty has been reported in a recent study
(Michels, Burgmer, & Mussweiler, 2017). Participants who imagined that they
were excluded from a group, or those who recalled an instance of previous exclu-
sion, later reported higher levels of self-uncertainty than those who imagined or
recalled themselves as being part of a group. Additionally, on the dispositional

level, it appears that higher levels of rejection sensitivity (Berenson et al., 2009),
as an indicator of exclusion, are associated with higher levels of self-uncertainty
(Michels, 2018).
Further experimental evidence stems from research showing that people
who feel more peripheral to a group indicate increased levels of self-uncertainty
(Hohman, Gaffney, & Hogg, 2017). It has been shown that lacking a perfect fit
with one’s group induces self-uncertainty, which in turn can be compensated by
identifying more strongly with the group’s attributes. At the same time, feeling
certain about the self can also act as a buffer against the feeling of being periph-
eral. For example, individuals who were led to feel certain about themselves
before being told to be a peripheral group member did neither identify more
strongly with their in-group, nor did they show more in-group bias as opposed
to being led to feel uncertain about the self.
Although sometimes uncertainty comprises the option to reinterpret a situa-
tion (see Chen et al., 2010), people generally strive to reduce any type of uncer-
tainty (e.g., Festinger, 1954). In this context, uncertainty that refers to the self
has an outstandingly strong impact on people’s motivation (e.g., Arkin, Oleson,
& Carroll, 2013; Hogg, 2012). Accordingly, self-uncertainty is considered to
be particularly powerful at initiating uncertainty-reducing actions. Reducing
self-uncertainty will render one’s self-concept clearer and the social world more
predictable so that individuals can behave accordingly.
One way of reducing self-uncertainty is social comparison (Festinger, 1954).
Current research provides experimental evidence indicating that in order to
reduce the self-uncertainty that results from being ostracized, excluded individu-
als engage in more social comparison seeking (Michels et al., 2017). Furthermore,
higher self-uncertainty is associated with increased social comparison orientation
(Michels, 2018).
Apart from engaging in social comparison to reduce self-uncertainty, research
shows that identifying with a group—especially those that are considered to be
more extreme—helps to reduce self-uncertainty (Hogg, 2014). In line with the
uncertainty–identity theory (Hogg, 2007), the more clearly cut a group pro-
totype is, the more easily individuals will be able to understand the group’s
attribute and use it for identification. It follows from this that groups which are
particularly clear in their expectations, norms, and identities (in other words,
extreme groups), should be especially effective at reducing uncertainty.
Why extreme groups? Extreme groups are likely perceived as having particu-
larly well-defined boundaries, with clear positions, well-articulated expectations
of members, and little ambiguity surrounding their purpose. To someone who
has been ostracized, these features may make extreme groups an especially attrac-
tive source of certainty. Existing theorizing supports this prediction. It has been
argued that groups with extreme views are appealing to people in the throes
of uncertainty because they have such clear and unambiguous norms (Hogg,
Adelman, & Blagg, 2010). Accordingly, when uncertainty is experimentally
induced, participants report greater identification with a radical student organi-

zation (Hogg, Meehan, & Farquharson, 2010).
Entitativity
Consider the Cobra Kai dojo from the film Karate Kid. What sets this group apart
from others? One feature that comes to mind is the uniformity of its members.
They dress alike and stand in neat rows. When the leader prompts them, they
respond in unison. This is a group arrangement that can be characterized as enti-
tative (as in, it is easy to perceive the group as a single entity; Campbell, 1958).
The concept of entitativity is based on Gestalt principles such as similarity, prox-
imity, and common fate (for example, common fate can be seen in the identical
movements of soldiers participating in military marches with precise unison—a
practice that fosters obedience to authority; Wiltermuth, 2012).
Highly entitative groups are thought to have especially clear, well-defined
boundaries and rules for how one should behave. As mentioned, this feature
may make them particularly attractive to individuals who have been ostracized,
as ostracism is an inherently ambiguous and uncertainty-provoking experience
(Hogg, 2004; see also Hogg, Sherman, Dierselhuis, Maitner, and Moffitt, 2007).
However, the entitativity offered by extreme groups may be appealing to those
who have been ostracized, not only because it offers more certainty (addressing
the need for control), but also because it offers a stronger sense of community,
identity, and shared values (addressing the need for belonging). That is, assuming
that one is able to gain access to an extreme and entitative group, the uniform-
ity in norms, customs, and beliefs gives someone something to fit in with. If the
group completely lacks entitativity, it is a less effective source of belonging, as
the group is more a collection of independent individuals, rather than an organ-
ized and coherent unit. All else being equal, ostracism should induce a desire to
re-fortify the threatened need for belonging, which should create a preference
for groups that have clear goals and norms. The entitativity offered by extreme
groups should thus be especially appealing to those who have been ostracized.
Impact
All else being equal, groups that are more extreme will also be more willing to
entertain a variety of tactics and methods to achieve their desired outcomes. A
moderate group promoting tuition reduction will hold meetings and circulate
pamphlets. A more extreme group will hold rallies and walk-outs and circulate
petitions with demands. Which group is more likely to make an impact? Which
one is more likely to be noticed?
Ostracism threatens not only belonging and self-esteem, but also control and
meaningful existence. When one’s need to be noticed is greater than their need
to be liked, groups that embrace extreme tactics will start to look more appeal-
ing. Recent research suggests that when ostracized, participants might simply
prefer the most impactful option, regardless of whether it is pro- or anti-social

(Schade, Domachowska, Mitchell, & Williams, 2014). Indeed, recent research
finds that ostracism can increase people’s endorsement of the use of violence in
favor of supported causes (i.e., terroristic mindsets) and that this effect is mediated
by threatened need for control (Pfundmair, 2018).
Additional reasons that extreme groups might be preferred

It may also be the case that extreme groups are perceived as more selective.
Though this may inhibit people from seeking initial entry (since the group is not
seen as permeable), it may make the group more desirable nonetheless, as belong-
ing to a highly selective group would provide a stronger boost to self-esteem than
a group that will accept anyone at all. Further, presuming the individual is able
to gain acceptance, extreme groups may also provide greater security and a lower
risk of being excluded once the individual manages to enter the group.
Research has shown that, at least in the United States, people who hold
extreme views (whether liberal or conservative) tend to also believe that their
position is superior to the other side’s (Toner, Leary, Asher, & Jongman-Soreno,
2013). This relationship between extremism and belief superiority suggests that
extreme groups may provide a unique opportunity for those who have been
ostracized to feel unique and important. This may be an especially important
dynamic to understand within the context of the moralization of one’s position
(Täuber, 2019).
Finally, ostracized individuals might prefer to associate with others who are
outcast by society. Extreme groups may be perceived to be comprised of more
such outcasts than moderate groups.
Conclusion
Together, the research reviewed suggests that ostracism not only threatens basic
needs but also motivates people to restore these needs by seeking to affiliate with
groups, especially groups that are extreme. It seems that Jake Bilardi’s decision to
join the Islamic State may have been a product, at least in part, of his prior mar-
ginalized status. We hope that researchers will continue to explore this research
area to better understand the interplay between ostracism and interest in extreme
groups and ideologies.
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3
ABOUT FLAMES AND BOOGEYMEN
Social norms affect individuals’
construal of social exclusion
Rainer Greifeneder and Selma C. Rudert
Being socially excluded is generally a painful experience that most individuals can
relate to because of their own experiences at school or work. In his temporal
need threat model of ostracism, Williams (2007a; 2009; see also Williams, Hales, &
Michaels, 2019) suggests that excluded individuals pass through three consecutive
stages: reflexive, reflective, and resignation. The present chapter puts the spotlight
on the first stage, the reflexive response, which Williams (2007a, p. 431) defines as
a “painful response to any form of exclusion, unmitigated by situational or indi-
vidual difference factors.” He compares the reflexive response to touching a flame,
which “is no less painful when it comes from a friendly rather than unfriendly
source” (Williams, 2007b, p. 238). Many studies provide empirical support for this
perspective of an unmitigated reflexive response. For instance, being ostracized
hurts, irrespective of whether those who ostracize are ingroup or outgroup mem-
bers (e.g., Fayant, Muller, Hartgerink, & Lantian, 2014; Gonsalkorale & Williams,
2007). Relatedly, reflexive reactions are similarly negative if individuals were alleg-
edly ostracized by a human or a computer (Zadro, Williams, & Richardson, 2004),
receive money for being excluded (van Beest & Williams, 2006), or toss around a
bomb instead of a ball (van Beest, Williams, & Van Dijk, 2011). Moreover, a series
of studies propose a neurophysiological overlap of physical pain and social pain
(e.g., Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003; Kross, Berman, Mischel, Smith,
& Wager, 2011; see also Ferris, 2019), perhaps explaining why social exclusion is
described as “pain,” why it “hurts,” and why the comparison with touching a flame
may be more than a metaphor.
The reflexive response is cognitively mediated

Despite all this evidence, we suggest that there is good reason to challenge the
flame metaphor. In extending Williams’s (2009) model, we suggest that reflexive
About flames and boogeymen 33
social pain is not invariably experienced, but cognitively mediated (similar to the
conceptualization suggested by Williams, 1997). To illustrate this idea, consider
the following scenario: Mark, 35 years old, who is happily married and has a
2-year-old daughter, has accepted a new position as an engineer in a team of
eight. During interviewing, he met his new boss and one member of the team,
who were both extremely supportive. Eager to get started, Mark arrives early on
the first day. To his surprise, the office is empty, but Mark soon finds all of his
new team members gathered together in the kitchen. When Mark approaches,
the group’s chatting suddenly stops, and an extended moment of silence takes
place. Finally, the team members greet Mark, actually quite happily.
One way for Mark to look at this scenario will likely hurt: although it is his
first day, all of the other team members who have gathered without him stop
talking as soon as he approaches. Apparently, they even showed up early to have
time to chat without him, and maybe about him. What more obvious sign could
there be that Mark is not welcome and that all else is just pretense?
In contrast, another way for Mark to look at this scenario may not hurt at all:
because it is Mark’s first day, all of the team members have gathered to prepare
Mark’s welcome. They even came in early because they wanted to make his
welcome special. When Mark showed up unexpectedly, they were caught by
surprise and stopped chatting—before quickly composing themselves and finally
greeting Mark.
Note that nothing has changed on the level of what factually occurred—the
team meets without Mark; they stop talking upon his arrival; Mark is kept out
of their gathering. Yet, despite the objective situation being identical, the two
cognitive perspectives likely trigger a markedly different reaction on the subjective
level. Whereas the first perspective elicits an experience of pain, the second elic-
its perhaps a warm glow of feeling welcome and esteemed. The only difference
is the cognitive frame of interpretation, which is hostile in the first perspective
and appreciative in the second. Consistent with this, we argue that the cognitive
perspective of the exact same situation affects which kinds of feelings will be
experienced.
There are thus two keys to our argument: first, we differentiate between the
objective situation (to the extent that there is such a thing, philosophically speaking),
and the subjective interpretation of that objective situation. The objective situation is
that Mark is not part of the group’s gathering. The subjective interpretation of this
objective situation can be one of hostility (the team meets separately as they do not
wish Mark to be a part of the group conversation), or appreciation (the team meets
separately to prepare Mark’s welcome). Secondly, it is not the objective situation,
but its subjective interpretation that triggers felt reactions. We thus conceptualize
reflexive responses to social exclusion as fundamentally cognitively mediated. As a
result of this cognitive mediation, objectively not-being-part does not invariably
result in feelings of pain and is not like touching a flame.
Note that our argument differs from the temporal need threat model’s basic
tenet of a reflexive response (Williams, 2009) that is “unmitigated by situational
34 Rainer Greifeneder and Selma C. Rudert
or individual differences” (Williams, 2007a, p. 431). Yet our argument is in

accordance with the fact that humans do not have a specific sensory organ to
detect social pain, as they do for physical pain. Indeed, we do not have equiva-
lents to heat or pressure sensors that tell us if we are currently being socially
excluded. Instead, we need to cognitively construe social situations in order to
capture the situations’ meanings (e.g., Smith & Semin, 2004). Logically, because
cognitive construal is a requisite for understanding a social situation, an experi-
ence can arise only after a situation has been subjectively construed, that is, after
a situation has been given meaning. Therefore, we can conclude that individu-
als feel pain not as a direct reaction to the objective situation but in response to
the subjective construal of the objective situation—not being part of the group’s
conversation—as threatening. Note that our perspective is not one of correction,
in which an initial pain response is corrected due to cognitive considerations.
Rather, we argue that social pain arises only after construal has taken place.
Consistent with this reasoning, control and meaningful existence needs have
been shown to be less impaired if social exclusion is perceived as fair compared to
unfair (Tuscherer et al., 2016).
At first glance, the immediacy that is characteristic of the reflexive response
(Williams, 2007b) may appear to be in conflict with the notion of cognitive
mediation. However, there is strong evidence that cognitive construing occurs
swiftly and requires a minimum of cognitive effort (e.g., Smith & Semin, 2004).
Cognitive construal of objective exclusion is therefore not akin to a deliberative
thinking process that involves the consideration of different facets or perspec-
tives. Instead, we think it operates incredibly fast.
Giving meaning to objective situations of not-being-part

Cognitive situating requires a certain level of ambiguity of the objective exclu-
sion situation. If there is only one viable way of interpretation, subjective reac-
tions are unlikely to differ. However, many situations are characterized by
strong ambiguity and can be interpreted in different ways, and this is especially
true for situations of social ostracism (Williams, 1997). For instance, Nezlek,
Wesselmann, Wheeler, and Williams (2012) argued that half of all exclusion
situations reported in everyday life can be linked to social roles or normative
behavioral expectations, thus allowing for frames of interpretation other than
hostile threat. Interestingly, consistent with our argument, Nezlek and col-
leagues (2012) observed fewer negative reactions to role-prescribed exclusion
compared to other kinds of ostracism.
Given that one objective situation can be interpreted in several ways, it is
important to understand which cognitive meaning is given to a specific situation.
Consistent with basic principles of social cognition (e.g., Higgins, 1996), we sug-
gest that the frame of reference that is most salient and accessible at the time of
interpretation is likely to guide meaning. For instance, if Mark had experienced
social exclusion at his previous work place, a hostile frame of reference could be
particularly accessible, and Mark could be prone to interpret the objective not-
being-part situation in a threatening way, thus causing experiences of pain. In
contrast, if Mark associates the new work place with the warmth and friendliness
expressed by the boss and his new co-worker during the hiring process, who
explicitly mentioned that the team likes to arrange for surprise parties on special
occasions, then a benevolent frame of reference could be particularly accessible,
triggering positive interpretations and felt reactions. Because salience and acces-
sibility are a function of both situational and dispositional variables, it is con-
ceivable that some individuals recruit a hostile or benevolent frame more often
than others. For instance, individuals high in rejection sensitivity may be more
prone than others to interpret not-being-part in a hostile way (Romero-Canyas
& Downey, 2005), and reversely, individuals low in rejection sensitivity may
tend to interpret social threat cues in a non-threatening way (Romero-Canyas
& Downey, 2013).
Although many frames of interpretation may exist to disambiguate objec-
tive situations of not-being-part, we put the spotlight on social norms as one
particularly important frame of interpretation in daily life. Social norms specify
what kind of behavior is collectively agreed on, and can therefore be expected
from others (Gibbs, 1965). Social norms can be explicit (as in fairy tales), but
also implicit. Some social norms are respected across full societies and can be
enduring (e.g., morals; see Täuber, 2019); other social norms may be specific
to a group or organization and are sometimes short-lived (e.g., consider social
norms that develop among students taking a specific course for one semester).
Which norm is recruited for the interpretation of an objective exclusion situation
depends on salience and accessibility, thus giving an advantage to norms that are
especially strong, or have otherwise been frequently or recently activated.
One social norm that is particularly important in the context of social exclu-
sion research is the norm of being included (e.g., Wesselmann, Butler, Williams,
& Pickett, 2010; Wesselmann, Wirth, Pryor, Reeder, & Williams, 2013). This
inclusion norm holds that nobody should be left out. This norm presumably
evolved because social belonging is fundamental to human survival (Baumeister
& Leary, 1995). The inclusion norm is central to many societies and is con-
veyed by fairy tales such as “The Ugly Duckling,” to which children (at least in
Western societies) are exposed to from a very early age. Importantly, being left
out violates the inclusion norm and constitutes a threat. Indeed, if the norma-
tively correct thing to do is to allow others to participate, the fact that one person
is currently not-being-part may be perceived as threatening and may cause pain.
Interestingly, many paradigms that investigate social exclusion render the
inclusion norm salient and accessible. Consider the widely used Cyberball para-
digm (e.g., Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000; Williams & Jarvis, 2006), in
which participants play a virtual ball game together with two ostensible other
players. For cooperative ball games in general, and Cyberball more specifically
(Wesselmann, Bagg, & Williams, 2009), individuals expect the other players
to include them, and they also expect that they will most likely receive a fair
share of the throws. Hence, the salient norm is one of inclusion. Alternatively,
consider chat room manipulations of social ostracism, in which the participant is
ignored by other chat room members (e.g., Donate et al., 2017; Williams et al.,
2002). Again, the normative expectation in a chat room is being included, and
behavior that violates this norm can be interpreted as threatening. Interestingly,
if social exclusion paradigms render the inclusion norm salient and accessible,
then the generally observed strong negative reflexive response may not tell us
much about general responses to objective exclusion (not-being-part), but more
specifically about situations in which the expectation of being included was vio-
lated without reason (for an overview of methods for investigating social exclu-
sion, see Wirth, 2016).
Changing meaning
We have argued that the almost invariably observed negative reflexive response
to social exclusion in paradigms such as Cyberball (e.g., Hartgerink, van Beest,
Wicherts, & Williams, 2015) may at least in part reflect a highly salient and acces-
sible inclusionary norm. Consistent with this argument, it should be possible to
reduce some of the negative reflexive reactions by changing the norm. To test
this idea, Rudert and Greifeneder (2016) asked participants to play Cyberball.
In the game’s standard version, inclusionary status is varied by changing the
number of balls that participants receive. In particular, some participants receive
the ball about a third of the time (generally referred to as the inclusion condi-
tion), whereas other participants receive the ball only twice at the start of the
game and then never again (generally referred to as the exclusion condition).
Compared to this Standard Cyberball, some participants played a variant of the
game, which we will here refer to as Dislikeball. In Dislikeball, participants
are asked to throw the ball to the person they like least; except that, if they are
undecided, they were asked to throw the ball equally as often to both players.
This rule creates a normative frame in which not-being-part is something posi-
tive and appreciative since if a player does not receive the ball, this means that she/
he is not disliked. Put differently, the person who is not-being-part of the game is
the one most liked by the others. Thus, not receiving the ball does not constitute
a threat to one’s belongingness, and hence should not hurt. Consistent with this
reasoning, Rudert and Greifeneder (2016) observed for excluded participants,
that Dislikeball causes less pain than Standard Cyberball. Note that the objec-
tive situation was identical for Dislikeball and Standard Cyberball, as excluded
participants were objectively not-being-part of the game after the two initial
throws. However, what is different between Standard Cyberball and Dislikeball
is the subjective interpretation of this same objective situation.
Intriguingly, Dislikeball also changes the interpretative frame for inclusion,
that is, for being-part. Compared to Standard Cyberball, included Dislikeball
participants can deduce that they are either disliked the most, or that the other
persons are undecided, and therefore throw the ball equally often to the two
other players. Receiving the ball in Dislikeball can thus mean more than one
thing, including a threat to one’s belongingness (if one is disliked most), or it can
result in an emotionally ambiguous situation (if the others are apparently unde-
cided on who is the worst). Consistent with this reasoning, Dislikeball causes less
fulfillment of needs than Standard Cyberball for included participants. Likewise,
overinclusion in “Cyberbomb” (van Beest et al., 2011) or “Euroball” (van Beest
& Williams, 2006)—two paradigms in which receiving the ball has negative
consequences—causes need threat, presumably because overincluded partici-
pants deduce that their belongingness status is unclear, due to the higher level of
risk put on them by the other players.
The Dislikeball findings powerfully support the idea that not-being-part does
not invariably result in a reflexive response of social pain. Instead, the salient nor-
mative frame channels how both not-being-part, and being-part, are subjectively
interpreted. In Dislikeball, this normative frame was put in place by an explicitly
stated rule; in Standard Cyberball, we purport that the normative frame is given
implicitly due to the fact that Cyberball is introduced as a ball game (see also
Wesselmann et al., 2009), and that the standard expectation for ball games is one
of equal share. Arguably, however, the explicitly stated rule in Dislikeball is not
very intuitive: throwing the ball to the person one likes least is not what people
generally expect to do. Hence, in contrast to our argument of different inter-
pretation frames, one could also argue that Dislikeball was a less credible story,
and perhaps created a less captivating social situation, thus causing less pain. To
address this concern, Rudert and Greifeneder (2016) introduced a second variant
of Cyberball, which they labeled Trainerball, and told participants that they are
the trainer of the other two players. Trainerball exists in two versions. In Active
Trainerball, participants are told that the training consists of sessions in which
the trainer (i.e., the participant) plays with the trainees. In Active Trainerball, the
normative framework is therefore one of inclusion, and not-being-part consti-
tutes a violation of this inclusion norm, as well as a potential threat to belonging-
ness. In contrast, in Passive Trainerball, participants are told that trainees should
practice on their own, without the trainer. Passive Trainerball thus introduces a
normative framework in which not-being-part is the right thing for the trainer.
Not receiving the ball should thus not constitute a threat to belongingness. In
support of this reasoning, Rudert and Greifeneder (2016) observed that passive
Trainerball causes less pain than both Active Trainerball and Standard Cyberball.
Different inclusion rules for those in power

In Active Trainerball, the trainer is not part of the trainees’ activities. We chose
this setting because it is characteristic for many organizational settings, in which
leadership comes with having power over subordinates but also with not-being-
part of the group of subordinates (or at least, having a special status within
the group). We believe that our argument may help to understand why this
not-being-part does not reflexively result in a perceived threat to the leaders’
inclusionary status. In particular, we think that the leaders’ social role engenders
the norm that subordinates can do and discuss things without the leader. Hence,
not-being-part does not necessarily constitute a threat. Interestingly, this argu-
ment may help to understand why loneliness in organizations occurs to a simi-
lar extent across managerial levels and is not confined to superordinates (e.g.,
Wright, 2012), despite many reports that superordinates are particularly prone
to experience loneliness.
In Active Trainerball, role-prescribed exclusion resulted in fewer negative
reactions. This normative framework was provided as part of the experimental
study and was therefore particularly salient and accessible. But how about situ-
ations from everyday life, in which similar normative frameworks exist (i.e., a
company director needs to not-be-part of all of her/his subordinates’ activities),
but are essentially implicit? Schoel, Eck, and Greifeneder (2014) reported a study
that may be instructive in this respect. These authors manipulated social power
in a very implicit way. To understand their reasoning, consider research on con-
ceptual metaphors (for an overview, Landau, Meier, & Keefer, 2010), which has
revealed that social hierarchy is often depicted vertically (e.g., Schubert, 2005).
Specifically, those in power are often depicted above, and the powerless below.
For instance, the CEO’s office is often on the building’s top floor, and her/
his role is shown at the top of the organigram, while the cupboard for clean-
ing staff is usually in the basement, and their role is shown at the bottom of the
organigram.
With this in mind, it is instructive to reconsider the visuals of Standard
Cyberball. The game is depicted in 2D, with the three participants being
arranged in an upside-down triangle: the two ostensible co-players are on top
and the participant (often “Player Two”) below. From a metaphorical perspec-
tive, the ostensible co-players are therefore in a powerful position, whereas the
participant is in an inferior position. In this situation, not-receiving-the-ball
could be perceived as a threat to one’s inclusionary status, and therefore result in
negative reactions. Schoel and colleagues (2014) compared this standard set-up
to a second condition, which we refer to as Powerball. In Powerball, the stand-
ard triangular configuration is flipped, so that now participants are on top of the
other players and aloof of the situation. From a metaphorical perspective, this
change in depiction should change participants’ cognitions. Given an implicit
norm where those in power need not-be-part of their subordinates’ activities,
not-being-part is not necessarily a threat and Powerball should therefore result
in fewer negative reactions. And indeed, excluded participants were less likely to
reflexively experience negative mood or control threats when playing Powerball
compared to Standard Cyberball.
Not receiving the ball means having less control (e.g., Williams, 1997). One
way of reinstating control is by being aggressive toward those who are excluded
(e.g., Warburton, Williams, & Cairns, 2006). Consistent with this reasoning,
and replicating earlier evidence, Schoel and colleagues (2014) observed that
Standard Cyberball participants were more aggressive in the exclusion compared
to the inclusion condition. In contrast, Powerball participants were generally

not very aggressive irrespective of inclusionary status, presumably because not-
receiving-the-ball did not threaten their need for control.
Of interest, Schoel and colleagues (2014) argued that power may buffer against
the adverse effects of being excluded, as those who are in power usually have a
greater degree of control. The argument suggested here offers a different per-
spective on the level of underlying psychological processes: those in power may
interpret not-being-part as non-threatening, and therefore may have no negative
feelings about it in the first place. Both interpretations—buffer or norm—are
consistent with the existing data, calling for further research along this pathway.
Related to the Powerball findings is evidence reported by Eck, Schoel, and
Greifeneder (2017), which holds that individuals with a high need to belong
tend to experience fewer reflexive feelings if they belong to the majority. For
instance, data for one study was collected in the middle of the primaries and
caucuses of the 2016 US presidential election. Participants were asked to imagine
that it is election day and that they are on-site at an election party when the first
projection is announced. To vary group membership, participants were asked
to imagine that either 82% (majority condition) or 18% (minority condition) of
the voters had supported the same candidate as they did. Subsequently, partici-
pants played Cyberball. Of interest, high need to belong participants, for whom
belonging to a group is particularly important, were less negatively affected by
social exclusion when they imagined that they were part of the majority. Again,
one could argue that the majority buffers against the adverse effects of being
excluded. However, in line with the present argument of cognitively mediated
construal, one could also argue that majority members construe the situation in
a different and less-threatening way.
Different political perspectives entail different social norms

Powerball capitalized on the existence of different social norms across organi-
zational hierarchy. But social norms vary across other dimensions, too, such as
political attitudes. For instance, at the time that Rudert and Greifeneder (2016)
were conducting their studies, German left-wing parties generally endorsed
gender quotas, for instance, with respect to the gender ratio found at the top
management level of companies. In contrast, right-wing parties were generally
in opposition to such quotas. Rudert and Greifeneder (2016) conducted a study
in which participants were included in, or excluded from, an online political
debate due to an ostensible gender quota. That is, excluded participants were
told that they could not be part because of their gender. Such an exclusion is
consistent with normative principles of left-wing parties but violates normative
principles of right-wing parties. If the existence of such norms has an impact on
how individuals experience not-being-part, left-wing compared to right-wing
participants should interpret the situation as less threatening, which should result
in fewer negative reflexive reactions, as observed by the authors. These results
suggest that the existence of a norm or the norm being salient is not enough—the
norm needs to be personally endorsed, too, for cognitive construal to prevent
the emergence of pain. Indeed, given that all participants were told that a gender
quota was in place, this normative framework was equally salient to all partici-
pants. Nevertheless, participants differed by party-line whether they endorsed or
rejected this norm, and, in consequence, if not-being-part due to a gender norm
was experienced as a threat.
Would these laboratory findings, with a fictitious online debate, translate to
the real world? An interesting opportunity to test this question arose in 2014
when Swiss citizens were called to a popular vote about an initiative against mass
immigration. Basically, Swiss citizens voted about how many immigrants are
welcome. The initiative was worded in such a way that it would not have any
bearing on those immigrants who were already in the country. Nevertheless,
psychologically, the initiative was experienced as a threat even by those who
were already in the country, as it demonstrated that immigrants’ political status
is fragile and that immigrants are not liked in many places (irrespective of the
immigrants’ social status or educational level). From a norm perspective, the fact
that immigrants only have a marginal role in society should be perceived as a
threat by those who generally vote left-wing (generally rejecting nationalist atti-
tudes), but much less of a threat by those who generally vote right-wing (gener-
ally endorsing nationalist attitudes). Results obtained from a large ad-hoc sample
of German-speaking immigrants are in support of this reasoning (Rudert, Janke,
& Greifeneder, 2017).
Interestingly, the synopsis of the two previous studies on politics demonstrates
the enormous flexibility that the conceptualization of a cognitively mediated
reflexive response affords. Notably, it is not the case that one group of individu-
als is more prone to negative reflexive responses to ostracism than another group
of individuals. Rather, negative reactions are triggered if the group’s norms are
violated. As a result, left-wing participants presumably perceived not-being-part
in the online political debate as non-threatening but were still quite distressed
by the Swiss political vote. In the former case of the online political debate, not-
being-part was consistent with the party norm in favor of gender quotas; in the
latter case of the Swiss vote, in contrast, not-being-part violated the party norm
in favor of inclusion.
Knowledge about socially shared norms is key

Our argument holds that social norms situate not-being-part, and therefore
afford an enormous flexibility in the interpretations and subjective reactions to
social exclusion. We think that this flexibility is generally advantageous, under
the precondition of a socially shared consensus about the norms to be recruited.
If this precondition of a social consensus is not met, however, interpretative flex-
ibility may result in erroneous conclusions. To illustrate, consider an academic
institution that cherishes the academic quart, and a guest speaker from outside
academia. If the guest speaker takes the timetable literally, while everybody else
adds fifteen minutes, then the guest speaker might easily experience ten painful
minutes of not being acknowledged before the first faculty member shows up.
More generally, if those who exclude, compared to those who are excluded, have
different norms in mind, different interpretations of the same objective situation
are likely to arise, and innocuous behavior by some may hurt others. Such situa-
tions may be particularly common for new employees, who have not yet learned
the implicit and explicit social rules that define a specific organization, unit, or
team, and may therefore interpret situations of not-being-part differently from
long-term employees. For instance, had Mark not known that the team likes to
arrange for surprise parties, he may likely have interpreted the gathering of his
new colleagues in a threatening way. This pertains to situations in which the
new employee is the target of ostracism, belongs to the group of ostracizers, or
witnesses ostracism as an external observer (see Rudert & Greifeneder, 2019).
The above examples generally pertain to short-term consequences and isolated
events. But interpreting not-being-part in ways different from other people over
extended periods of time may result in misunderstandings that prove maladap-
tive in the long run, too. For instance, if people interpret innocuous situations
as episodes of hostility, they may react in ways that are not easily understood by
others. Ironically, these others may then truly change their behavior and exclude
the deviant for real, so that the initially misunderstood situation becomes real-
ity. To illustrate, if one person in a romantic couple tends to interpret innocuous
not-being-part situations as indications of intentional rejection, this person may
behave reproachfully or start stalking her/his romantic partner. In reaction to
this negative behavior, the romantic partner may then truly reject the person
(Downey, Freitas, Michaelis, & Khouri, 1998).
So far, the tacit assumption has been that a set of socially shared norms exists
that is not known by some (such as guests or new employees). But this assump-
tion of an existing set of norms is not always met; in fact, the lack of a clear set
of norms may more often than not be the reason for misinterpretations of social
situations. Consider organizations or teams that go through changes, companies
that merge, or new businesses that develop: in all these cases, the organizational
culture is vague or weak and characterized by a lack of clear, socially shared
norms (e.g., Robinson, 2019; Robinson, O’Reilly, & Wang, 2013).
All of these considerations foster the conclusion that an accurate knowledge of
socially shared norms is important. Lack of knowledge about existing norms, or
a lack of the actual norms themselves, may provide fertile soil for misinterpreta-
tions and misunderstandings. Therefore, investing in a well-known culture and
communicating the cultural norms to its new members may prove worthy.
Methodological paradigms as real-world analogies

We have previously argued that Cyberball and other methodological paradigms,
which are frequently relied on to investigate social exclusion such as chat rooms,
render an inclusion norm salient and accessible. Against the background of the
present argument, one could therefore speculate as to what extent findings accrued
with these paradigms might translate to other situations. Intriguingly, these spec-
ulations may suggest that Cyberball and related paradigms are extremely well
suited to investigate social ostracism, precisely because they render the inclusion
norm salient and accessible. This is because the inclusion norm is so prevalent
and strong in many societies that it may constitute the default interpretation that
individuals apply to disambiguate a situation of not-being-part (at least in the
absence of more specific information). To reiterate, our argument holds that the
reflexive responses to ostracism are not invariably negative, but that they depend
on the cognitive construal of the respective situation. Social norms—such as a
general inclusion norm—are one important source of information that situates
cognitive construal. Given the strength of the inclusion norm, more often than
not, being excluded should be reflexively experienced as painful.
These considerations may help to further understand why social exclusion
studies generally find that the reflexive response to ostracism is unmitigated (e.g.,
Williams, 2007a, 2009), with few exceptions (for reviews, see Eck, Schoel, &
Greifeneder, 2016; Hartgerink et al., 2015). To illustrate, consider van Beest
and colleagues’ (2011) Cyberbomb study, in which participants tossed a bomb
instead of a ball. Receiving a bomb that may take off at any second is undesirable,
so that not receiving the bomb becomes positive. One might thus assume that
participants are happy when they are not part of the game. However, excluded
compared to included participants experienced more need threat irrespective
of whether they tossed a ball or a bomb (though less when tossing the bomb
compared to the ball). From our perspective, Cyberbomb is still a game and
was described as such to participants, so that the normative expectation is one
of inclusion, and violation of the social norm is a threat. Although receiving
the bomb might carry a risk, not receiving the bomb guarantees that one is
unworthy of being-part. Our point is that need threat in Cyberbomb ceases only
when the default norm of inclusion is no longer in place (Rudert & Greifeneder,
2016). Note that this theorizing is consistent with qualitative interview research
reported by Williams (2009), who found that people prefer being physically
assaulted (here receiving the bomb) to being regarded as though they were invis-
ible (not-being-part of the game).
Whereas Cyberball is suitable to investigate contexts characterized by a
strong inclusion norm, it may not be the first methodological choice for contexts
dominated by other norms. For instance, when investigating contexts of role-
prescribed not-being-part, paradigms other than Cyberball may allow for more
specific conclusions. Situational contexts in which norms other than inclusion
might be dominant can be emulated, for instance, by paradigms that force partic-
ipants to make a selection between different individuals (exclusion due to a gen-
der quota, Rudert & Greifeneder, 2016; e.g., apartment hunting, Rudert, Hales,
Greifeneder, & Williams, 2017). Relatedly, paradigms asking for the recall of
autobiographical events (e.g., Sommer, Williams, Ciarocco, & Baumeister, 2001)
can be tailored to reflect norms other than the inclusion norm, although these
paradigms harbor the caveat that the manipulation’s strength and contribution to
internal validity depend on the specific content recalled.
A flame, a boogeyman, or both?

Williams (2007a) compared social ostracism with touching a flame, as it pre-
sumably hurts no matter what (an unmitigated reflexive response). Instead of
comparing it to a flame, we suggest that social exclusion may be understood
as something shadowy in the corner of the room. If there is reason to construe
this shadow as the boogeyman, a construal as threat and negative reflexive feel-
ings are in order and evolutionarily advantageous. In contrast, if the shadow is
known to be a coat stand, it is better perceived as non-threatening, and having
no reflexively negative feelings is more helpful (and may increase the chances of
survival by reducing the risk of a heart attack). Similarly, to the extent that situ-
ations foster threatening versus benign cognitions about not-being-part deter-
mines whether a reflexive negative response occurs. Still, it should be noted that
the existence of a strong inclusionary norm in many societies creates a situation
where the shadow in the corner is perceived, more often than not, as threatening.
As a result, the end states of the flame versus boogeyman analogies are often in
accordance: not-being-part hurts.
However, the boogeyman allows for a silver-lining: If it is possible to frame
not-being-part as not threatening one’s inclusionary status, then not-being-part
should not hurt, or hurt less. Field evidence provided by Walton and Cohen
(2011; see also Yeager et al., 2016) is consistent with this notion. Walton and
Cohen (2011) provided African American students with lay theories that chal-
lenges during the first year of college are common. This changed the students’
construal of adverse events and resulted in higher GPAs as well as self-reported
health and well-being three years after the intervention.
We have no data to speculate about whether these intervention students felt
no pain at all in response to adversity. But clearly, cognitively reframing helped
to experience less pain. On a theoretical level, our argument holds that no pain
would be possible, but to the extent that some ambiguity remains despite refram-
ing, even an identified coat stand may hurt a tiny little bit.
Williams (2009) argued that an automatic reflexive response has co-evolved
with the widespread use of social exclusion by groups and societies through-
out mankind. Those who detect ostracism early can presumably do something
about it, and hence increase their chances of (re-) inclusion and survival. From
Williams’s perspective, therefore, an automatic reflexive response is evolutionarily
advantageous. Yet, not all situations of not-being-part constitute a threat to indi-
viduals’ inclusionary status, but often reflect, for instance, role-prescribed behav-
ior (e.g., Nezlek et al., 2012) or no ostracism at all (Williams, 1997). We therefore
contend that a cognitively mediated response to objective exclusion allows for a
more fine-tuned response and could therefore prove even more evolutionarily
advantageous. This is especially the case as cognitive construal occurs quickly and
requires a minimum of cognitive capacity (Smith & Semin, 2004), so that little
costs (in terms of time lost before action), but potentially strong gains (in terms of
more appropriate behavior) result from a cognitively fine-tuned response.
A matter of timing
Back in 1997, Williams advocated for cognitive mediation to be present before
needs are experienced as threatened (Williams, 1997). In the most recent version
of his temporal need-threat model, Williams (2009) takes a different position
and argues that the first reflexive reaction to ostracism is unmitigated, and cogni-
tion kicks in only at the reflective stage. Our argument puts cognition back into
the reflexive stage ( just as Williams, 1997, did), based on the fact that humans
have no sensory organs for being ostracized, but instead need to cognitively
construe the social situation before they can react upon it. A closer look at these
different perspectives reveals timing as the critical parameter. Williams’s (2009)
model holds that social ostracism is detected, met reflexively with pain, and only
then cognitive mediation takes place. We argue instead that cognition channels
downstream consequences right from the beginning, that is, at detection. Unless
we are able to reach an extremely high temporal resolution in experimental
ostracism research, it is impossible to rigorously tease these diverging theoretical
accounts apart; one can always argue that detection versus reflexive pain versus
reflective considerations were at play when measures were assessed. Most ostra-
cism studies—including our own—are therefore unfit to speak about this matter
of timing. But even if an extremely high temporal resolution in measurement
would be possible, a theoretical specification of when reflexion ends and reflec-
tion begins is needed first, in order to decide what a measured outcome means.
One existing study may nevertheless provide insight into the timing ques-
tion, as it relied on fMRI, which affords comparably higher temporal resolu-
tion. Eisenberger and colleagues (2003) observed an increased activation in the
right ventral prefrontal cortex, which is involved in the inhibition or regula-
tion of pain, during exclusion in Cyberball. However, in a preliminary trial in
which participants were told that they could not play Cyberball due to technical
difficulties, no increased activation could be observed. From our perspective,
the pain regulation system may not have kicked in during the preliminary trial
because no threat was detected in the first place.
In addition to increasing temporal resolution in theory and measurement, the
two theoretical accounts may be tested by other means. Williams’s (2009) model
implies that individuals can detect and react to ostracism with almost no cogni-
tive mediation. How, then, does need threat arise? Perhaps conceptually consist-
ent with Zajonc (1980), one could argue that the perception of specific social
constellations directly triggers feelings that are unmediated by further construal.
For instance, one could argue that upon the perception of any spatial configura-
tion of one being left out by others, need threat is triggered. Interestingly, one
study by Law and Williams (reported in Williams, 2009) questions this possibil-
ity. Law and Williams had participants watch and describe two squares and one
sphere, with the sphere moving between the squares. When participants were
asked to develop a story about what they see, they subsequently reported need
threat. But if participants were not encouraged to develop a story, they did not
feel excluded or ignored. One way to interpret this evidence is that the percep-
tion of a standard special social ostracism configuration—one being left out by
others—is not enough to trigger need threat. The cognitive construal of the
perceived configuration as being threatening is key.
Conclusion
Being socially excluded hurts, and most people have made this painful experi-
ence themselves. But while these feelings arise with stunning immediacy, they
are not an unmitigated response to situations of not-being-part. Instead, because
humans have no sensory organs for social exclusion, they must cognitively con-
strue each social situation—and only if this construal is one of threat will not-
being-part hurt. Arguably, an interpretation of threat is a helpful interpretation
in many situations; however, it is also useful to realize when there is no reason to
feel hurt or respond in maladaptive, negative ways.
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4
EXCLUSION AND ITS IMPACT ON
SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING
Heather M. Claypool and Michael J. Bernstein
Belonging, or feeling socially connected to others in a meaningful way, is critical

to human functioning (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Unfortunately, people fre-
quently experience events that threaten belonging, such as social exclusion, ostra-
cism, rejection, and subjective feelings of loneliness, and these events can trigger
a host of negative outcomes. For instance, feelings of loneliness are associated
with increased risks for mental-health challenges (e.g., Cacioppo, Hawkley, &
Thisted, 2010), physical-health problems such as high blood pressure (Hawkley,
Thisted, Masi, & Cacioppo, 2010), impaired immune functioning (e.g., Kiecolt-
Glaser, Garner, Speicher, Penn, Holliday, & Glaser, 1984), and even mortality
(e.g., Shiovitz-Ezra & Ayalon, 2010). Moreover, a single experience of exclusion
can elicit negative mood (e.g., Gerber & Wheeler, 2009) and self-regulation dif-
ficulties (e.g., Baumeister, DeWall, Ciarocoo, & Twenge, 2005; Stenseng, Belsky,
Skalicka, & Wichstrom, 2015). Thus, people may benefit greatly if they can stave
off belonging threats or recover quickly from them when they are encountered.
Various theoretical perspectives argue that cognition plays a role in how one
responds to belonging threats and can aid people in dealing with them (see
Greifeneder & Rudert, 2019). In their influential review paper, Baumeister and
Leary (1995) argued that the need to belong is a “fundamental human motiva-
tion,” and they laid out a set of criteria that should be true if belonging is truly
“fundamental” (p. 497). Among these was the assertion that belonging should
“direct cognitive processing” (p. 498). Thus, early in the belonging literature
was an explicit assertion that threats to belonging, like those from social exclu-
sion, should impact how people think.
Subsequent theoretical developments articulated one specific way in which
belonging threats might shape cognition. Namely, Pickett and Gardner (2005)
elucidated their Social Monitoring System (SMS) account, which is a regulatory
model of belonging (see Figure 4.1). In brief, this model concurs with Baumeister
50 Heather M. Claypool and Michael J. Bernstein
Appraisal of state No SMS Success in future

Is it satisfactory?
of belonging Activates interactions?
Yes
Stop
FIGURE 4.1
The Social Monitoring System framework, adapted from Pickett and
Gardner (2005)
and Leary’s (1995) assertion that belonging is critical. Therefore, Pickett and
Gardner (2005) suggest that people consistently appraise whether their current
levels of belonging are satisfactory. If that need is satiated, no other action is nec-
essary. However, if belonging has dropped below some idiosyncratically accept-
able level—as might happen following social exclusion, the focus of the current
chapter—then the SMS activates. This system monitors the social environment
for “verbal and non-verbal social cues [and] opportunities for social connection”
(p. 215). This is functional because picking up on social cues quickly may help
guide one’s behavior in ways that will ensure success in subsequent social interac-
tions. Assuming that one has used these cues and been successful in those interac-
tions, the next time one appraises belonging, one will (hopefully) find that it has
returned to acceptable levels.
Over the years, multiple scholars have unearthed findings supportive of this
model’s assertion that belonging threats (like social exclusion) trigger greater social
monitoring. For instance, Pickett, Gardner, and Knowles (2004) showed that those
with dispositionally higher levels of need to belong (who presumably have a rela-
tively unmet belonging need) were better able to identify correctly whether a
face was displaying anger, fear, happiness, or sadness, and whether a voice had a
positive or negative tone. Additionally, Gardner, Pickett, and Brewer (2000) found
that socially excluded people had better memory for social information than did
included people, suggesting that social exclusion triggers deeper encoding and pro-
cessing of such information. Subsequent follow-up work (Hess & Pickett, 2010)
replicated these findings and showed that excluded people’s greater memory is
specific to social information about others (and, in fact, social memory about the
self is worse for such participants). These latter authors argued that these find-
ings illustrate a doubly functional cognitive reaction to social exclusion: orienting
the excluded toward others (that may promote re-affiliation), while simultaneously
avoiding thoughts of the self (that may be protective).
Those who are lonely (who subjectively experience unsatisfactory levels of
belonging) also show greater social monitoring performance, at least in some
Exclusion and social information processing 51
situations (Gardner, Pickett, Jefferis, & Knowles, 2005). Namely, when a task is
couched as undiagnostic of social skills, lonely people can outperform the non-
lonely; yet, when told a task is diagnostic of social skills, lonely people typically
perform worse than the non-lonely in social monitoring domains (Knowles,
Lucas, Baumeister, & Gardner, 2015). Knowles et al. (2015) believe this occurs
because lonely people “choke under social pressure” (p. 805). In their view,
loneliness prompts greater social monitoring, but the anxiety of social situations
impairs the effective execution of this monitoring for lonely people.
DeWall, Maner, and Rouby (2009) have illustrated effects of social exclu-
sion on attention. In one of their studies, excluded people were faster than
non-excluded people to identify a smiling face in an array of neutral faces. In
another, excluded (relative to non-excluded) people gazed at smiling faces for
longer among an array including sad, angry, and neutral faces (see van Beest &
Sleegers, 2019, for work using pupillometry to investigate responses to belonging
threats). DeWall et al.’s (2009) work also illustrated that attentional deployment
was specific to positive social signals, as excluded people did not differ from their
non-excluded counterparts in terms of time spent gazing at positive, non-social
stimuli. Finally, they found that excluded (versus non-excluded) participants
were slower to disengage their attention from a smiling face.
In our own labs, we have conducted a series of studies inspired by the SMS per-
spective focused on the notion that social exclusion should impact social informa-
tion processing, broadly construed. Our work targets two domains: face processing
and impression formation. In the remainder of this chapter, we review this work,
highlight areas in need of further empirical investigation, and end with a discus-
sion of whether belonging threats, like those posed by social exclusion, should
trigger greater accuracy or greater bias in social information processing.
Face processing
During many social interactions, the human face acts as one of the most socially
rich cues. A face sends information to others about the person’s current emotional
state and intentions (e.g., Parkinson, 2005), direction of attention (e.g., Hoffman
& Haxby, 2000), social-category membership (e.g., Hugenberg & Wilson, 2013;
Hugenberg, Young, Bernstein, & Sacco, 2010), and so forth. Not surprisingly,
then, excluded people might be especially interested in attending to the faces of
others and processing them in ways that might help re-secure lost belonging.
Over the years, we have examined how social exclusion impacts face processing
in multiple ways, beginning with how it impacts perceptions of smiles.
Following the logic of the SMS, socially excluded people might be apt to
notice whether others are (or are not) smiling. Consistent with this, and as noted
earlier, DeWall et al. (2009) found that excluded people are faster than are non-
excluded people at picking out smiling faces in an array. However, we reasoned
that excluded people should not simply be more likely to notice smiles, but that
they might also be better at deciphering them.
Broadly, there are two types of smiles. First are Duchenne smiles, also known
as real or genuine smiles (Duchenne, 1862/1990). These smiles are typically
displayed when people feel genuine positive affect (e.g., Ekman, Davidson, &
Friesen, 1990), and when they have cooperative or affiliative intent (e.g., Mehu,
Grammer, & Dunbar, 2007). The other type of smile is non-Duchenne, or a
“fake” smile. These smiles are deliberately posed, perhaps most commonly when
smiling for a picture, and can be deceptive, as when attempting to cover up
negative feelings. Though it is likely useful for everyone to distinguish between
real and fake smiles, we argued, consistent with the SMS perspective, that this
is an especially valuable skill for those who have been excluded. This is because,
all other things being equal, those displaying real smiles in our presence likely
represent better re-affiliation prospects. Real smilers are feeling happy around
us, which may mean they like us or are open to affiliating with us, and they may
have cooperative intent. Fake smiles, in contrast, offer little insight into underly-
ing motivations. Thus, distinguishing real from fake smiles should be functional
in re-capturing belonging. Therefore, we predicted that excluded people would
be better able to do this.
In this study (Bernstein, Young, Brown, Sacco, & Claypool, 2008), participants
underwent the commonly used re-living paradigm, in which they remembered
and wrote about a time they had been excluded, a time they had been included, or
their previous morning (control condition). Then, they completed a smile percep-
tion task by watching 20 videos, one video at a time. Each video showed a single
target from roughly the shoulders up. The person in the video first had a neutral
expression, then smiled, and then returned to a neutral expression. Participants were
tasked with identifying which targets had real and which had fake smiles.We calcu-
lated d’ scores as a measure of participants’ sensitivity—or their ability to accurately
distinguish real from fake smiles. Participants in all conditions did fairly well, with
d’ scores above 1. But, consistent with the SMS and our predictions, those in the
exclusion condition showed the greatest sensitivity, more than those in the inclu-
sion or the control conditions, which did not differ.
In a follow-up study a few years later (Bernstein, Sacco, Brown, Young, &
Claypool, 2010), we replicated and extended these findings in some important
ways. First, we wanted to determine if excluded participants could pick up on the
distinction between real and fake smiles, even when they were not alerted to the
fact that the smiles differed in their veracity. Second, we wanted to determine if
they would then use this information in making behavioral decisions, by assess-
ing their desires to work with real and fakes smilers.
Again, participants began by writing about a time they felt excluded, included,
or else did something mundane. They then watched the same videos as in the
previous study, but this time, we did not tell participants that some smiles were
real and others were fake. Also, the dependent variable was different: we asked
them to imagine that they might work with each target on a subsequent task, and
to rate how much they would enjoy doing so. The results showed two findings.
First, there was a main effect of smile type. All participants wanted to work more
with real smilers over fake smilers. This is consistent with the earlier study: all
participants seemed to pick up on this difference to some degree; all showed a
preference for real (over fake) smiles. Second, and more importantly, the magni-
tude of this preference was greatest for those in the exclusion condition. That is,
relative to the other two conditions, excluded folks showed a greater preference
to work with real smilers over fake smilers.
Beyond examining how excluded people process and interpret smiles, we
have also conducted work on how exclusion impacts face-memory, and more
specifically, a common face-memory bias: the other-race effect (ORE). The
ORE is the tendency for people to better recognize the faces of same-race targets
versus other-race targets (e.g., Meissner & Brigham, 2001). A prevailing account
for why the ORE emerges argues that people generally have greater motiva-
tion to process same-race faces (e.g., Hugenberg et al., 2010), resulting in their
relatively better recognition. Consistent with this account, researchers have illus-
trated that the ORE can be reduced or even eliminated under conditions where
people have higher-than-normal motivations to process other-race faces. For
instance, when perceivers believe that other-race targets are particularly pow-
erful—which should induce motivation to pay attention to them as potential
controllers of resources—the ORE is eliminated by improving recognition of
other-race targets to levels which are equal to that of same-race targets (Shriver
& Hugenberg, 2010).
In one of our labs (Bernstein, Sacco, Young, & Hugenberg, 2014), Bernstein
and colleagues examined whether social exclusion might impact the magnitude
of the ORE and whether the racial group membership of the excluder mat-
tered. The predictions were two-fold. First, because it is generally motivationally
important to attend to same-race (relative to other-race) targets, they expected
to observe an ORE after participants interacted (in Cyberball) with same-race
others, regardless of social exclusion or inclusion. Second, after participants inter-
acted with other-race players in Cyberball, Bernstein et al. expected to observe
a robust ORE following inclusion, but they also expected that this effect would
be diminished or eliminated following exclusion. When others exclude us, they
are exercising a type of power over us. Thus, other-race exclusion might prompt
greater processing of other-race targets, eliminating or reducing the ORE in
that case.
To test this, White and Black participants were excluded or included by
same-race or other-race targets in Cyberball (Williams, Cheung, & Choi,
2000). Afterward, participants completed a face-recognition paradigm. In the
first phase of this paradigm, participants viewed photos of unknown White and
Black faces. Later, they viewed a set of White and Black faces, some of which
were repeated and others that were new. Participants identified which targets
had been presented previously. Consistent with their first prediction (articulated
above), after playing Cyberball with same-race players, only a main effect of tar-
get emerged: people recognized same-race targets better than other-race targets.
Moreover, and consistent with their second prediction, after playing Cyberball
with other-race players, an ORE emerged in the inclusion condition but was
eliminated in the exclusion condition. Notably, this occurred because recogni-
tion sensitivity was increased for other-race targets in the exclusion condition.
Collectively, findings from our labs on face processing have supported and
extended a key tenant of the SMS—that threats to belonging prompt greater
social monitoring. In these cases, this greater social monitoring generally
increased accuracy. Namely, exclusion elicited greater accuracy in differentiating
real from fake smiles (Bernstein et al., 2008) and improved memory for other-
race targets (wiping out a common memory bias), at least when people were
excluded by cross-race others. Later, we will discuss when exclusion-prompted
monitoring might enhance bias (inaccuracy) instead.
Impression formation
Forming impressions of others is a ubiquitous part of everyday social interaction.
We make a snap determination that our new teacher is energetic because of his
young age or conclude that our new boss is well organized based on a considera-
tion of her managerial behaviors. These examples illustrate that there are gener-
ally two broad ways to form impressions. Per the continuum model (Fiske, Lin,
& Neuberg, 1999; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990), we sometimes form impressions by
stereotyping. This occurs when we base our impressions solely on the category
membership of the target. We encounter a target, put him or her into a cat-
egory, and then assume that the target has the consensually agreed upon features
of that category (e.g., “young people are energetic”). Under some conditions,
we may engage in a different type of impression formation called individua-
tion. Individuation occurs when we form an impression based on a fuller array
of idiosyncratic features that includes, but also goes beyond, a target’s category
membership. This might notably involve forming an impression based heavily on
the specific behaviors that the target has performed and the traits we infer from
those behaviors. During individuation, the target’s category membership “does
not evaporate, but becomes just another attribute that contributes to the overall
impression” (Fiske et al., 1999 p. 235).
Decades of research show that relying on stereotypes is a quick and frugal way
to form an impression of another person (e.g., Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000).
In essence, it is the cognitively “lazy” route. Yet, we also know that some con-
ditions encourage individuation. Broadly, people are more likely to individuate
when they have sufficient cognitive resources and when they are motivated to
do so (e.g., Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000). One specific type of motivation that
triggers greater individuation is the motivation for accuracy (Neuberg & Fiske,
1987). After all, it is sensible to believe that we can form a more diagnostic, accu-
rate impression of another person if we consider his or her full complement of
features: not only his or her category membership, which perceivers may believe
offers valuable insights into the person, but also all of his or her other known
features, such as the trait implications of the person’s observed actions.
We reasoned that excluded people might have an accuracy motivation when

considering others. They may be trying to determine accurately which tar-
gets will make for good re-affiliation prospects and which will not. Certainly,
because people find others’ category memberships important and potentially
informative, per the SMS, excluded people might pay attention to and notice
this cue. However, they should also want to pay attention to all other social
information about a person, including his or her performed behaviors, etc. Thus,
we predicted that excluded (versus non-excluded) people would form more indi-
viduated impressions of others when such information was available.
In our first study on this topic (Claypool & Bernstein, 2014, Exp 1a), partici-
pants wrote about a time they were excluded, were included, or did something
mundane. Then, they completed an impression formation task, wherein they
read a series of short vignettes, each about a person with a different occupation.
The first sentence of each vignette identified the target as working in a particular
profession (e.g., “I am an accountant”), and the rest of the vignette described
some specific behaviors performed by that target, which served as critical pieces
of individuating information. Importantly, these behaviors were constructed
to be mildly counter-stereotypic. Thus, if participants thought carefully about
those behaviors, they should have concluded that this particular accountant, for
instance, did not “fit” the typical accountant stereotypes. After reading about
each target, participants judged that target on five traits—three that were ste-
reotypic of the target’s occupational group and two that were unrelated fillers.
As expected, excluded participants judged the targets lower on stereotypic traits
than those in the other two conditions, which did not differ. There were no dif-
ferences across conditions on the filler traits, which makes sense because nothing
in the vignettes nor in the stereotypes of the associated groups were related to
those traits. These findings provided preliminary support for our contention that
excluded people are more apt than non-excluded people to form more individu-
ated judgments of targets.
Follow-up studies illustrated that these effects are not limited to occupational
stereotypes. For instance, in one study (Claypool & Bernstein, 2014, Exp 1c),
participants were first excluded or included in the “Atimia” paradigm (Wirth,
Bernstein, & LeRoy, 2015; Wirth, Turchan, Zimmerman, & Bernstein, 2014).
Namely, non-Hispanic participants played a game with two other (ostensibly
human) players who were actually computer-controlled agents. Each player had
the opportunity to solve a word puzzle. Once this was completed, they had to
then nominate another player to solve the next puzzle. In the inclusion ver-
sion, the participant was selected regularly throughout the game. But in the
exclusion version, the participant was selected just once by each of the other
two players, and then never again (making this paradigm conceptually simi-
lar to Cyberball; Williams et al., 2000). Later, they read a transcript of a case
that was put before an alleged student disciplinary panel. The case concerned a
student accused of physically assaulting another student, and critically, the tran-
script included both information suggesting that the defendant was guilty and
information that he was not. Participants believed that the defendant had a typi-
cal Hispanic-sounding name (“Carlos Ramirez”) or a Caucasian-sounding name
(“Robert Johnson”). After reading this, participants judged the likelihood that
the defendant was guilty.
Given the rather mixed evidence in the case, an assessment based on the specific
evidence might have logically yielded judgments near the scale midpoint. Or, it
might have yielded rather low guilt judgments, given that the standard of proof
in US-based courts is “beyond a reasonable doubt” (i.e., there is clear “reasonable
doubt” in a case as ambiguous as this). But if participants completely ignored the
individuating evidentiary information and relied solely on the group member-
ship of the alleged perpetrator, they would have judged the Hispanic defendant as
guiltier than the White one (relying on the stereotype of Hispanics as “criminals”).
In the inclusion condition, this is exactly what occurred. But in the exclusion
condition, “Carlos” and “Robert” were seen as equally guilty, showing no evidence
of stereotyping. Moreover, guilt judgments of “Robert” were below the scale mid-
point and unaffected by the social experience manipulation. However, “Carlos” was
judged at the scale midpoint of guilt following inclusion, which was significantly
greater than in the exclusion condition.
In additional studies, we examined moderators of our basic finding. Our con-
tention is that excluded people’s attention to individuating behavioral information
is in service of helping find appropriate re-affiliation partners. Thus, excluded
people should reserve individuation for social targets that can provide affiliation,
but not extend it to non-social entities that are incapable of providing affiliation.
To test this hypothesis, we conducted a study much like the one described with
occupational vignettes, but importantly, we manipulated target type within sub-
jects (Claypool & Bernstein, 2014, Exp 2). On some trials, participants formed
impressions of occupational targets. On other trials, the targets were non-social
agents, such as trees, pieces of furniture, etc. Of course, participants cannot ste-
reotype these sorts of objects, but they can prototype them—assuming that they
have features in common to most exemplars in their category. To make the non-
social targets parallel the social ones, we began these trials with a declaration
that the target was in a given category (e.g., “In the distance is a tree”). This was
followed by information about that target that was mildly counter-prototypic.
Thus, if excluded participants were paying close attention to this individuating
information (more so than non-excluded participants), then they should judge
these objects as less prototypic. Again, though, we did not expect this to occur,
because these objects are not able to effectively provide affiliation.
Replicating the earlier results, excluded participants judged social targets
lower on stereotypic dimensions than non-excluded participants. However, there
was no impact of exclusion condition on the non-social targets. These findings
suggest that excluded people deploy greater attention to individuating behavioral
information for social targets because doing so will help them gain re-affiliation.
Because there is no affiliative benefit gained by individuating non-social entities,
they do not do it for such targets.
Using similar logic, we reasoned that excluded people’s motivation to indi-

viduate targets should be limited to targets that are seen as desirable for social
interaction and belonging replenishment. The need to belong is fundamental
(Baumeister & Leary, 1995), and so excluded individuals might be rather “des-
perate” to find affiliation most anywhere they can. Regardless, we felt that there
must be some limits; certain targets might be judged as being so despicable that
they would not be deemed as worthy interaction partners a priori, therefore
obviating the need to individuate them.
Thus, in one of our studies (Claypool & Bernstein, 2014, Exp 3), non-Afri-
can-American participants wrote about exclusion, inclusion, or something neu-
tral, and then read about a target that was seen as a reasonable interaction partner
(an African-American male) or one that (we assumed) would be seen as wholly
unreasonable (a Neo-Nazi skinhead). We selected these two targets because they
varied in their desirability as social interaction partners, and also because they
shared a common, stereotyped trait (hostility). In the impression-formation task,
participants saw a photo of the target, along with a description of his ambigu-
ously hostile behaviors. If people paid careful attention to these behaviors, their
ambiguity should be apparent, leading to relatively neutral judgments of hostil-
ity. However, if judgments were not driven by the implications of the behaviors,
but rather solely by the social-category membership of the target, then they
should be seen as quite hostile. As expected, excluded participants judged the
African-American male target as less hostile than the non-excluded participants,
suggesting that they avoided stereotyping him and instead based their judgments
on his actual behaviors. For the Neo-Nazi target, excluded participants not only
did not individuate him, they stereotyped him the most. Namely, they judged
him as more hostile than those in the non-exclusion conditions. Thus, these last
two studies illustrate that exclusion appears to prompt greater individuation (less
stereotyping), but only when doing so will aid with re-affiliation efforts.
In a final study in this set (Claypool & Bernstein, 2014, Exp 4), we more directly
tested whether excluded participants base their judgments on the actual behavioral
information presented about targets (which is the essence of individuation). To do
so, we needed to manipulate the nature of the behaviors performed, while hold-
ing the target’s group membership constant. Non-African-American participants
wrote about exclusion, inclusion, or something neutral. They were then presented
with 24 behaviors, one at a time, about an African-American male target. In the
stereotype-consistent (SC) condition, 12 of these behaviors were neutral fillers,
8 implied hostility (consistent with a stereotype of this group), and 4 were kind
(inconsistent with the stereotype of this group). In the stereotype-inconsistent (SI)
condition, the behavioral configuration changed: 12 were fillers, 8 implied kindness,
and 4 implied hostility. Objectively, the SC target is more hostile than the SI target,
as the former engages in noticeably more hostile behaviors. If excluded people are
individuating the most, they should be the most sensitive to this fact. Indeed, par-
ticipants in all conditions judged the SC target as more hostile than the SI one, but
this difference was greater among excluded people.
Collectively, these studies illustrate that excluded people engage in relatively

more individuation and that they do so when the targets are capable of provid-
ing—and are desirable prospects for—affiliation. Moreover, these findings are
consistent with the SMS, as they show that threats to belonging enhance the
social monitoring (in this case) of individuating information.
Future directions
Our work has uncovered novel outcomes of social exclusion’s impact on social
information processing and has conceptually supported a key tenant of the
SMS. Still, more work is needed to investigate unanswered questions in specific
domains (e.g., impression formation), as well as broader questions about the SMS
itself. For instance, much remains unexplored on the topic of how excluded peo-
ple weigh social-category information in the presence of individuating behavio-
ral information. In the studies we conducted, participants were presented with a
target’s category membership (e.g., race or occupation) and his or her behaviors.
Both are important pieces of social information, and as per the SMS, we assume
that they both garner substantial attention. However, in our work, excluded
people (typically) arrived at judgments that were more reliant on target behaviors
than on target category memberships. How, precisely, is this happening?
One plausible possibility is that, for excluded people, both sources of informa-
tion (category membership and behavioral information) receive relatively equal
initial attention, but then category information is relatively de-emphasized when
constructing a judgment. If this is the case, it is possible that excluded (compared
to non-excluded) people could simultaneously show both greater category/ste-
reotype activation and less stereotype application/use. Though it is certainly not
conclusive evidence, findings from the “skinhead” study offer some prelimi-
nary support. When the target was a Neo-Nazi skinhead—who we presumed
would be dismissed a priori as an affiliation prospect, obviating the motivation
to individuate him—excluded people judged him as more hostile than non-
excluded people. In other words, excluded people may have relied more heavily
on the target’s category membership than non-excluded people, judging him
to be especially stereotypic. This is consistent with the possibility that category
membership and/or its associated stereotypes might actually be more accessible
(or salient) for excluded (relative to non-excluded) people; a speculation that we
believe is consistent with the SMS framework. This hypothesis awaits systematic
empirical testing.
Apart from exploring how exclusion shapes social information processing in
particular domains more deeply, there are some broader questions which need
more attention. Namely, some facets of the SMS model have gone largely unex-
plored. The link in the model from unsatisfactory belonging to greater social
monitoring is well documented and supported. However, the next step in the
model argues that people should use those cues to guide their (hopefully success-
ful) subsequent interactions. However, there is no work to our knowledge that
illustrates this full sequence: belonging threat → greater monitoring → effective/

successful behavioral response.
The closest we have come to exploring this chain (in our own labs) comes
from our work on smile perception. In one study, we showed that excluded peo-
ple were better able to discriminate real from fake smiles (Bernstein et al., 2008).
In another, we showed that excluded people reported a greater preference to
work with real (versus fake) smilers (Bernstein et al., 2010). Yet, even this work
does not adequately test the full model for at least two reasons. First, the prefer-
ence to work with real (versus) fake smilers is—at best—a behavioral intention
measure. Ideally, we might have had participants interact face-to-face with real
and fake smilers, thereby measuring actual behavioral reactions during those
interactions, such as seating or standing distance, length of time chatting, eye
contact, etc. Second, it would be useful to measure both social monitoring and
behavior during an interaction in the same study in order to illustrate mediation.
For instance, a study might have excluded and non-excluded participants judge
whether targets have real or fake smiles, and later have them interact with dif-
ferent real and fake smiling people. An SMS-inspired prediction is that excluded
people would engage in greater social monitoring (they would be better at dis-
tinguishing real from fake smiles) and that, the better they performed this task,
the more positive their non-verbal behaviors would be with the real (versus the
fake) smiler.
Another potential question of interest concerns determining with greater pre-
cision whether SMS activation varies by exclusionary context. Consistent with
the original work outlining the SMS perspective, we have implied a threshold-
type argument: when feelings of belonging drop below some acceptable thresh-
old, the SMS activates, triggering the social-cognitive outcomes described in
this chapter. This implicitly communicates an “all-or-none” view. However,
other views are plausible. For instance, the SMS might operate on more of a con-
tinuum, activating to various degrees depending on how much “below” a critical
threshold belonging stands. When people experience an especially severe or dev-
astating form of exclusion, wherein one’s feelings of belonging are substantially
below a desired level, the SMS might activate more strongly than in response
to milder forms of exclusion. For example, we know that taking individuating
behavioral information into account requires processing resources. Might more
of these resources be deployed when one’s current levels of belonging are further
below the desired threshold (compared to more modestly below)? Future work
should investigate such issues.
A final broad question that needs greater empirical attention and concep-
tual development concerns determining when belonging threats trigger greater
accuracy in social information processing versus greater bias/inaccuracy in
social information processing. Some studies do not directly address this question
because the dependent measures used are purely subjective judgments. Our work
on exclusion and individuation is a good example. In those studies, the depend-
ent variables are subjective trait ratings of targets. Though we can examine the
degree to which excluded people appeared to rely on individuating behaviors, it

would be problematic to conclude that excluded people were more accurate in
those cases, as we do not know the “real” degrees of the target’s traits.
Yet, other studies use tasks where there are “right” and “wrong” answers,
where accuracy can be discerned. In such studies, there is clear evidence that
the greater social monitoring performed by belonging-threatened people yields
greater accuracy in social perception. For instance, excluded people are more
accurate in distinguishing real from fake smiles (Bernstein et al., 2008; see also
Eck, Schoel, Reinhard, & Greifeneder, 2018, for a conceptually similar out-
come), have better memory for social information (Gardner et al., 2000), and
those with a high need to belong can more accurately discern vocal tones and
facial expressions (Pickett et al., 2004).
However, other work suggests that greater accuracy is not the universal out-
come. For instance, consider the work of Sacco, Wirth, Hugenberg, Chen, and
Williams (2011), which examined people’s ability to discern category distinc-
tions. Broadly, they found that excluded participants were more accurate (than
non-excluded participants) in distinguishing between faces that crossed a cat-
egory boundary, but that they were also less accurate (than non-excluded par-
ticipants) in distinguishing between faces that were within the same category.
Thus, exclusion led simultaneously to more and less accuracy within the same
judgment domain.
Here is how their task worked: the researchers first created an array of facial
stimuli from a “parent” angry face (100% angry, 0% happy) and a “parent” happy
face (0% angry, 100% happy). They then created blends of these two faces at 10%
increments across the full continuum. Thus, stimuli included those that were
90% angry/10% happy, 80% angry/20% happy, and so forth, yielding eleven
total facial stimuli. After being included or excluded in Cyberball, participants
completed a stimulus discrimination task. On each trial, they were shown two
faces from the continuum for 750ms and decided if the faces were identical.
On some trials, the stimuli were, in fact, exactly the same. But on other trials,
the stimuli differed by 20% on the facial continuum (e.g., a 90% angry versus
a 70% angry face). If people paid attention to the face category (happy versus
angry) when the two were different but from within the same facial expression
group (i.e., both mostly angry or both mostly happy faces), then discriminating
between them should have been difficult. But, when the two faces were different
and crossed the category boundary (e.g., a 60% angry/40% happy face next to a
40% angry/60% happy face), then the difference should have been more notice-
able and thus the distinction easier. Consistent with the SMS, excluded people
paid more attention to categorical information, thus showing greater accuracy
on trials where faces crossed boundaries, but less accuracy when faces were from
within the same category, relative to included participants.
Basic social cognition research illustrates that more attention (monitor-
ing) does not always translate to more accuracy. Indeed, paying deeper atten-
tion to the “wrong” (non-diagnostic) cue may lead to biased social perception
(e.g., Tversky & Kahneman, 1983). This may help to explain when more social
monitoring should increase versus decrease accuracy. If a non-diagnostic or
deceptive cue is most salient, excluded participants’ greater attention to it may
trigger inaccurate responses. But, when the diagnostic (correct) cue is most sali-
ent, excluded participants’ greater attention to it should prompt greater accuracy.
Of course, this then begs the question of which cues will be most salient,
which is a complex issue to address. Under time pressure, basic categorical infor-
mation is likely to be the most salient because such information is extracted
quickly (e.g., Freeman & Ambady, 2011). In the Sacco et al. (2011) case, the
facial category (happy or angry) was likely quickly available to perceivers and
thus was used when they had only 750ms to consider the stimuli. Using the
emotional category of the face, though, was not the correct cue to use when
discerning between two faces within the same category. In order to make the
correct determination that the faces were different required careful attention to
minute differences in facial features. Participants had little time to notice such
features and instead used a non-diagnostic cue, thereby harming their accuracy,
which was especially poor among excluded people.
Knowledge or naïve theories might also determine which cues become most
salient. Accurately discriminating real from fake smiles requires paying close
attention to the eyes, which is a more diagnostic cue of smile authenticity than
the mouth/cheeks. Many people may already be aware of this, given the com-
mon phrase “smiling with the eyes.” Thus, in this case, the diagnostic cue may
be known, and therefore excluded people (who are especially motivated to be
correct on this judgment) may have deduced “where to look” in order to arrive
at an accurate assessment.
In articulating their SMS model, Pickett and Gardner (2005) themselves dis-
cussed the issue of when belonging threats might prompt greater (versus lesser)
accuracy. As we have here, they noted that more attention need not necessarily
elicit greater accuracy, suggesting instead that such a disconnect:
may be particularly likely to emerge in cases with complex social cues

requiring integration, or when a task involves making broader cue-based
inferences. In these cases, attention to the cues…may impair accuracy to
the extent that attending to multiple cues creates confusion or multiple
erroneous inferences.
(Pickett & Gardner, 2005, p. 224)
They further speculated that both situational threats (like those posed by acute
exclusion) and chronic belonging threats might prompt greater accuracy when
tasks are easy, but on more difficult tasks, greater accuracy might emerge
only for people who have faced chronic threats, because such individuals may
have more “practice” with social monitoring. These speculations are compat-
ible with ours, and we believe that both sets of ideas deserve more empirical
attention.
Conclusion
Belonging is critical, and when it is unmet, humans can suffer profoundly.
Fortunately, belonging threats elicit tuning to social cues which may help peo-
ple re-affiliate with others, and help them to replenish their lost needs. This
chapter summarized more than a decade’s worth of findings on this topic, and
highlighted areas which are in need of further investigation. Pursuit of these
unexplored areas will undoubtedly encourage further refinement of the Social
Monitoring System framework, which will in turn enable even more progress to
be made. A more nuanced understanding of how and when belonging-threat-
ened individuals respond in cognitively adaptive ways may enable them to stave
off psychological and physical-health ailments posed by exclusion, ostracism,
rejection, and loneliness. Thus, both scientists and practitioners may benefit from
this work and the subsequent work it inspires.
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5
DEALING WITH SOCIAL EXCLUSION
An analysis of psychological strategies
Susanna Timeo, Paolo Riva, and Maria Paola Paladino
Social exclusion has been defined as the experience of being kept apart from oth-
ers physically (e.g., social isolation) or emotionally (e.g., being ignored or told
one is not wanted; Riva & Eck, 2016). Social exclusion has many facets. It can
be used by individuals or groups to punish a rule violation, or with malicious
intentions to hurt the victim (see Rudert & Greifeneder, 2019). These various
forms of social exclusion have in common their ability to hurt a given target.
Williams (2009) compares ostracism to a flame that instantaneously hurts the
skin, no matter what the circumstances are. The pain of social exclusion has been
likened to the experience of physical pain (Eisenberger, & Lieberman, 2004).
Exclusion triggers negative emotions, threatens basic psychological needs such as
self-esteem and belonging, and can itself foster aggression (see Williams, Hales
& Michels, 2019). Most relevant, however, is how people respond to the negative
outcomes caused by social exclusion. Individuals can either choose to cope with
it in functional ways, thus ultimately increasing their chances for social inclusion,
or in dysfunctional ways: promoting a vicious cycle of exclusion, maladaptive
responses, further instances of exclusion, and social isolation. Accordingly, in
recent years, researchers have started to devote attention to the psychological
and behavioral strategies that might help individuals to cope with this unpleasant
situation (Eck & Riva, 2016; Riva, 2016). The purpose of this chapter is twofold.
On one side, we will review and systematize research on psychological strategies
that have demonstrated some efficacy against social exclusion. This will help us
to depict a general state of the art and to point out gaps in the literature. On the
other side, we will suggest the use of other strategies, which have been tested in
other domains of psychological wellbeing and critically discuss their effectiveness
against exclusion.
The starting point to any evaluation of strategies for coping with exclusion is to
acknowledge the negative effects of this experience on the individual’s wellbeing.
66 Susanna Timeo et al.
Exclusion threatens the individual’s basic psychological needs (Williams, 2009)

and impacts people’s personal wellbeing (Niu et al., 2016, see Williams et al.,
2019). Williams (2009) points out that at least four needs are involved: the need
to belong, the need for self-esteem, the need to have control, and the need for a
meaningful existence. The need to belong refers to an impulsive desire to be con-
nected with others and to feel part of a social group. Self-esteem is the need to
have a positive vision of oneself. Control refers to the sense of being in charge of
one’s own life as well as being able to dominate its circumstances. Finally, the need
for a meaningful existence refers to the need to feel that one’s own life has value
and purpose. In this perspective, exclusion threatens the self in its core aspects.
In his Temporal Need-Threat model, Williams (2009) identifies three stages to
observe the effect of ostracism: reflexive, reflective and resignation (see Williams
et al., 2019). The reflexive stage occurs right after the ostracism episode and
includes increased negative emotions (i.e., anger, sadness, anxiety), and decreased
satisfaction of fundamental psychological needs. The reflective stage involves
efforts to cope with ostracism and includes the attribution of meaning and moti-
vation to the event, along with the fortification of depleted needs (i.e., attempts
to become more socially attractive). According to Williams, this is the only stage
where coping strategies may have an impact on the person’s feelings and recovery
can be observed. Finally, the resignation stage occurs after a prolonged experi-
ence of ostracism and consists in the inability to react or fortify needs. This stage
may lead to depression and alienation. In this perspective, exclusion will always
hurt people at the very beginning, and this is also considered adaptive since
detecting even subtle signs of exclusion might be vital for the individual’s fit into
the society. In this view, coping strategies will never eliminate the sting of exclu-
sion. Instead, their role should be to help people manage the negative feelings
and threatened needs connected with exclusion and to accelerate the recovery
process. Moreover, coping strategies should also temper the individual’s possible
negative behavioral reactions (i.e., isolation or aggression, see Williams et al.,
2019; Täuber, 2019) which may be detrimental for future successful interactions.
In this chapter, we will depict a multifaceted array of strategies. After looking
at those that had already been tested, we identified two main classes. The first
class—which we named Changing Perspective—comprises approaches that lessen
the perceived threats of exclusion, for instance, by acquiring a different perspec-
tive on the situation or the self. Accordingly, these strategies include positive
reappraisal, acceptance, self-distancing, distraction, and focused attention (see
Orvell & Kross, 2019). Some of these approaches (e.g., positive reappraisal) imply
changing how the exclusionary event is perceived, whereas others (e.g., distrac-
tion) involve shifting the attention away from the event. However, all these
strategies can help people to avoid ruminating on negative events and move on
more quickly from unpleasant situations. Therefore, they can reduce the impact
of daily forms of exclusion and rejection.
Other strategies, rather than mitigating the effects of social exclusion (e.g., by
directing the attention away from the exclusionary event), focus on managing
Dealing with social exclusion 67
the effects of exclusion once they have occurred. As previously described, social
exclusion threatens four individual psychological needs. The most commonly
studied strategies in the field of exclusion involve the recovery of the threatened
needs by directly working to raise their level of satisfaction. Specific strategies
proved to contrast the negative effects on belonging, self-esteem, control, and
meaningful existence. We have therefore grouped them together in the class
Restoring the Threatened Needs. In the following sections, we will review strategies
included in these two main classes.
Changing perspective
In this broad class are listed all the strategies that can reduce the impact of social
exclusion. The main idea behind these strategies is that not only does the objec-
tive experience of exclusion hurt people, but also that their personal interpreta-
tion and reaction to it is affected (see Greifeneder & Rudert, 2019). In a sense,
shifting the perspective of exclusion into a relative, more positive and rational
view could help victims minimize its negative effects. Therefore, these strategies
are mostly based on a cognitive reinterpretation of events or on averting atten-
tion from them.
Acceptance
Acceptance is a core element of mindfulness-based intervention (Germer, 2005)
where the painful situation is not avoided, and the negative feelings are embraced.
This process involves the conscious and not evaluative acceptance of negative
feelings and thoughts. This is also a core element of a promising cognitive-based
therapy, namely Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Hayes, Luoma, Bond,
Masuda, & Lillis, 2006). Based on this approach, experiential avoidance is a harm-
ful behavior which consists of running away from negative (or negatively framed)
situations. By doing so, people are constantly looking for negative situations to
avoid and the focus on negative events is amplified. Acceptance-based therapy
helps people consciously embrace negative feelings instead of escaping or reducing
them. The acceptance of temporary negative events may help people to focus more
on their broader values, thus increasing goal-oriented behavior. In this direction,
recent work has shown that people who are more psychologically flexible per-
ceived lower stress following ostracism (Waldeck, Tyndall, Riva, & Chmiel, 2017).
To date, an acceptance-based intervention has never been applied to the con-
text of social exclusion. In one such study, however, have tested the acceptance
strategy to cope against stressful experiences. In one such study, the acceptance-
oriented strategy promoted heart-rate habituation and recovery over an evalua-
tive strategy (Low, Stanton, & Bower, 2008). Moreover, acceptance-enhanced
expressive writing has shown favorable results in preventing low to mild symp-
toms of depression (Baum, & Rude, 2013), alongside a wide range of psychologi-
cal benefits for adolescents (Holder-Spriggs, 2015). Learning to accept negative
events and the feelings connected with them might be a promising strategy to
cope against social exclusion. In effect, if people learn to accept the negative
social interactions that they might encounter, they may not charge those episodes
with anxiety. This in turn may lead to an easier recovery from those situations.
Positive reappraisal
Positive reappraisal is a classical strategy of emotion regulation and takes place
when a person tries to create positive meaning to a negative situation in terms
of personal growth to decrease its emotional impact (Gross, 1998). Some studies
have tested positive reappraisal in the context of social exclusion, finding prom-
ising results (Poon & Chen, 2016; Sethi, Moulds, & Richardson, 2013). Poon
and Chen (2016) primed participants with beliefs that ostracism was either detri-
mental (loss frame) or beneficial (gain frame) for people’s relationships. The gain
frame eliminated people’s inclination to act aggressively toward their perpetra-
tor. In the same direction, Chen and colleagues (Chen, DeWall, Poon & Chen,
2012) manipulated people’s beliefs on relationships. In the destiny belief condi-
tion, people were told that interpersonal relationships are usually either going
to work or not regardless of their efforts. In the growth belief condition, people
were told that although some relationships are troubled, they can be improved
through effort and hard work. In this framework, people were encouraged to
interpret exclusion as an event that could be overcome and may even help with
their own personal growth (positive reappraisal). In effect, in the growth belief
condition, participants showed less aggressiveness toward the perpetrator when
they were excluded.
Self-distancing
Self-distancing is a strategy used to detach from the present situation and has
been proven to be adaptive when facing negative experiences (Kross, Ayduk,
& Mischel, 2005; Orvell & Kross, 2019). When self-distancing, people face
the negative situation with less emotional arousal and can reconstruct it, giv-
ing it meaning and closure. To our knowledge, there are no studies specifically
using self-distancing manipulation to cope with social exclusion. However, a
recent study has shown that people with a more abstract (i.e., more detached)
and less concrete thinking style reported less threat to belonging when excluded
(Pfundmair, Lermer, Frey & Aydin, 2015). Moreover, participants primed with
an abstract thinking style reported higher levels of belonging. In any case, abstract
thinking only has a positive effect when it helps people put the situation into a
broader framework, thereby reappraising the single event. In this regard, Rude
and colleagues (2011) differentiated the abstract–evaluative (i.e., “Why do you
think this happened?”) from the abstract–contextual style (i.e., “How do you
think you will view this event in 1–2 years?”) and found that the latter led to less
rumination and fewer depressive symptoms following rejection than the first and
control conditions. The concrete–experiential condition (i.e., “As you recall the
event, what physical sensations do you notice?”) performed equally well.
Distancing can be reached by taking an external perspective on the event. It is
important, however, not to evoke the presence of an observer, as this might bring
feelings of shame and anxiety, and worsen the impact of social exclusion. Lau
and colleagues (Lau, Moulds, & Richardson, 2009) found that, when instruct-
ing people to use an observer perspective instead of a self-focused recall, these
people recovered more slowly from ostracism. Altogether, these findings suggest
that self-distancing might be an interesting strategy to use for social exclusion,
although it may bring some insidious side effects (i.e., evaluation-related stress).
Distraction
Distraction is a common reaction to negative situations and consists of turning
attention away from unpleasant thoughts. Distraction has often been contrasted
with rumination, which consists of constantly thinking of negative situations and
feelings (Garnefski, Teerds, Kraaij, Legerstee, & van den Kommer, 2004). Whereas
rumination as a coping strategy has been linked to internalizing problems (Garnefski
et al., 2004), distraction has turned out to be a better coping strategy against nega-
tive events (Nolen-Hoeksema, Morrow, & Fredrickson, 1993). Distraction has also
been used with success in controlling physical pain (Damme, Crombez, Wever, &
Goubert, 2008). In the field of social exclusion, distraction has produced promis-
ing results. Studies have found distraction after exclusion to produce less distress
than rumination (Wesselmann, Ren, Swim, & Williams, 2013) and to have similar
effects to prayer and self-affirmation strategies (Hales et al., 2016).
It has been argued that distraction is only a temporary, short-term solution
(Linehan, 1993). However, in the context of social exclusion, distraction is an
easy coping strategy to implement just after the negative event and may work
better for isolated and sporadic exclusion than for prolonged exclusion. It is
highly likely that more conscious coping or problem-solving strategies, used in
combination with distraction, are necessary to cope with negative events. In a
one-year longitudinal study, it was found that when in high-stress job situations,
frequent use of problem-solving and distraction lead to less stress and better job
performance (Shimazu & Schaufeli, 2007).
Focused attention
Focused attention is one ingredient of mindfulness intervention and consists of
conscious awareness of the present moment without any judgment or attachment
to the experience (Germer, 2005). Although it may be counterintuitive to think
that focusing on the present moment can help distract from a negative situation,
the basis of focused attention is that the experience is always flowing from one
moment to the next. By focusing attention on the present experience, the person
can quickly leave the exclusion episode behind and move on to the next event.
Moreover, mindfulness is based on the pure observation of the scene from a

detached point of view. The experience is described but not valued. In this sense,
focused attention is connected with both non-judgmental distancing and accept-
ance of the situation as it is. Past research has shown mindfulness meditation to
be more effective than just distraction in reducing dysphoric mood (Broderick,
2005). In the context of social exclusion, one study (Molet, Macquet, Lefebvre,
& Williams, 2013) showed that ostracized participants who were trained with
focused attention intervention felt the same need-threat as that of ostracized par-
ticipants without the intervention. However, those in the focused attention con-
dition recovered more quickly. Moreover, a recent study also showed the efficacy
of focused attention in reducing the propensity to commit ostracism (Ramsey &
Jones, 2015). Focused attention could be a promising strategy against exclusion,
even though it requires more effort than just pure distraction.
Summary
The strategies reviewed in this macro section aim to facilitate the cognitive
elaboration of the situation by accepting or reappraising it, or by shifting peo-
ple’s attention away from it (e.g., self-distancing, distraction, focused attention).
They all constitute potentially effective bumpers against the well-known nega-
tive effects of social exclusion, helping victims to protect themselves from con-
sequences that would otherwise make them highly vulnerable. These strategies
are spontaneously used, but they can also be taught for prevention (before any
negative event), or suggested after the exclusion has occurred. From this perspec-
tive, even though exclusion will always be interpreted as hurtful, the range of
strategies for changing perspective should help affected people reconstruct the
exclusionary experience in a less negative way.
Restoring the threatened needs

Social exclusion constitutes a direct threat to the self. In effect, social exclusion
threatens at least four fundamental needs: self-esteem, belonging, control, and
meaningful existence (Williams, 2009). From this perspective, one possibility is
to cope with exclusionary experiences by trying to satisfy one or more of these
threatened needs. Strategies that facilitate the recovery of need-satisfaction
include self-affirmation; reminding oneself of existing social bonds and social
surrogates, as well as control, power, or the denigration of the excluding person.
Reaffirming belonging
Amongst other negative effects, social exclusion particularly threatens the indi-
vidual’s need to belong (DeWall, & Richman, 2011). When people are excluded
they are left alone, which makes them think they are not liked by others (see
Claypool & Bernstein, 2019). However, an experience of exclusion from one
group or person does not necessarily mean that the target will be excluded
by all human beings. Focusing on other existing positive social relationships
is a strategy to overcome the experience of ostracism. Thinking of a friend or
family member makes excluded people behave less aggressively (Twenge et al.,
2007) and fulfill some need-satisfaction (McConnell, Brown, Shoda, Stayton,
& Martin, 2011). Even thinking of one’s own pet is sufficient to restore peo-
ple’s need (McConnell et al., 2011). Moreover, belonging to a majority group
seems to protect against need-threat, but only for individuals who have a high
need to belong (Eck, Schoel, & Greifeneder, 2016). Finally, even when people
activate the group construct by themselves, it facilitates recovery from threats
of exclusion (Knowles, & Gardner, 2008). Training people to remind them-
selves of their social bonds could be an easy, ready-to-use strategy to implement.
Thinking of other relationships could also be a way to detach from the specific-
ity of the present exclusionary event and evaluate it in a more relative rather than
an absolute way.
Social surrogates act in the same way as reminders of social bonds, although
they are only a substitute for real human relationships. This strategy consists of
making people think of someone (i.e., famous people, fictional characters) or
something (e.g., nature or God) they like and evokes a sense of connectedness
with human or non-human entities. In this sense, the use of social surrogates
might be an effective short-term strategy, simulating the sense of belonging and
acceptance, although with less intensity than in a real social bond. Research on
social exclusion has uncovered different types of social surrogates, like parasocial
attachment to TV characters (Derrick, Gabriel, & Hugenberg, 2009), comfort
food (Troisi & Gabriel, 2011), connectedness to nature (Poon, Teng, Wong, &
Chen, 2016), and religion (Hales et al., 2016). These surrogates have been shown
to protect self-esteem (Derrick et al., 2009), the sense of belonging (Troisi &
Gabriel, 2011) and to decrease intentions of aggression (Poon et al., 2016).
Reaffirming self-esteem
There are several strategies which might serve the ultimate goal of satisfying the
fundamental need of perceiving oneself as a valuable person threatened by social
exclusion.
Self-affirmation is a strategy that reminds people of their values and positive
aspects (Steele, 1988). Within the context of social exclusion, self-affirmation
may be a strategy to raise self-esteem. Accordingly, recent studies showed some
promising results. Self-affirmation seems to improve need-satisfaction (Hales,
Wesselmann, & Williams, 2016) and the executive control of excluded partici-
pants (Burson, Crocker, & Mischkowski, 2012). Moreover, even though exclu-
sion threatens social relationships when given a chance to affirm a social or an
intellectual area of life, excluded people still prefer to talk about the impor-
tance of social values (Knowles, Lucas, Molden, Gardner, & Dean, 2010). This
result may be taken as proof of the importance of relationships to human beings.
However, the mechanism by which self-affirmation works is still under debate.

Some researchers argue that instead of just raising self-esteem, the recall of per-
sonal values produces a big-picture focus (Wakslak & Trope, 2009). Focusing on
values would make people think of the most important aspects of their lives, thus
enlarging their horizon of priorities compared to an exclusionary experience.
Self-affirmation helps people put the negative event or threat into a broader per-
spective and focus on long-term values, thus minimizing the detrimental effects
of a single instance of social disconnection.
Derogation is another self-defensive strategy that attempts to diminish the
partner’s value in a relationship (Murray et al., 2002). This allows people to
distance themselves from the source of social threat, restoring their self-esteem
and self-value by depicting the perpetrator as less worthy (MacDonald & Leary,
2005). This strategy is especially used when ostracism is due to a moralizing issue
(see Täuber, 2019). Bourgeois and Leary (2001) showed that rejected participants
rated their perpetrators less positively and thought they knew them less well
than their included counterparts. Most importantly, derogating their perpetrator
helped participants to maintain positive affect after rejection. However, deroga-
tion as a defensive strategy seems to be used more by people with low self-esteem
and has been linked with high levels of stress-phase cortisol (Ford & Collins,
2010). This strategy seems to be more of an impulsive reaction to a personal
threat, probably related to anger or anxiety, which may protect the victim’s self-
esteem while fostering interpersonal hostility.
Reaffirming control or power

Social exclusion or rejection also threatens the need for control. In their meta-
analysis, Gerber and Wheeler (2009) found a correlation between loss of control
and an increase in aggression, showing that when control is threatened, people
tend to act antisocially. Moreover, in the victim-offender relationship, studies
have demonstrated that a higher sense of power facilitates victims’ forgiveness
(Côté et al., 2011; Karremans, & Smith, 2010). In the context of social exclu-
sion, different studies have shown that being in a powerful position buffers the
negative effects of exclusion (Kuehn, Chen, & Gordon, 2015; Schoel, Eck, &
Greifeneder, 2014). Furthermore, monetary compensation (Lelieveld, Moor,
Crone, Karremans, & van Beest, 2013) or reminders of money as a symbol of
socio-economic power (Zhou, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2009) have also been shown
to have positive effects against exclusion. Finally, a recent study showed that just
thinking about being physically invulnerable could be a sufficient buffer against
the negative effects of exclusion (Huang, Ackerman, & Bargh, 2013).
Reaffirming a meaningful existence

The last need that is threatened by social exclusion is the sense of having a
meaningful existence. Especially when prolonged over time, exclusion makes
people feel as if they are invisible and do not deserve the attention of others.
From this perspective, restoring one of the other needs (i.e., self-esteem or
control) will also improve the sense that one is living a meaningful existence.
Alternatively, some studies showed that mere acknowledgment of the person’s
presence may be sufficient to improve the sense of meaning (Rudert, Hales,
Greifeneder, & Williams, 2017; Wesselmann, Cardoso, Slater, & Williams,
2012). As Rudert and collaborators (2017) showed, even negative attention is
better than no attention. From this perspective, being ignored and ostracized
seems to be the ultimate punishment, and might even be worse than receiving
hostile attention.
Summary
All the strategies listed in this section aim at reaffirming at least one of the four
threatened needs. Social exclusion is one threat to the self, which comes from the
social environment surrounding the person. As other social threats (i.e., identity
or self-threat), it may undermine people’s self-esteem and perception of self-
worth (Branscombe, Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 1999). These strategies try to
compensate for each threat by restoring its correlated need. Thus, the social bonds
and social surrogates strategies may help people to protect their sense of belonging
by finding comfort and reassurance in their real (or imagined) social networks.
The self-affirmation and denigration of the perpetrator strategies can be used by vic-
tims to protect their personal value and self-view by enhancing positive qualities.
The control/power strategy may help people to heighten their sense of control by
enhancing their perceived power. Overall, these strategies may also help people
maintain their sense of meaningful existence by restoring positive qualities and
agency to the individual. However, even mere acknowledgment of the person may
be sufficient in restoring this last fundamental need. In general, it seems that
these strategies may follow a hydraulic mechanism based on the oscillation of
need-satisfaction. From this perspective, every time an episode of exclusion low-
ers need-satisfaction, using a specific strategy should help restore it to the previ-
ous level. In this sense, the use of a strategy should be implemented each time an
episode of exclusion occurs.
However, one aspect still unclear is whether the use of a specific strategy
would influence only one specific need or whether there would be a beneficial
effect for all four needs. Previous studies have found that one strategy was able to
raise the satisfaction of more than one need (Hales et al., 2016; McConnell et al.,
2011). These strategies are addressing not just one but several needs at the same
time. From this perspective, self-affirmation may work not only on self-esteem
but also on increasing people’s sense of control. An alternative hypothesis is that
the four needs are related to one another. In this sense, working on self-esteem
may also help people to increase their sense of a meaningful existence or their
sense of control over events. However, more research is needed to assess these
different explanations.
Discussion
In this review, we examined different coping strategies that have shown promising
effects on the recovery from social exclusion or other self-threats. These strategies
have been clustered into two categories. The first category includes strategies that
help people to cognitively change their perspective toward exclusion or distance
themselves from the event. They include accepting the exclusion episode with-
out judgment (acceptance), looking at it from a broader perspective (distancing),
framing it in a more positive light (positive reappraisal), shifting attention from
the negative event to something more positive (distraction), or focusing on the
present moment (focused attention). The second category includes strategies that
help people reaffirm their threatened needs. These strategies include those which
restore the need to belong, such as focusing on real or imagined positive social
relationships (reminders of social bonds and social surrogates), strategies to restore
self-esteem by focusing on one’s positive aspects (self-affirmation), or decreasing
the perpetrator’s value (derogation of the other) and strategies that restore the
victim’s power or control. The second group of strategies is the most studied, and
they try to directly heal a specific area that has been threatened. In a way, they
address the consequences of the exclusion rather than the exclusion process itself.
With a hydraulic metaphor, we could see the self as a bowl full of water, which
represents need-satisfaction. While the water stays at a certain level, the system
is balanced. The exclusion threat could be seen as a pin that punches a hole in
the bowl so that some water starts to pour out, and the level of water inside the
bowl gets lower. The system detects a problem. The strategies to recover need-
satisfaction could be seen as pouring some water back into the bowl, so as to reach
the previous level. With this metaphor, we can see that we would never reduce
the water flowing out (need-threat), or reinforce the sides of the bowl (reduce
the threat of exclusion). Moreover, it is interesting to observe that until need-
satisfaction is back to a balanced level, more social connections will not produce
beneficial effects, while only a reduction of need-satisfaction will be detected
as problematic (see also sociometer theory, Leary & Baumeister, 2000). In this
respect, inclusion will not result in a buffer against future exclusion.
The strategies which change perspective are meant, in the long-term, to
change people’s perspective on the threatening situation, and maybe also on the
self. In this metaphor, they might help to make the self less vulnerable to social
exclusion by either reinforcing the bowl’s sides (i.e., positive reappraisal), or by
simply embracing the fact that the bowl might not always be full (i.e., accept-
ance). In effect, a recent study has shown that people with a higher psychological
flexibility (i.e. staying in the present moment without defence as fully human
beings) are less vulnerable to social exclusion (Waldeck et al., 2017). Although
exclusion will hurt at the very beginning, the long-term practice of these strate-
gies may help make exclusion less emotionally painful.
A different discussion should be made for distraction. In this sense, it is not
clear whether this strategy may stop need-threat by disengaging attention from
the hurtful event (in the metaphor, moving the bowl far from the pin of exclu-
sion). In this sense, although the immediate damage is avoided, no change has
occurred in the self. In the metaphor, if another pin arrives, the bowl would be just
as vulnerable, and so it would need to be moved again and again. Alternatively,
distracting strategies might work as the strategies to restore need-satisfaction do:
by filling the self with other pleasant experiences or feelings (i.e., filling the bowl
with new water). Furthermore, the efficacy of this strategy may depend on the
value of the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim (Richman &
Leary, 2009), in that it may work well in a context with low relational value. For
example, when a person is excluded by strangers in a new situation (a common
background for the experimental manipulation of exclusion), distraction may be
one of the best coping strategies they have in order to move on from the unpleas-
ant event and erase any negative feelings associated with it. On the contrary,
when a person is excluded by close friends, distraction may be more difficult to
implement and may bring less effective results.
Altogether, these strategies may work on different aspects of the exclusion
process, thus bringing more or less durable positive effects. However, the mecha-
nisms behind these strategies are still to be investigated, and future research
should help us to unravel these questions.
Strategies administered by others

Although this review has focused its attention on strategies that can be used by
victims of social exclusion, it is important to point out that the people around
victims can play an important role in their recovery. One example is repre-
sented by social norms. Some researchers (Rudert & Greifeneder, 2016) have
in fact argued that social exclusion is a hurtful experience which is cognitively
mediated. This means that exclusion needs to be interpreted as a negative event.
For example, if a person is excluded but s/he does not recognize the exclusion,
then the event would not hurt her/ him. Moreover, researchers have argued
that exclusion hurts people because our society has an expectation for inclu-
sion, which qualifies exclusion as a negative experience. In some experiments, it
has been shown that changing the expectation of inclusion diminished people’s
need-threat, negative mood, and intention to act aggressively toward their per-
petrators (Greifeneder & Rudert, 2019; see also Rudert & Greifeneder, 2016;
Schoel, et al., 2014). Another study conducted with children from one individu-
alistic and one collectivistic economic culture showed that collectivistic children
estimated ostracism to be less painful, punishing the ostracizer less harshly than
individualistic children (Uskul & Over, 2017). From this perspective, working
on the social norms of a given culture may loosen the anxiety connected with
an exclusionary status.
The validation of emotion represents another strategy. This strategy has been
used in therapy for chronic physical pain and consists of communicating an
understanding of the patient’s feelings (Edmond & Keefe, 2015). In this type of
strategy, the caregiver supports the complaints of the patient, thus communicat-
ing that his/her experience is trustworthy and legitimate. In the context of social
exclusion, just the simple acknowledgment of the victim’s feelings may help them
to feel legitimate in their experience and thus prevent self-blame. In a recent
experiment, we have tested the validation strategy with a group of university
students (n=109, M age = 19.63 years, SD = .90 years, 21 Males). At the beginning
of the study, participants’ self-compassion, self-pity, and self-esteem levels were
assessed. Afterward, participants played the Cyberball task, a manipulation of
ostracism (Williams, Cheung, & Choi 2000). Participants were either included
or excluded. As a cover story, participants were also told that the game session
was being supervised by a member of staff, whose role it was to give technical
support if needed. At the end of the game, participants received a message from
the bogus staff member. In the control condition, the message included standard
information about the duration of the session and the number of throws. In the
validation condition, the message made an explicit reference to the exclusion
situation. The staff member validated the perspective of the participant by say-
ing that it was not a pleasant situation, and that other people had already been
excluded in the past, and that their reaction was negative. After this, partici-
pants’ need-satisfaction and emotions were assessed in the reflexive and reflective
stages. Receiving a validation had positive effects on the emotional experience,
especially for those participants who were low in self-compassion. In a way, it
seems that a validating communication style could have helped the recovery of
participants who were generally more critical toward themselves, and who might
have blamed themselves for having been excluded. These preliminary results
highlight the potential assistance that people surrounding the victim of exclusion
might have to offer. In effect, exclusion is a social phenomenon that deprives the
individual of social relationships. When surrounding people offer acceptance
and support to the victim of exclusion, this could result in need restoration.
Sometimes, when people feel they do not possess the instruments to cope with
negative events, the best solution would be to look for external help. In a way, a
strategy for the victims may even be considered to strategically turn to individu-
als that may offer them support. Finally, it is plausible that these strategies may be
beneficial to some sub-populations, which may be more sensitive to the exclu-
sion threat (i.e., low self-compassionate people in our research).
Conclusion
Despite the fact that much research has been carried out on the effects of exclu-
sion, only a few studies have focused on the coping strategies that may buffer its
negative outcomes and foster recovery (Riva, 2016). In this chapter, we revised
the self-administered coping strategies that have shown some promising results
in the field of social exclusion, or in closer research areas. We have proposed a
clustering of these strategies based on the specific aspects of the exclusion pro-
cess that they address. The strategies to change perspective aim at diminishing
the negative impact of exclusion. In this sense, they try to prevent the negative
feelings associated with need-threat by cognitively reappraising the situation.
The strategies to restore need-satisfaction aim at repairing the damage caused
by exclusion. They try to replenish the need fulfillment which has been lowered
by the exclusionary situation. Although all these strategies have been proposed
to promote recovery from exclusion, the exact effects of the approaches and
the processes by which they work are still unclear. In this sense, more research
is needed to better account for the underlying mechanism of these strategies.
Moreover, research has focused almost entirely on self-administered strategies,
although surrounding people may play an important role in the victim’s recov-
ery from a negative state. Because of the social relevance and the possible appli-
cation of this topic, we hope that future studies will investigate in more depth
the most effective strategies to teach people to cope with social exclusion.
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6
HOW SELF-TALK PROMOTES
SELF-REGULATION
Implications for coping with emotional pain
Ariana Orvell and Ethan Kross
In the quietude of night, Captain Hook, the antagonist in Peter Pan, paced
his pirate ship feeling sorry for himself. He was overcome with feelings of
self-doubt—obsessed with being a person of “good form,” and pained by his
sudden realization that none of the children aboard his pirate ship liked him.
Grappling with these thoughts of rejection, he proclaimed, “Better for Hook,
if he had had less ambition!” J.M Barrie, the omniscient narrator of Peter Pan,
then added, “It was in his darkest hours only that he referred to himself in the
third person.”
Is this habit merely an idiosyncrasy that Barrie ascribed to his character,
Captain Hook? Or is there a connection between experiencing psychological
distress and using one’s own name to reflect on the self? In the current chapter,
we review evidence supporting the latter. Specifically, we explain how—with
this small glimpse into Captain Hook’s psyche—Barrie astutely captured a tool
that has been empirically shown to aid people in their ability to regulate their
behaviors, thoughts, and negative emotions, including those that stem from
experiences of social rejection.
We begin by briefly outlining a theoretical framework that explains why we
expect using one’s own name and other non-first-person pronouns (e.g., you,
he/she) should enhance self-regulation, focusing specifically on the role that psy-
chological distance plays in this process. We then describe the implications that
such “distanced self-talk” has for emotion regulation, and discuss the mecha-
nisms that underlie its benefits. We then transition to discussing when, and for
whom, distanced self-talk may be most effective, exploring the degree to which
this process requires effort, and discussing how this tool functions early on in
development. We end by describing other linguistic mechanisms that promote
How self-talk promotes self-regulation 83
psychological distance. Finally, we discuss the implications of this body of work

for interventions aimed at experiences of social rejection.
Theoretical rationale
We all have an internal monologue, a voice inside our heads that guides us as we
navigate our lives. Both anecdotal observations and research suggest that peo-
ple can engage with this inner monologue using different parts of speech (Zell,
Warriner, & Albarracin, 2012). This is where our interest lies: in the words people
use to refer to themselves as they silently introspect, and the implications they have
for how people think, feel, and behave under stress. Specifically, we suggest that
using one’s own name and non first-person pronouns during introspection helps
people take a step back from their immersed perspective, allowing them to effec-
tively regulate their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors across a range of situations.
Two sets of prior findings motivate this prediction. First, a large body of
research suggests that enhancing psychological distance from the self facilitates
self-regulation (Fujita, Trope, Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, 2006; Kross & Ayduk,
2017; Liberman & Trope, 2008; Mischel & Rodriguez, 1993; Trope & Liberman,
2010), including people’s reflections on painful experiences of social rejection
(e.g., Ayduk, Mischel, & Downey, 2002). Central to this work is the idea that
strong emotions immerse people in their experiences, which makes it difficult
for them to reason objectively about their circumstances in ways that align with
their long-term goals. According to this work, reducing a person’s egocentric
involvement in their experience—i.e., enhancing psychological distance from
the self—promotes self-regulation by allowing people to focus more objectively
on the circumstances they find themselves in.
Second, several sets of findings indicate that the language people use to refer
to the self can distance them from their experiences (Cohn, Mehl, & Pennebaker,
2001; Nook et al., 2017; Pennebaker & King, 1999). Specifically, people typi-
cally use first-person pronouns to refer to themselves (I must be hungry right
now). In contrast, they use non-first-person pronouns and names to refer to
other people who are de facto removed from the self (e.g., “You must be hungry
right now”). Thus, we reasoned that when people use non-first-person parts of
speech internally to refer to the self—hereinafter referred to as “distanced self-
talk,” it should allow them to reason about the self in a similar way to how they
would reason about others.
Before proceeding, it is important to specify that our focus in this chap-
ter is on the role that distanced self-talk plays when people silently introspect.
Although it is possible that the findings we report here generalize to situations in
which people talk aloud about their thoughts and feelings using their own name
(like Captain Hook), this may violate social norms and thus could be linked to
negative interpersonal consequences. Given this, our focus throughout is on the
consequences of using distanced self-talk during private introspection.
84 Ariana Orvell and Ethan Kross
Foundational studies
Does thinking about the self using non-first-person
language promote psychological distance?
Our first goal in this line of work was to establish a link between using non-
first-person pronouns and names to refer to the self and psychological distance.
Prior research suggests that enhancing psychological distance in one domain
(i.e., space, time, language) should also enhance it in other domains (Trope
& Liberman, 2003). For example, imagining an event as further away in time
should also lead a person to consider it more abstractly. Following this logic,
if referring to oneself using non-first-person pronouns and one’s own name
serves a distancing function, then cueing a person to analyze their thoughts
and feelings using these parts of speech should also enhance other metrics of
psychological distance.
An initial set of studies tested this prediction by randomly assigning participants
to analyze their deepest thoughts and feelings surrounding situations that elic-
ited anger and anxiety by using either first-person pronouns (immersed self-talk
condition) or non-first-person pronouns and their own names (distanced self-talk
condition) (Kross et al., 2014 Studies 1a and 1b). For example, after recalling a
personal negative event, participants in the first-person condition were instructed
to…. “Please try to understand why you felt the way you did in the experience you just
recalled using the pronouns “I” and “my” as much as possible. In other words, ask yourself,
“Why did I feel this way? What were the underlying causes and reasons for my feelings?”
while participants in the non-first-person condition were instructed to “Please try
to understand why you felt the way you did in the experience you just recalled using the
pronoun “you” and [your own name] as much as possible. In other words, if your name was
Jane, you would ask yourself, “Why did Jane feel this way? What where the underlying
causes and reasons for Jane’s feelings?” After participants analyzed their feelings using
these different parts of speech, they were asked to rate the extent to which they saw
the event unfold from the perspective of an outside observer, using this as a measure
of visual distance (Ayduk & Kross, 2010). As expected, participants in the non-first-
person group reported seeing themselves from the perspective of a more distanced
observer when reflecting on their negative experience, providing initial evidence
that thinking about the self using one’s own name and non-first-person pronouns
enhances psychological distance.
Does distanced self-talk promote self-regulation

under social stress?
Having established that instructing people to reason about their thoughts and
feelings using non-first-person pronouns and their own names promotes psy-
chological distance, we next examined the self-regulatory implications of this
process. We began by examining the effects of distanced self-talk in situations
that elicit social stress and fears of rejection.
Specifically, we used a “first impressions” task in which people experienced

fears of social rejection (e.g., Clark & Arkowitz, 1975; Glass, Merluzzi, Biever,
& Larsen, 1982). We recruited undergraduate women to participate in a study
based on first impressions. After arriving at the lab, participants were told that
they would be meeting a member of the opposite sex, and that they would be
judged on the first impression that they made, both by their interaction partner in
the study and by a set of trained psychologists (Kross et al., 2014, Study 2). After
being told about the upcoming interaction task, participants were left alone for
a preparation period. During this time, they were instructed to reflect on their
anxious feelings regarding the upcoming interaction, but they were randomly
assigned to do so using first-person pronouns (immersed self-talk condition) or
non-first-person pronouns, as well as their own name (distanced self-talk condi-
tion), using directions similar to those outlined in the visual distancing studies
described above. After this preparation period, participants reported on their
current level of anxiety. Next, they met their opposite sex interaction partner—
who was actually a confederate—and engaged in a short, unstructured interac-
tion, as well as a structured one where the participant and confederate took turns
asking each other questions from a preselected list (e.g., “What is your biggest pet
peeve?”). The confederate’s responses were scripted so that they stayed consistent
across participants. After the task was over, participants again reported on their
current level of anxiety.
Participants in the distanced self-talk condition exhibited steeper declines in
their anxiety from before the interaction to after, compared to participants in
the immersed self-talk condition. Additionally, condition and hypothesis-blind
coders judged that participants in the distanced self-talk group performed better
overall (i.e., based on eye contact, vocal quality, and signals of discomfort) dur-
ing the task, suggesting that distanced self-talk also has implications for helping
people regulate their behavior (Kross et al., 2014).
These findings were conceptually replicated in another study using a dif-
ferent type of stress-inducing task that was also relevant to the experience of
social rejection (Kross et al., 2014, Study 3). Upon arrival to the laboratory,
male and female participants were told that they would need to give a speech on
their “dream job” to a panel of judges who would evaluate how qualified they
were. They were further informed that they would be asked to talk about their
strengths and weaknesses, and to provide real-world examples illustrating how
they had overcome past deficits in ways that perfectly positioned them for their
dream job. Once this cover story was delivered, participants were given five
minutes to mentally prepare their speech in a windowless cubicle (without taking
notes) to allow their anxiety to foment.
After the speech preparation period was over, a confederate told participants
that one of the things the study focused on was the language people use to pre-
pare themselves prior to giving public speeches. Depending on which condition
the participant was randomly assigned to, the confederate then went on to say
that some people used first-person pronouns (immersed self-talk condition) and
others used their own name as well as non-first-person pronouns (distanced self-
talk condition) when mentally preparing themselves for a task. They then asked
the participants to introspect about their feelings regarding the upcoming speech
task, using the type of language they were instructed to use for three minutes.
Finally they were taken down the hallway to another room where they were
asked to deliver their speech in front of a panel of evaluators who were trained to
maintain stoic facial expressions while the participants spoke.
The study’s results indicated that participants in the distanced self-talk condi-
tion reported lower levels of negative affect after giving their speech. They also
reported experiencing less shame, and ruminated less about their performance as
time went on. Critically, as in the previous study, distanced self-talk also affected
participants’ performance: condition-blind judges rated participants in the dis-
tanced self-talk condition as being less nervous, more confident, and more per-
suasive then their immersed self-talk counterparts (Kross et al., 2014).
How does distanced self-talk influence people’s

mental representations of stressful experiences?
Our initial studies provided evidence to support the idea that distanced self-talk
facilitates emotion regulation under stressful interpersonal situations associated
with the experience of social rejection (i.e., not making a good first impression
on someone else; being rejected from a potential job). But the studies left an
important question open: how does distanced self-talk lead to these benefits? To
address this, we sought to examine how distanced self-talk influences the way
people mentally represent stressful situations, focusing specifically on the role
it plays in promoting challenge (vs. threat) appraisals. Our logic for focusing
on this dimension was two-fold. First, prior work indicates that when people
are faced with social stressors, they quickly classify them as presenting either a
challenge or a threat (Blascovich & Tomaka, 1996). A person viewing an event
as a threat concludes that they do not have the resources to cope with a par-
ticular situation. In contrast, a person viewing an event as a challenge concludes
that they do have the emotional resources to cope with a situation effectively
(Blascovich, Mendes, & Mendes, 2000; Blascovich & Tomaka, 1996; Skinner
& Brewer, 2002).
Second, prior research indicates that when people reflect on stressful expe-
riences from a self-immersed perspective, they tend to focus on the concrete,
emotionally arousing features of their experiences (Kross, Ayduk, & Mischel,
2005; Trope & Liberman, 2010); for example, they think about what is happen-
ing, and what they are feeling. As we embarked on addressing this question, we
reasoned that these are precisely the features that should drive a threat response.
In contrast, we predicted that asking people to distance themselves using non-
first-person pronouns as they reflected on their stressful feelings should lead
them to focus less on the threatening features of the event and instead place
the experience in a broader context (e.g., “I’ve given many speeches before;
this will only last five minutes and then I’ll be done”). This type of mental
representation should promote more adaptive, challenge appraisals (Kross &
Ayduk, 2017).
To test this prediction, we re-ran the speech study described above, but this
time we instructed participants to write about the thoughts and feelings that had
run through their head as they reflected in the first person (immersed perspec-
tive) or in the third person (distanced perspective) (Kross et al. 2014, Study 4).
We also asked participants to rate the extent to which they perceived the upcom-
ing speech task as a threat (e.g., “How demanding to you expect the upcoming
speech task will be?”) and as a challenge (e.g., “How well do you think you will
be able to cope with the speech task?”), and had participants rate how anxious
they felt prior to giving their speech.
We then asked judges to code the essays on the extent to which they contained
challenge vs. threat appraisals of the situation. As predicted, participants in the dis-
tanced self-talk condition viewed the situation as more of a challenge compared
to those in the immersed self-talk condition, as indicated by both their own self-
report ratings as well as the judges’ content analyses of their stream-of-thought
essays (Kross et al., 2014, Study 5). Examples of participants’ responses are provided
in Table 6.1.
Recent research by Streamer and colleagues (2017) extended these findings
to the physiological level. Using the same methods described above, they ran-
domly assigned participants to prepare for an upcoming speech using either
first-person (immersed self-talk condition) or non-first-person pronouns (dis-
tanced self-talk condition). They then monitored the participants’ cardiovas-
cular response in vivo as they gave the speech. Conceptually replicating our
original findings, they found that participants in the distanced self-talk condi-
tion showed lower levels of total peripheral resistance, a physiological indicator
of a challenge response (Blascovich, 2008; Chalabaev, Major, Cury, & Sarrazin,
2009; Seery, 2011, 2013; Streamer, Seery, Kondrak, Lamarche, & Saltsman,
2017). Interestingly, they then instructed participants to give a second, unre-
lated speech and found that the effects of using distanced self-talk carried over
to the second task: participants who had initially prepared for the speech using
TABLE 6.1
Sample challenge and threat appraisals from participants as a function of
condition
Immersed self-talk condition Distanced self-talk condition
I thought that I was so nervous because when I told myself that I’m not under a lot of
I give a speech, I need to feel prepared; pressure for this. I’m qualified and
however, I don’t think I am prepared have worked hard; I have confidence
enough to give a speech such as this one. in my abilities.
distanced self-talk continued to show a physiological response which was con-

sistent with challenge appraisals (Streamer et al., 2017). The latter finding speaks
to the potential prolonged benefits of distanced self-talk for buffering people
against future stressors.
Generalizability, effort and development

Implications for vulnerable populations
Thus far, we have explored the benefits of distanced self-talk for helping indi-
viduals regulate their emotions in rejection-relevant situations that elicit social
stress. But how might these findings generalize to individuals suffering from
extreme forms of distress, or to situations where people are grappling with more
intense negative experiences? Prior research on other types of self-distancing
strategies provides mixed evidence regarding the answer to this question. While
some work indicates that such strategies work best for emotionally vulnerable
individuals—presumably because they have the most negative affect to regu-
late—other studies do not reveal any moderating effects of emotional vulner-
ability on the benefits of self-distancing (Kross et al., 2014; Kross, Gard, Deldin,
Clifton, & Ayduk, 2012; Kross & Ayduk, 2009; Penner et al., 2015; Wisco &
Nolen-Hoeksema, 2011).
In the Fall of 2014, the anxiety that surrounded the potential threat of an
Ebola outbreak in the United States provided us with a unique context in which
to address this question (Kross et al., 2017). Although public health officials
stressed that the actual likelihood of an Ebola outbreak in the United States was
low during this time, concerns surrounding the issue swelled. This provided us
with an ecologically valid context in which to examine whether distanced self-
talk could lead people—especially those with high levels of concern—to reason
more rationally, and quell their anxieties around a pressing public health threat.
To this end, we randomly assigned 1,008 participants from across the United
States to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings surrounding Ebola using
either first-person pronouns (immersed self-talk condition) or non-first-person
pronouns (distanced self-talk condition). After writing their essay, participants
answered several questions that assessed their current level of worry about Ebola
and their perceptions of its risks. Once data collection was complete, two con-
dition-blind coders content analyzed participants’ essays for the presence (vs.
absence) of fact-based reasons not to worry (e.g., “Ebola can only be spread
through direct contact with bodily fluids”), our operationalization of rational
thinking in this context.
Our findings indicated that the distanced self-talk manipulation led partici-
pants who scored high on a measure of Ebola-worry administered at baseline
(i.e. before the manipulation) to generate more fact-based reasons not to worry
about Ebola, which in turn led to reductions in how worried they were about
it, and how vulnerable they felt about contracting the disease. In contrast, the
manipulation did not lower the worry and risk perceptions of participants who
scored low on Ebola-worry at baseline. These findings support the idea that a
certain level of negative emotion is needed for self-distancing to be effective
(Kross & Ayduk, 2009; Kross et al., 2012; Penner et al., 2015). If a person is
experiencing little or no negative affect to start with, there may be little room for
self-distancing strategies to change their construal of an experience and reduce
their negative emotion.
These findings suggest that linguistic self-distancing may be particularly
beneficial for helping individuals regulate their emotions as the emotional
intensity of the situation they find themselves in increases—a factor that may
be influenced by the objective features of the situation or by any number of
individual differences.
An effortless form of self-control?

Self-regulation is typically thought of as an effortful process which requires cog-
nitive resources to implement (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996; Heatherton,
2011; Moser, Krompinger, Dietz, & Simons, 2009; Ochsner & Gross, 2005). Yet
participants in several of the aforementioned studies indicated during informal
debriefings that it was relatively easy for them to engage in distanced self-talk.
This raised another question: Might this process constitute a relatively effortless
self-control tool?
Going into this line of work, we hypothesized that it might, based on two
observations. First, names and second- and third-person pronouns are a ubiqui-
tous part of our linguistic corpora: we use them continuously throughout our
daily lives to refer to and interact with others. Thus, the association between these
parts of speech and our mental representations of others should be very tightly
linked. Second, prior research (Grossmann & Kross, 2014) as well as common
experience suggests that it is much easier for people to help others make sense of
their emotional problems than it is for them to make sense of their own. Given
the tight coupling between (a) using these parts of speech to think about others,
and (b) our ability to help others work through their problems relatively easily,
we reasoned that using one’s own name to think about the self should allow a
person to manage their own emotional issues with little effort.
Moser and colleagues (2017) tested this prediction by cueing participants
to reflect on their feelings elicited by viewing negative pictures (Study 1) and
recalling negative memories (Study 2), using either first-person or non-first-
person pronouns (immersed or distanced self-talk respectively), while their brain
activity was measured using event-related brain potentials (ERPs; Study 1) and
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI; Study 2). Across both studies,
distanced self-talk was associated with reductions in neural activity associated
with self-referential emotional processing, but not with enhancements in neural
activity associated with cognitive control. Specifically in the first study, dis-
tanced self-talk led to reduced activity in an ERP marker of self-referential emo-
tional reactivity (i.e., late positive potential) without enhancing an ERP marker
of cognitive control (i.e., stimulus preceding negativity). In their second study,

distanced self-talk was associated with reduced levels of activation in an fMRI
marker of self-referential processing (i.e., medial prefrontal cortex), but not with
increased levels of neural activity in fMRI markers of cognitive control (i.e.,
prefrontal and parietal cortex cognitive control networks).
Together, these results provide initial evidence suggesting that distanced self-
talk may constitute a relatively effortless emotion regulation tool.
Developmental trajectory
In the now famous delay of gratification test, Walter Mischel gave pre-school
participants a choice: eat one marshmallow (or an equivalent treat) now, or wait
until the experimenter returns and get two marshmallows (Mischel, Shoda,
& Rodriguez, 1989). While left alone in the room, children spontaneously
employed a variety of strategies to help them wait for the second marshmal-
low. Interestingly, many of these involved making the tempting marshmallow
more abstract and enhancing psychological distance. For example, some children
turned their back on the gooey treat to avoid looking at it, and to subsequently
reduce temptation (Mischel & Rodriguez, 1993).
More recent work has moved beyond the role of abstraction to systematically
address the extent to which children benefit from distanced self-talk in situa-
tions that require self-control. To examine this question, one study presented a
group of four- and six-year-old children with a boring work task. Specifically,
participants were instructed to press “go” if cheese appeared on a screen (75%
of the trials) and “no” if a cat appeared. The experimenter explained to children
that “this [was] a very important work activity” and told them that it would be
helpful if they could work on it for as long as they could. However, the experi-
menter also acknowledged that the job could get boring, and so offered them
the option to take breaks “if they wanted to, when they wanted to” by play-
ing a game on an iPad, which was placed next to them as they worked (White
et al., 2017).
Children were randomly assigned to monitor their progress from one of three
perspectives: in the immersed self-talk group, children were told to ask them-
selves, “Am I working hard?” In the distanced self-talk group, children were
told to ask themselves, “Is [child name] working hard?” Finally, in a distanced
self-talk exemplar group, children were able to adopt the perspective of one of
four fictional characters, all of whom are known for working hard (i.e., Dora the
Explorer, Rapunzel from Disney’s Tangled, Bob the Builder, and Batman), and
ask themselves: “Is [Dora] working hard?”
Although six-year-olds persisted longest overall, in both age groups, there
was a linear effect of distance on persistence, such that children persisted longer
and took fewer breaks the more distanced they were from the self. Although
taking the third-person perspective of a fictional character was more effective
for enhancing persistence than adopting an outside perspective on the self by

using one’s own name, this study suggests that self-distance may be a useful self-
regulatory technique among young children (see also White & Carlson, 2016 for
similar findings).
An intriguing question for future research is how children learn to utilize
distanced self-talk to help them regulate their emotions. The developmental
psychologist, Lev Vyogtsky, wrote extensively on self-talk and observed that
children talk to themselves in situations that require self-regulation or effort
(Vygotsky, 1978). However, we still know relatively little about when—and to
what extent—internal (i.e., silent) distanced self-talk is useful for helping children
regulate their thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
Broader implications
Although we began this line of work examining the implications of distanced
self-talk for emotion regulation, we have discovered that using one’s own name
and other non-first-person pronouns to reason about the self also has implica-
tions for several other domains. In the next part of the chapter, we briefly review
what we have learned about the utility of distanced self-talk for these additional
phenomena.
Wisdom
The Chinese philosopher Confucius said, “By three methods we may learn wisdom:
First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by
experience, which is the bitterest.” We suggest that distanced language usage may
also provide people with a tool for promoting wise reasoning, which we define
as “the ability to reason about challenges that are inherent to our social world”
(Grossmann et al., 2010).
In a series of studies, Grossmann and Kross (2014) tested this idea by prompt-
ing participants to imagine themselves (vs. others) in difficult interpersonal
situations involving infidelity and betrayal using either first-person pronouns
(immersed self-talk) or non-first-person pronouns (distanced self-talk). They
then asked participants a series of questions that tapped into the extent to which
they engaged in wise reasoning (i.e., recognized the limits of their own knowl-
edge, acknowledged multiple perspectives involved in the situation, and demon-
strated a more dialectical view of the world which indicated that circumstances
are likely to change) while considering the problem.
Their results indicated that people who imagined themselves in the situation
from a self-distanced point of view displayed (a) more recognition of the limits
of their own knowledge, (b) an increased search for compromise, (c) more con-
sideration of others’ perspectives, and (d) realized that the event could unfold
in various ways. Moreover, these indices of wise reasoning were equivalent to
those of people who were prompted to reason about someone else in the same
situation (Grossmann & Kross, 2014), suggesting that self-distancing allevi-
ated the self-other asymmetry that characterizes wise reasoning (i.e., people
consistently reason more wisely about other people’s problems compared to
their own).
Some may wonder whether the benefits of using distanced self-talk to rea-
son about social problems transcends the saying, “with age comes wisdom.”
Interestingly, the authors found that both younger (20–40 years old) and older
(60–80 years old) participants benefited from using distanced self-talk to think
about self-relevant problems (Grossman & Kross, 2014). Together, these find-
ings suggest that distanced self-talk may provide a tool that allows people to tap
into wise reasoning processes that are typically accessible when we reason about
others’ problems, but not our own (also see Grossmann, Sahdra, & Ciarrochi,
2016; Kross & Grossmann, 2012).
Moral decision-making
Some of the most difficult decisions we encounter are those that pit our own
self-interest against what is right or wrong—moral dilemmas. Consequently,
identifying the ways in which we can help people navigate such moral dilemmas
is important. Recent work has begun to explore the role that distanced self-talk
plays in this process.
In one line of work, Sowden, Weidman, Berg, and Kross (under review),
examined how a person’s relationship to the perpetrator of a crime may lessen
people’s ability to reason impartially. Evidence from their initial studies sug-
gests that relational closeness does indeed make it more difficult for people to
reason impartially about moral transgressions: the closer you are to the perpe-
trator, the more likely you are to lie to a police officer. The authors also found
that this is true regardless of how severe the crime was that the participants
reasoned about.
The authors were interested in whether reflecting on the dilemma using dis-
tanced self-talk could buffer people against this tendency. The rationale was
this: if people are cued to reason about the moral dilemma from a self-distanced
perspective, this will reduce their focus on the self—and by extension, their
relationship to the perpetrator—which should in turn lead them to reason more
objectively about the crime. As predicted, the authors found that reasoning about
the situation from a self-distanced perspective mitigated people’s tendency to
act in their own self-interest (i.e., lie when questioned about close others’ trans-
gressions). In a follow-up study, the authors found that in the context of high-
severity crimes involving close others in particular, people were more likely to
indicate that they would tell the truth if they had been instructed to reflect on
the situation using distanced self-talk. In contrast, distanced self-talk had no
effect if the crimes involving a close other were low in severity—people were
equally likely to lie. This pattern of results conceptually replicated the findings
outlined earlier in the chapter, which suggested that distanced self-talk was par-
ticularly effective when emotions were running high. In this case, we can infer
that participants felt more conflicted when faced with the prospect of protecting
a close other if they had committed a severely immoral act, and it was here that
self-distancing was useful in helping participants take a step from the situation
and reason more objectively about it. In sum, being forced to take a step back and
consider one’s thought process from a more distanced perspective seems to allow
people to think more objectively about the dilemma at hand, thereby making a
more moral choice.
Mentoring and intergroup relations

In an increasingly diverse world, a common challenge that people face is how to
communicate effectively with those who may not share their background. One
domain where this is critically important is mentor–mentee interactions, where
feedback is often paramount to a mentee’s growth and development. However,
extant research shows that in such contexts, Whites tend to worry that deliver-
ing criticism to people of color will be seen as racially motivated, or will make
them appear prejudiced (Croft & Schmader, 2012; Mendoza-Denton, Downey,
Purdie, Davis, & Pietrzak, 2002; Mendoza-Denton, Goldman-Flythe, Pietrzak,
Downey, & Aceves, 2010; Plant & Devine, 2003). Leitner and colleagues (2016)
sought to address this issue by examining whether distanced self-talk could lessen
White mentors’ self-focus, and in turn facilitate their ability to provide effective
feedback to Black mentees.
The authors recruited White participants for a study on mentorship. White
participants watched a speech that their supposed mentee, a Black student, was
giving on their dream job. After watching the speech, participants were ran-
domly assigned to reflect on the feedback that they would deliver to their mentee
using either first-person pronouns (immersed self-talk condition) or non-first-
person pronouns (distanced self-talk condition).
Results indicated that participants in the distanced self-talk condition pro-
vided verbal feedback that was perceived as more warm and helpful by condi-
tion-blind coders, compared to participants in the immersed self-talk condition
(Leitner et al., 2017). Interestingly, this effect was mediated by reductions in
self-referential processing (i.e., the MPFC) which were captured through
Electroencephalography (EEG). This study suggests that adopting a self-dis-
tanced perspective helps reduce self-referential processing, which may otherwise
interfere with people’s ability to give constructive feedback in the context of a
cross-racial interaction.
These findings have important real-world implications for racially discordant
mentor-mentee relationships. Future research is needed to examine whether these
benefits apply when the mentor and mentee are of the same racial background.
Motivation
Finally, research has also examined the role that distanced self-talk plays in influ-
encing people’s motivation to complete challenging tasks. In a series of studies,
Dolcos and Albarracin (2014) invited participants into the lab and then varied
whether participants “psyched themselves up” for an anagram task using first-
person self-talk (e.g., “I can do this”) or second-person self-talk (e.g., “You can
do this”). They then measured participants’ intentions to complete the task, and
their subsequent performance.
Participants in the second-person condition reported stronger behavioral
intentions to finish the anagrams and completed more of them compared to
participants in the first-person self-talk condition (Dolcos & Albarracin, 2014).
These studies provide evidence that distanced self-talk may also function by
promoting motivation in ways that are beneficial for performance. These find-
ings could have implications in other domains where “psyching oneself up”
could be particularly consequential, for example, before a sports game or an
important exam.
Other ways to enhance psychological

distance through language
Thus far, we have summarized the psychological function of distanced self-talk,
and examined its implications for self-regulation across a range of contexts. We
know from this research that referring directly to the self in the second person
using the word “you” (e.g., “Ariana, you can do this!”) promotes psychologi-
cal distance and facilitates self-regulation. However, recent work suggests that
there are other ways that people can use the word “you” to derive psychological
distance and enhance their ability to cope with negative events. Consider, for
example, this quote from Sheryl Sandberg, written on Facebook shortly after her
husband’s untimely death: “I think when tragedy occurs, it presents a choice. You can
give in to the void, the emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability
to think or even breathe. Or you can try to find meaning.” Here, Sandberg uses “you”
to refer to people in general, despite the fact that she is reflecting on the very
personal—and deeply negative—experience of coping with her husband’s death.
What function might “you” be serving in this context?
In a series of experiments, Orvell, Kross and Gelman (2017) found that
generic-you (i.e., “you” that refers to people in general) is used to express norms
about both everyday (e.g., “You carry an umbrella in the rain”) and emotional
(“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”) events. They further reasoned that
using “you” in the context of reflecting on negative experiences should allow a
person to transcend their immersed perspective of an event and place it within a
broader context that extends beyond the self. Consistent with their predictions,
they demonstrated that using generic-you when attempting to work through
negative experiences was associated with increased psychological distance from
the event, which in turn was related to higher levels of reconstrual and lower
levels of negative affect (Orvell, Kross, & Gelman, 2017).
Recent work indicates that children as young as two years old also use
generic-you to express norms about everyday events, and begin using it at age
five to express generalizable lessons about negative experiences, including those
involving social rejection (i.e., being excluded on the playground) (Orvell, Kross
& Gelman, 2018a, 2018b). These findings suggest that generic-you—like dis-
tanced self-talk—may constitute a basic linguistic tool that people can use to
promote psychological distance. An interesting direction for future research will
be to examine how generic-you compares to distanced self-talk as a regula-
tory strategy. Are there certain situations where one may be more beneficial
than the other? Perhaps in interpersonal situations, generic-you may be an effec-
tive mechanism for promoting empathy between the listener and the speaker,
whereas using distanced self-talk aloud may backfire.
Concluding comment
It is rather remarkable that J.M Barrie intuited that a person would use their own
name to refer to themselves in moments of distress. Over a century later, converg-
ing evidence suggests that engaging in such distanced self-talk helps people regu-
late their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors across a range of situations, including
those that elicit concerns regarding social rejection. One important question for
future research is how distanced self-talk may buffer people against the negative
consequences associated with social rejection in vivo, once these painful feelings
have been initiated. Given evidence suggesting that distanced self-talk may be
a relatively effortless strategy to implement, it may be well-suited for helping
people cope with these kinds of intense, attention-draining situations. Distanced
self-talk has also been shown to nudge people into thinking more rationally,
which raises the additional possibility that using this tool to reflect on rejection-
related experiences may help individuals put them in a broader context in a way
that relieves their distress (Schartau, Dalgleish & Dunn, 2009; Kross & Ayuk,
2017). Finally, future research should also continue to explore the implications
of using distanced self-talk across multiple levels of analysis—i.e., at the affective,
behavioral, cognitive, physiological, and neural levels. Doing so has the potential
to deepen our understanding of this regulatory tool.
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7
HURT FEELINGS
Physical pain, social exclusion, and
the psychology of pain overlap
Laura J. Ferris
Feeling hurt and hurt feelings: the

psychology of pain overlap
Why does a break up hurt so very much? One explanation is that rejection, ostra-
cism, or social exclusion activate the same gross anatomical regions in the brain
that are associated with physical pain (Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams,
2003). The resulting social pain then represents the same feeling of unpleasantness
that arises from physical pain (MacDonald & Leary, 2005).
The idea of social–physical pain overlap hints at a unifying concept of human
pain and suffering. Pain is a primal and familiar experience – whether from
injury, child birth, illness, or the myriad sources of painfulness that are part of
life. Pain is common and recognisable as a percept (ouch!), but it is also complex
(Auvray, Myin, & Spence, 2010).
Seminal research has highlighted commonalities between the experience of
social pain (arising from interpersonal rejection, ostracism, or other forms of social
exclusion and loss) and physical pain (Herman & Panksepp, 1978; MacDonald
& Leary, 2005; Panksepp, Herman, Conner, Bishop, & Scott, 1978). Could the
same neural architecture or neurochemical systems that promote physical sur-
vival underlie social connection? Do pain killers actually quell the heartache of
separation and loss for human beings? These are the evocative implications of an
overlap between physical pain and social pain.
What is pain?
The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP, 1994/2016) defines
pain as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual
or potential tissue damage, or is described in terms of such damage. Two key
Hurt feelings 101
features emerge from this understanding of pain: a) the subjective nature of the
pain experience, such that pain may be experienced in terms of tissue damage
but absent actual damage; and b) the delineation of its sensory and affective
components (Fernandez & Turk, 1992; Price, 2000). In this sense, pain is both
a sensation and a complex drive for response – more like hunger, thirst or itch,
rather than touch (see also, Auvray et al., 2010).
Like physical pain, social pain hurts – but to understand how connections
between social and physical pain have come about, it is helpful to briefly look
back at the recent history of pain theory and its development.
Historical considerations
Historically, the science of pain has been a study of the physical pain mechanisms
falling largely within the domain of medicine. Early theories positioned pain as
a phenomenon arising solely via the mechanistic stimulation of receptors. René
Descartes’ enduring image of the flame as pain burns its path from foot to brain
(or from body to mind) famously symbolizes the bodily machinery of pain from
injury-event to painful experience (1644; see Bourke, 2012). This basic under-
standing of pain mechanisms served medical science well for centuries, and forms
the basis of the concept of nociception still in use today (Brooks & Tracey, 2005;
Duncan, 2000). But scientific knowledge about pain has seen transformational
shifts over the centuries (Morris, 1991).
A biomedical approach sees acute physical pain as being generally triggered by
nociception – i.e., through detection and transduction of noxious stimuli by nocicep-
tors in the periphery or viscera. Specific and well-characterised receptors have been
discovered that correspond to different pain inputs: mechanical (e.g., from pressure
applied to the skin), thermal (e.g., touching a hot plate), chemical (e.g., strong
acid on the skin), and cold pain (e.g., plunging the body into icy water). Noxious
or nociceptive input is detected by receptors, transduced, and then received in
the dorsal horn of the spinal cord before being relayed supraspinally, preserving
distinct sensory qualities mapped to the region of detection (Schwarz & Meyer,
2005; Westlund, 2005). Acute physical pain is known to spark specific and complex
physiological responses, evinced by increased skin conductance, faster heart rate,
and higher levels of blood cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline, heralding pain-
activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the sympathetic nervous
system (Benarroch & Sandroni, 2005; Pacák & McCarty, 2000).
In a major turning point for pain theory, Melzack and Wall’s (1965) gate
control theory of pain provided the catalyst for a shift away from a pain-as-
nociception model. The central nervous system was ascribed capacity for descend-
ing control of pain inputs, and psychological factors were afforded greater status
than mere reactions to pain. This facilitated an understanding of pain that went
beyond what nociception alone could account for (for instance, cases of chronic
pain, phantom limb pain, and other idiopathic pain syndromes; Biro, 2010).
Over time, this new view of pain has given rise to a more inclusive approach
102 Laura J. Ferris
(Gatchel & Kishino, 2011), with some even defining pain as “…whatever
the experiencing person says it is, existing whenever the person says it does”
(McCaffery, 1968; cited in McCaffery & Beebe, 1994, p. 15). Those pains with-
out an apparent mechanistic etiology have been gradually withdrawn from
the category of “somatization” (Crombez, Beirens, Van Damme, Eccleston, &
Fontaine, 2009), “psychogenic pain,” or as in earlier days, hysteria (Cope, 2009),
and the lived experience of the person in pain became elevated in importance. In
short, scientific examination of the biological and physiological mechanisms of
pain has been exponential, leading to substantial empirical advancements in pain
conceptualisation and treatment (K. D. Craig, 2009; Julius & Basbaum, 2001).
However, advances in pain theory have moved beyond a purely biomedical con-
cept of pain. These developments have opened the door for a more inclusive
conception of pain.
Pain overlap theory

How does social pain fit into the story of pain? The idea of pain overlap chal-
lenges early theories of pain mechanisms because of the absence of specific or
characterized social pain receptors in the body (Papini, Fuchs, & Torres, 2015).
However, modern ideas of pain incorporate the experience of pain as a subjective
sensory and emotional experience – one that may not be associated with tissue
damage (Melzack & Katz, 2013). This concept means that parallels can be drawn
between “feeling hurt” and “hurt feelings,” because if social pain hurts, then it
is pain. This is a controversial premise, but one that reveals several possibilities in
which to consider the overlap between social and physical pain.
MacDonald and Leary (2005) traced out the concept of pain overlap across
psychological, evolutionary, and neurological domains. They pointed to the
prevalence of linguistic metaphors that paint social pain as physically painful:
feeling “crushed,” “wounded,” “emotionally scarred,” or like getting “a slap
in the face” (p. 206). Since this time, researchers have taken a closer look at
the overlap between social and physical pain (Eisenberger, 2008, 2012a, 2012b,
2012c; Eisenberger, Jarcho, Lieberman, & Naliboff, 2006; Kross, Berman,
Mischel, Smith, & Wager, 2011). Neuroimaging studies have shown that physical
pain is associated with activity in an extensive subcortical and cortical network,
referred to as the pain matrix (Legrain, Iannetti, Plaghki, & Mouraux, 2011;
Melzack, 1999, 2005). This network integrates ascending signals and modu-
lates descending feedback, and also includes the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex,
insula, periaqueductal grey, primary somatosensory cortex and prefrontal cortex
(Chapman, 2005; Coghill, McHaffie, & Yen, 2003; Eisenberger, 2012c; Tracey,
2010). A graded fMRI signature that correlates with subjective pain ratings has
been proposed (Wager, Atlas, Lindquist, Roy, Woo, & Kross, 2013), but the
extent to which biological correlates can presently represent multidimensional
pain is contested (Miller, 2009), including in relation to pain overlap (Iannetti
& Mouraux, 2011).
Hurt feelings 103
Particular criticism has been levelled at the reverse inference made in substan-
tiating physical and social pain overlap through co-activation patterns. Iannetti
et al. (2013) contest that overlapping brain activation equates to an exclusive
overlap in subjective mental state (Iannetti et al., 2013, p374), pointing to the
heterogeneity of pain and the inability of current technologies to capture its
diversity. Wager and Atlas (2013) touch the heart of the issue in saying that neu-
roimaging can generate and helpfully constrain cognitive theories “to the extent
that particular patterns of brain activity are sensitively and specifically associated
with particular types of cognitive processes” (p. 91). This debate continues as
imaging and analytical techniques advance (Cacioppo et al., 2013; Lieberman &
Eisenberger, 2015; Rotge et al., 2015; Woo et al., 2014); but ultimately, neural
overlap reveals correlative activation (Poldrack, 2006), and not social-psycho-
logical content per se. Therein lie the richer details in terms of the thoughts and
emotions underpinning how we anticipate, emotionally react to, consciously
reflect upon and conceptualize pain.
By definition, examining overlap has also brought commonalities into sharp
focus, with arguably less enquiry directed toward what makes these phenomena
different to each other. Now, more than ten years on from the original fMRI
findings, researchers have still tended to restrict the focus toward investigations
that reveal similarities in the neural indices of pain (Eisenberger, 2015). Neural
indices do provide an important biological constraint to psychological theoriz-
ing (Wager & Atlas, 2013). Biological correlates of the pain experience offer the
chance of a “clean” measure of the pain experience, but presently reveal only
restricted information about the psychological or social context in which it has
arisen. Consistent with a biopsychosocial approach to pain (Engel, 1977; Gatchel,
Peng, Peters, Fuchs, & Turk, 2007), it is scientifically worthwhile and deeply
important to retain this psychological understanding when conceptualizing and
interrogating pain overlap.
A rose by any other name? “Physical” and “social”

Aside from the debate surrounding the neural signature of pain, there are other
important theoretical implications that stem from the comparison of social and
physical pain. One such implication is evident in the language used to describe
these experiences. The terms “physical” and “social” pain are used to differenti-
ate pain on the basis of its source. Describing pain in terms of physical and social
causes makes intuitive sense, but there are some important caveats. The labels
“physical” and “social” provide a workable but imperfect way to describe and
delineate these two pains, because defining pain based on its origin is controver-
sial. The IASP definition specifically seeks to avoid yoking pain to a stimulus:
pain is always a psychological state, and not necessarily proportionate to nocicep-
tion (IASP, 1994/2017). The idea of pain overlap connects social pain with the
apparent tangibility of physical pain, but modern pain theory eschews the idea
that pain needs a physical cause in order to be “real.”
104 Laura J. Ferris
Accordingly, it is considered loaded discourse to label a pain that is felt in the

body as physical: tautological at best (“all pain is physically experienced”), and
a misnomer at worst (“only physical pain is real pain”). A phenomenological
approach to pain aims to address these tensions, and proposes that all subjectively
felt pain is pain. This unties it from any particular stimulus or objective cause and
situates pain as a product of the brain (Melzack & Katz, 2013). Importantly, this
also clears the path for different pain types to be brought together conceptually
on the basis of overlap in subjective experience – because subjectively, these pains
could feel the same.
Being mindful of this tension in nomenclature is worthwhile because the
literature on pain overlap continues to evolve. MacDonald and Leary (2005)
described social pain as “a specific emotional reaction to the perception that
one is being excluded from desired relationships or being devalued by desired
relationship partners or groups” (p. 202). This aligns with the notion that pain
is subjective, but also pins down the experience as a mere reaction. Traditional
biomedical perspectives on physical pain also captured cognitive and emotional
dimensions of pain as mere reactions to painfulness, rather than components of
it (Melzack, 1999; Melzack & Katz, 2013). Recent approaches treat pain affect
as more than a reaction to sensation – it is now considered a critical constitu-
ent of pain. Bringing psychological dimensions like pain affect into the circle
as constituents of pain has elevated their status, bringing these elements to the
forefront as functionally significant components of painfulness (see for example,
Fernandez & Turk, 1992; Price, 2000).
Are all hurts the same?

So how broad is the concept of pain? With echoes of Bentham’s (1789/1907)
classification of various pains and their kinds, Lieberman and Eisenberger (2009)
have espoused a wide view of what pain might include, suggesting that “[f ]or
every state of deprivation associated with a particular need, there is a pain. Lack
of food begets hunger, lack of water begets thirst, and lack of shelter begets ther-
mal discomfort. Each of these pains motivates us to seek out the salve that will
take the pain away and satisfy the underlying need” (p. 891). This broad concep-
tualization permits the idea that overlap could lie beyond mere unpleasantness
(see also Kross et al., 2011), and that various sources of pain might conceptually
overlap simply by virtue of being painful.
But with certainty, one can say that a heart attack is very different from the
experience of a lover’s rejection; feeling broken hearted does not necessarily mean
one’s heart is truly broken.1 There are important differences between social and
physical pain. Iannetti, Salomons, Moayedi, Mouraux, and Davis (2013) suggest that
these differences are perceptual, and that the two pains are readily distinguished by
reference to how they feel to the person who is undergoing the experience – social
pain presents as emotional distress, while physical pain is experienced as a sensory
and emotional phenomenon. However, this proposes that social pain and physical
Hurt feelings 105
pain are distinguishable because they feel different, and the two experiences con-
tinue to be delineated simply by virtue of the feeling alone.This makes an empirical
resolution elusive, because subjectively, if these pains actually do feel the same, then
they are the same. Even if social pain and physical pain feel the same, these two pains
are psychologically and conceptually inseparable from their antecedents.
Moreover, the social element of pain is integral in understanding the pain
experience, its sequelae, and its functions. In “physicalizing” social pain – by
emphasizing its similarities with physical pain (as opposed to similarities with
other negative emotional states), and searching for an overlap through biological
substrates in the brain (including how social pain might be treated by taking a
pill: see for example, DeWall et al., 2010; cf Durso, Luttrell, & Way, 2015) – the
literature has arguably edged closer to a mechanistic, more constrained meaning
of pain (see Figure 7.1). Instead, by taking the best from both literatures, we can
round out a comprehensive psychological analysis of pain. This simply means a
shift in how pain is approached – a shift to contextualize pain in terms of its ante-
cedents, and the cognitions and emotions surrounding it, with a view to better
conceptualizing how people make meaning and respond to pain. Accounting for
where pain has come from reveals that physical pain and social pain are funda-
mentally different beyond the subjective state.
MECHANISTIC
PHYSICAL PAIN Gate control theory

Biopsychosocial model
SOCIAL PAIN Pain overlap theory

Social pain theory
Pain is whatever
the person
experiencing it
says it is
PHENOMENOLOGICAL
FIGURE 7.1
Schematic of pain theory trajectory with relevance to concepts of pain
as mechanistic and stimulus-based versus subjective and phenomenological
106 Laura J. Ferris
Pain is not a passive percept

Considering how people appraise, make meaning, or anticipate pain moves it
away from a passive percept, and generates a richer set of bases on which to
compare and contrast social and physical pain. A potential side effect of the focus
on neural overlap is the concomitant focus on the specific experience of pain, and
how this is similar – i.e., the way in which common experiential elements or
qualia overlap. Daniel Dennett (1988) has described qualia in terms of “corralling
the quicksilver,” saying that ‘‘[q]ualia is an unfamiliar term for something that
could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us.” (p. 42) 2. With
the focus on imaging overlap, there has been a strong emphasis on these qualities
of the pain-state, and how this experience may be common across pain types.
But this runs the risk of making pain a passive percept, inadvertently diminish-
ing pain to a feeling passively felt. This means there is a risk of overlooking the
cognitive and affective processes surrounding pain. Especially with the emphasis
on the question of where in the brain is overlap found, we may have incidentally
focused on finding an index for pain qualia overlap.
But evidence tells us that context fundamentally shapes pain. With regard to
physical pain, contextual features of pain can readily modulate whether pain is
appraised as damaging or beneficial to the body (Benedetti, Thoen, Blanchard,
Vighetti, & Arduino, 2013). Physical pain that is intentionally administered also
hurts more intensely than unintentional pain (Gray & Wegner, 2008), suggest-
ing that pain’s signaling value can be escalated as well as dampened. Placebo
pain relief remains effective even if the person has insight and knows about the
presence of a placebo.
In applying this premise to overlap, fixing upon similarities only in the experi-
ence of painfulness runs the risk of making pain a passive percept, inadvertently
diminishing pain to a feeling passively felt. This obscures the role of affect, pain
appraisal, attribution, and beliefs and attitudes that contribute to meaning making
(for example, Benedetti et al., 2013; Gray & Wegner, 2008; Lazarus & Folkman,
1984; Moseley & Arntz, 2007; Tomaka, Blascovich, Kibler, & Ernst, 1997). These
are the thoughts and emotions underpinning how we anticipate, emotionally
react to, consciously reflect upon and conceptualize pain. Looking back, conven-
tional perspectives on pain captured cognitive and emotional dimensions of pain
as mere reactions to pain, rather than components of it (Melzack, 1999; Melzack
& Katz, 2013). More recent notions treat pain affect as more than a mere reaction
to pain – it is now considered a critical constituent of pain. Bringing psychologi-
cal dimensions like pain affect into the circle as constituents of pain makes it clear
these are functionally significant components of painfulness (see for example,
Fernandez & Turk, 1992; Price, 2000). However, a thorough analysis must also
look to account for psychological processes beyond the experience, and not sim-
ply those processes viewed as constituting it in a strict sense. A comprehensive
psychological analysis of overlap means bringing these externalities back into the
frame – keeping critical psychological factors within scope.
Hurt feelings 107
What sorts of factors should be considered? We can use the physical pain
literature to illustrate where crossover could be tested. By way of an example,
an extensive literature exists on the role of cognitive and affective factors in
modulating physical pain, which hints at the possibility for deeper comparative
work. For instance, fear and expectation, attentional set and mood all contribute
to physical pain magnitude: anticipating low painfulness can reduce reported
pain (Koyama, McHaffie, Laurienti, & Coghill, 2005), as can prior attentional
set toward non-pain tasks (Van Ryckeghem, Crombez, Eccleston, Legrain, &
Van Damme, 2013) or positive mood (Villemure & Bushnell, 2009; Villemure,
Slotnick, & Bushnell, 2003). Experimentally induced depressed mood heightens
the unpleasantness of physical pain (Berna et al., 2010). Placebo and nocebo
effects for physical pain are well documented (see Tracey, 2010, for review). Fear
of pain and catastrophization amplify painfulness (Campbell & Edwards, 2009;
Sullivan et al., 2001). Significant work has been done to explore the role of fear
(see Crombez, Eccleston, Van Damme, Vlaeyen, & Karoly, 2012 for review)
and catastrophizing (Sullivan, Bishop, & Pivik, 1995) in the transition toward
chronic pain.
A comprehensive picture of how social and physical pain compare across each
of these elements is yet to be explored. However, there are promising instances
of empirical and theoretical work (Riva, Montali, Wirth, Curioni, & Williams,
2016; Riva, Wesselmann, Wirth, Carter-Sowell, & Williams, 2014; Riva,
Williams, & Gallucci, 2014). For example, comparing fear of social and physical
pain, Riva, Williams, et al., (2014) examined crossover in fear of physical and
social “threat” with the development of the Fear of Social Threat Scale (based on
the Fear of Pain Questionnaire; McNeil & Rainwater, 1998). They report the
existence of two discrete fear constructs that are positively correlated, suggest-
ing support for a qualified convergence of fear type (Study 1). However, each
fear type uniquely predicted perceptions of the corresponding pain: in Study 2,
fear of social threat uniquely predicted ratings of social distress from ostracism
in Cyberball, while in Study 3, fear of physical pain uniquely predicted pain
ratings of subsequent physical pain. This shows that there are commonalities
(i.e., crossover in fear of both pain types), but by looking beneath this veneer,
differences emerge, and this adds depth to our understanding of how pain and
fear interrelate.
Further, research has examined memory for, and temporal projections of,
social and physical pain. This has shown that past social pain is more readily and
intensely relived than past physical pain (Chen, Williams, Fitness, & Newton,
2008), and imagined future social pain is more intensely experienced than future
physical pain (Chen & Williams, 2012). Perhaps these differences also reflect the
types of coping mechanisms that are most adaptive in dealing with each kind of
pain (Chen & Williams, 2011; see also Riva, Timeo, & Paladino, 2019). Again,
we see how a psychological lens can reveal where social and physical pain diverge
in important ways. This demonstrates how we can begin to consider similarities
and differences across new domains. By applying a contextualized approach to
108 Laura J. Ferris
pain, the horizons for inquiry are considerably broadened – and this promises a
richer understanding of both pains as a result.
Communicating pain
What then does a neural signature of pain offer? For the outside observer, Scarry
(1985) describes the pain of another as so foreign as to be comparable to “remote
cosmologies” and “unseeable classes of objects”: its obscurity is “a sign of pain’s
triumph, for it achieves its aversiveness in part by bringing about, even within
the radius of several feet, this absolute split between one’s sense of one’s own real-
ity and the reality of other persons.” (p. 4). This begs the question; can we ever
truly know someone else’s pain?
Recent research indicates that the pain of others can at least feel as if it were our
own. Building on previous findings on the effects of observing social exclusion
(Wesselmann, Bagg, & Williams, 2009), Giesen and Echterhoff (2017) invited
participants to observe or experience ostracism, and then to report their own
levels of mood and need threat. They found that simply viewing others playing
the Cyberball ostracism induction game had a negative effect on mood and elic-
ited need threat, just like when participants themselves were excluded. Empathy
for others’ physical pain has also been reported across a wide range of settings
and measurement approaches (see for example, K. D. Craig, Versloot, Goubert,
Vervoort, & Crombez, 2010; Issner, Cano, Leonard, & Williams, 2012; Jackson,
Meltzoff, & Decety, 2005; Morrison, Tipper, Fenton-Adams, & Bach, 2012;
Osborn & Derbyshire, 2010; Singer & Frith, 2005; Singer et al., 2004). Notably,
for both social and physical pain, empathy for pain is socially moderated – for
example, outgroup members’ social pain is less severe than ingroup members’
(Riva & Andrighetto, 2012), and viewing racial outgroup members in physical
pain elicits less activation in the brain regions associated with empathy than see-
ing racial ingroup members in pain (Xu, Zuo, Wang, & Han, 2009).
However, the question of accuracy remains important for clinical decision
making. Self-reporting has served as the “gold standard” for the measurement
of pain as a private and subjective experience (Brown, Chatterjee, Younger, &
Mackey, 2011), but it also carries its limitations.There is debate on how effectively
self-reported pain can truly represent pain. Efforts continue toward a sensitive,
specific and clinically useful biomarker for pain, using neuroimaging methods
which might bypass the first-person account (Brown, Chatterjee, Younger, &
Mackey, 2011; Wager et al., 2013; cf Legrain et al., 2011). Beyond the desire for
research functionality, or legal probity (Salmanowitz, 2015), compelling practical
reasons exist for a solution that adds more to the toolkit than self-reporting alone.
Preverbal children, nonverbal patients, behaviorally nonresponsive patients and
others can present unique challenges for which clinicians and patients require
more options for communicating, imaging, and understanding their pain. In some
settings, measurement is highly controversial (for example, in determining foetal
and neonatal pain: Lee, Ralston, Drey, Partridge, & Rosen, 2005).
Hurt feelings 109
Looking deeper, Wager and Atlas (2013) suggest that self-reporting fails to
fully characterize the physical pain experience and its underpinning processes,
and point to the need to distinguish social cognitive processes from the experi-
ence itself. A key aim in the field today remains to assess pain independent of self-
reporting, and to scientifically capture the biological processes of pain (Wager
& Atlas, 2013). This seems to recreate pain as a biological puzzle (Morris, 1991)
to be solved by learned and detached observers. From a critical perspective, it
carries echoes of Scarry’s (1985) picture of the dark side of 20th century medi-
cal approaches, seeing “the patient as an ‘unreliable narrator’ of bodily events, a
voice which must be bypassed as quickly as possible so that they can get around
and behind it to the physical events themselves” (p. 6). Nevertheless, this ten-
sion remains hotly debated. Functional neuroimaging of pain offers the promise
of a clean and objective measure, ostensibly clear of noise from other factors
which might potentially impact upon pain reports, such as demand characteris-
tics, cultural or social norms, practitioner expectations (De Ruddere, Goubert,
Vervoort, Kappesser, & Crombez, 2013; Kappesser, de C. Williams, & Prkachin,
2006), or even malingering; functional neuroimaging provides the best avail-
able biological correlates of the pain experience (Wager & Atlas, 2013). Cutting
across diverse literatures, there is intense discussion about how best to infer spe-
cific cognitive processes and mental states on the basis of neuroimaging evidence
(Poldrack, 2006). There continues to be strong value in investigating biological
correlates of physical and social pain, but not to the neglect of other domains of
enquiry.
Knowing pain, using pain

Even though pain is an internal experience, intimately unknowable, Glucklich
(2003) points out, “[i]t is inconceivable that the suffering of Christ on the cross,
or the astounding martyrdom of the saints, or that of Rabbi Akiva or Al-Hallaj,
would mean anything to anyone unless pain was intrinsically shareable” (p. 63).
Knowing when another being is in pain also informs our moral lives – helping
to answer intractable questions about which methods of capital punishment
might constitute cruel and unusual punishment; about the boundaries of com-
passionate palliative treatment of pain and euthanasia; about animal rights and
whether an animal ought to be subjected to pain. Communicating pain may
be instinctual or reflexive, such as physical withdrawal from noxious stimuli,
pain vocalisation, or facial expression. Conveying pain may also be agentic and
transactional, in order to draw the attention of others to our circumstances
(Hadjistavropoulos et al., 2011). This is important because the social resources
we have at our disposal when we are in pain can influence how the pain is
experienced (Ferris, Jetten, Molenberghs, Bastian, & Karnadewi, 2016; Jones &
Jetten, 2011; Master et al., 2009).
Pain’s inherent aversiveness implies that human beings will always seek to
avoid it. However, evidence from cultural, social, and clinical psychology;
110 Laura J. Ferris
anthropology; and sociology – not to mention everyday anecdotal experience –

readily tells us this is not so (Baumeister, 1989/2014; Bentley, Nock, & Barlow,
2014; Franklin et al., 2013; Nock, 2010; Richert, Whitehouse, & Stewart, 2005;
Whitehouse, 1996). Pain may be sought out for social, cultural, or religious
reasons (Bridel, 2010; Glucklich, 2003; Mann, Feddes, Doosje, & Fischer, 2015;
Xygalatas, Konvalinka, Bulbulia, & Roepstorff, 2011; Xygalatas et al., 2013),
or even simply to alleviate boredom (Wilson et al., 2014). Experiencing pain
attracts a plethora of meanings – pain may signal damage to tissues, but it also
may represent change in social status through a rite of passage or punishment;
symbolizing cleansing or purification, such as in religious practice, or impurity
or tarnishing via unwanted assault; an indication to stop, or a sign to keep going,
as in sustained efforts such as in a triathlon or marathon (Aldrich & Eccleston,
2000; Scott, Cayla, & Cova, 2017).
Bastian, Jetten, Hornsey, and Leknes (2014) have persuasively argued that
engaging with pain is important in unlocking other benefits beyond threat man-
agement. They suggest that pain facilitates pleasure; enables self-regulation; and
promotes social bonding (Bastian, Jetten, & Ferris, 2014), and argue that a host
of psychosocial benefits may remain obscured, or be only partially realised, if
we just focus on maximising pleasure and avoiding pain. Indeed, the popular-
ity of collective painful practices, such as cold swims, marathons, and physical
challenge events, suggests a side to pain and even enjoyment that is worthy of
additional scientific scrutiny.
However, it is less clear whether social pain is similarly sought out. There is
a diverse typology of social exclusion (see Wesselmann, Michels, & Slaughter,
2019). On one hand, there are examples of symbolic or religious self-segre-
gation and isolation where social exclusion is chosen, and even welcomed
(Kaufmann, 2011). But on the other hand, for social pain, even rejection by
unvalued groups and inanimate entities remains hurtful and disrupts our social
equilibrium (Gonsalkorale & Williams, 2007). Even social exclusion by comput-
ers, to whom intentionality cannot rationally be imputed, still hurts regardless
(Zadro, Williams, & Richardson, 2004). Instances of benign masochism and
painful physical challenges suggest that physical pain can ultimately be mastered,
and even enjoyed (Klein, 2014; Rozin, Guillot, Fincher, Rozin, & Tsukayama,
2013). The situation for social pain is perhaps less straightforward – in acknowl-
edgement that humans have evolved to cooperate and share with kith and kin,
our fundamental need to belong may well be much harder to master.
Conclusions
Pain is a seminal human experience with clear evolutionary value in signal-
ling threats to survival (A. D. Craig, 2003); with positive as well as negative
psychological consequences (Bastian, Jetten, Hornsey, et al., 2014); and with
diverse sociocultural meanings (Aldrich & Eccleston, 2000; Glucklich, 2003).
A scientific approach to pain reasonably leads to a desire to confine pain to what
Hurt feelings 111
is observable, measurable, and even what is treatable (Bendelow & Williams,

1995). So far, both social and physical pain remain elusive to perfect scientific
extraction, despite technological advances. Pain remains complex and private,
resisting objective scrutiny and measurement. Rather than suggesting scientific
efforts are futile, these difficulties are a reminder that a comprehensive under-
standing of pain is where our best and most innovative efforts can be directed.
Since the mid-20th century, nothing short of a revolution has taken place in how
pain is conceptualized (Melzack & Katz, 2013; Melzack & Wall, 1965; Moayedi
& Davis, 2013). Alongside biomedical advancements, a growing acknowledg-
ment of the psychosocial dimensions of pain has emerged (Fernandez & Turk,
1992; Garland, 2012; Gatchel, Peng, Peters, Fuchs, & Turk, 2007; Morris, 1991;
A. C. de C. Williams & Craig, 2016). The associated theoretical and empirical
advancements have facilitated a flourishing literature on social and physical pain
overlap.
The latest conceptual advances have highlighted the critical role of social
psychology, with its ontological traditions of scientific concern for cognitions,
emotions, and the behaviour of groups and individuals. Social psychological
examinations of pain thus represent the forefront of this area of research, where
much exciting ground is yet to be covered. There is promising research into cog-
nitive–affective modulators of physical pain, but the extent and nature of overlap
between social and physical pain along these and other lines remains largely
untested. These examples hint at the range of comparative opportunities where
similarities and differences between pain types can be examined. Even though
pain is a private, interoceptive experience (Scarry, 1985), it occurs within a soci-
ocultural context. This context can influence the frequency and duration of pain
exposure, cognitions and emotions about pain, and how we communicate pain
(Hadjistavropoulos et al., 2011; Williams & Craig, 2016). A broader psychologi-
cal approach to pain can reinvigorate inquiry into social and physical pain that
specifically extends over and above their common experiential elements.
Notes
1 There exists a condition known as broken heart syndrome, which is considered a stress-
induced cardiomyopathy primarily featured in the left ventricle of the heart and medi-
ated by an excess in circulating catecholamines (Nussinovitch, Goitein, Nussinovitch,
& Altman, 2011; Peters, George, & Irimpen, 2015; Ueyama, 2004). However, this
stress-induced form of transient systolic dysfunction can also be induced by positive
emotional events (Ghadri et al., 2016), and there is no evidence to suggest its equiva-
lence to social pain in terms of aetiology, prevalence, or sequelae.
2 Notably, Dennett went on to argue for the non-existence of qualia – a debate with
which we do not engage here.
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8
PHYSIOSTRACISM
A case for non-invasive measures of
arousal in ostracism research
Ilja van Beest and Willem Sleegers
Being excluded and ignored has a powerful influence on people’s well-being.

Social isolation has been associated with both physical and psychological det-
riments (Cacioppo, Hawkley, & Berntson, 2003), and even brief episodes of
ostracism can experiences result in distress, negative emotions, and decreased
fundamental needs (Baumeister & Tice, 1990; Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000;
Zadro, Williams, & Richardson, 2004). Following ostracism, people respond
with various behaviors. In some cases, people respond with affiliative attempts
to restore one’s inclusion (Maner, DeWall, Baumeister, & Schaller, 2007), in
other cases, they display aggressive tendencies after being excluded (Maner et al.,
2007; Twenge, Baumeister, Tice, & Stucke, 2001). This range of affective and
behavioral responses show that the ostracism experience is a painful experience.
Crucially, this painful experience should not only be observed in behavioral and
affective outcomes, but should also be accompanied by physiological changes.
Physiological measures and ostracism

There is increasing interest in assessing the physiological responses to being
ostracized. Perhaps most notable is the sizable literature on the neurophysiology
underlying the ostracism experience. Using such tools as functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), researchers have
demonstrated that being excluded or rejected activates the anterior insula and the
anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) (Cacioppo et al., 2013; Eisenberger, 2012, 2015;
Rotge et al., 2015). These findings have been interpreted to show that ostracism
is a painful experience, and ultimately postulating, although not without contro-
versy, that this experience of social pain relies on the same neural underpinnings
that are involved in the experience of physical pain (for further discussion, see
Ferris, 2019).
Physiostracism 121
Researchers have also used physiological tools to assess the temporal dynamics
of being ostracized. For example, using tools such as fMRI and EEG, it has been
demonstrated that attention to exclusionary cues decreases over time (Gunther
Moor et al., 2012; Themanson, Khatcherian, Ball, & Rosen, 2013). Despite a
decrease in attention, the intensity of the experienced social pain appears to
increase over time (Wesselman, Wirth, Mroczek, & Williams, 2012). This latter
finding has also been found using facial EMG. Facial EMG activity over the cor-
rugator supercilii is an indication of subjectively experienced affect, with pleas-
ant stimuli eliciting less activity, and unpleasant stimuli eliciting more activity
than neutral stimuli would (Larsen, Norris, & Cacioppo, 2003). As shown by
Kawamoto, Nittono, and Ura (2013), ostracism indeed results in increased facial
EMG activity over time, even when the participants believed the ostracism was
being executed by a computer—a finding consistent with other studies showing
that the aversive effects of ostracism are easily evoked (Zadro et al., 2004).
In addition to neurophysiological assessments and EMG, researchers have also
focused on autonomic physiological proxies such as cardiovascular reactivity,
skin temperature, and skin conductance. Gunther Moor, Crone, and van der
Molen (2010) used electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings to measure the beat-by-
beat heart rate response to rejection, and found a slowing of transient heart rate
in addition to a delayed return to baseline. This was particularly the case when
the rejection was unexpected, which supports the idea that expectations are an
important component of people’s response to social threats such as rejection and
ostracism (also see Wesselmann, Wirth, & Bernstein, 2017).
IJzerman et al. (2012) assessed skin temperature by means of a small ther-
mometer attached to the finger tips and found that ostracized participants’ skin
temperature lowered as they were ostracized. This is likely the result of vasocon-
striction, a state in which the blood vessels are narrowed in order to maintain
body heat within the body’s core, but not in peripheral areas like the fingers
(Rimm-Kaufman & Kagan, 1996).
Finally, several researchers have used skin conductance to further develop
our understanding of the ostracism experience. Changes in sympathetic galvanic
skin conductance are a biological index of autonomic arousal, gauged either in
terms of a phasic response to a single stimulus: the skin conductance response
(SCR); or a slow tonic modulation of sympathetic arousal: the skin conductance
level (SCL). Kelly, McDonald, and Rushy (2012) used SCL to measure the auto-
nomic response to participants as they played Cyberball. Cyberball is a game that
is popularly used as an experimental manipulation of ostracism. In Cyberball,
participants play a ball tossing game, often with fictional players, and are either
included by receiving an equal number of ball tosses compared to the other
players, or they are excluded when they receive less ball tosses than the other
players. Kelly, McDonald, and Rushy (2012) found that when participants were
included, there was a marked decrement in SCL over the course of the Cyberball
game, whereas there was no such decrement when participants were ostracized.
Similarly, Kouchaki and Wareham (2015) also found higher SCL arousal levels
122 Ilja van Beest and Willem Sleegers
following ostracism, although they found increasing levels of skin conductance

during ostracism.
Sijtsema, Shoulberg, & Murray-Close (2011) used variability between par-
ticipants to predict aggressive behaviors. They showed that girls who responded
with a blunted physiological “fight or flight” response to a game of Cyberball—
as assessed with SCR—were more likely to display relational aggression, whereas
those who showed a heightened fight or flight response were more likely to
display physical aggression.
Based on the findings described here, it is clear that physiological measures
are popular and add to our understanding of how people respond to ostracism.
However, despite these contributions, all of the physiological measures discussed
so far share a particular limitation: each measure involves the placement of elec-
trodes (EEG, EMG, ECG, SCR or SCL, skin temperature) and/or the placement
of the participant in a confined space (fMRI). In other words, these measures are
invasive measures of physiological arousal.
Limitations of invasive measures

Invasive measures of arousal come with several limitations. One limitation is
that physiological arousal measurement tools can themselves evoke arousal.
The placing of electrodes on the skin or placing a participant in a confined
space can be arousing, or is at least expected by the participant to evoke
arousal. This may hinder the assessment of arousal in two ways. First, the
arousal evoked by the device may directly interfere with the arousal evoked
by the stimulus. That is, the arousal evoked by the measurement device may
interact with the arousal caused by the stimulus in unexpected ways. Second,
participants may attribute any felt arousal caused by the stimulus to the meas-
urement tool (e.g., see Croyle & Cooper, 1983). This is particularly relevant
when a relationship is investigated between the physiological arousal response
and subsequent behavior. When a relationship is posited between a physiologi-
cal response and a behavior, it is necessary that the participant ascribes the felt
arousal to the correct origin. If the participant believes the arousal stems from
the measurement device, he or she may not experience the arousal as aversive,
and may therefore not be motivated to perform the necessary behavior in order
to reduce the aversive arousal.
There are several solutions to this problem. One solution is to use within-
subjects designs so that only relative comparisons are made within the arousing
context. When a constant measuring context is used, any changes in arousal are
likely to be the result of the experimental manipulation rather than the meas-
urement device; hence valuable inferences can be drawn. However, it may not
always be possible to rely on within-subject effects (i.e., when there are strong
ordering effects), and it may not be ideal to have only relative comparisons (Bless
& Burger, 2016). In certain cases, it is more desirable to have an assessment of
arousal in which the arousal is caused only by the experimental manipulation.
Physiostracism 123
A second solution is to use baseline periods at the start of the experiment so

that the participant can acclimate to the measurement device. By giving the
participant some time to adjust to their new situation the arousal may subside,
after which it should no longer interfere with the researcher’s goal. However, it
is uncertain how long this baseline period should be, as this is partly influenced
by personal characteristics such as prior experience with physiological measures.
In some cases, it may also be impossible to fully acclimate to the device, such
as with fMRI measures, whose restricted space and noise may remain arous-
ing. Incidentally, the use of baselines may result in longer experimental sessions
which may lower the willingness of people to participate in the experiment, thus
limiting the sample that can be obtained.
A third, potentially better solution is to use non-invasive measures.
Technological improvements have resulted in new measures that are non-inva-
sive because they assess arousal without the need for electrodes or without the
need to confine the participant. We will highlight two of these measures: ther-
mal imaging and pupillometry.
Thermal imaging
Thermal imaging, thermography, functional infrared imaging, or infrared ther-
mography is a safe and increasingly affordable technique that records the radiation
of energy released from the body. The principle of thermal imaging is relatively
straightforward: Because all objects emit infrared radiation as a function of their
temperature, researchers can thus infer temperature from the radiation that they
emit. In people, thermal imaging has been used to capture temperature changes
associated with metabolism, blood flow, breathing patterns, heart rate, muscle
movement, and vasoconstriction (for a review see Ioannou, Gallesse & Merla,
2014). Thermal imaging has been directly compared to its more invasive coun-
terparts (e.g., electrocardiography, piezoelectric thorax stripe for breathing, nasal
thermistors, GSR), showing that thermal imaging is just as reliable (e.g., Coli,
Fontanella, Ippoliti, & Merla, 2007; Kuraoka & Nakamura, 2011; Shastri, Merla,
Tsiamyrtzis, Pavlidis, 2009). Consequently, thermal imaging can be used to
assess changes in the autonomic nervous system (general arousal) and even spe-
cific temperature patterns associated with emotions such as anger, disgust, fear,
joy, and sadness (Cruz-Albarrran, Benitez-Rangel, Osornio-Rios, & Morales-
Hernandez, 2017).
What makes this technique relatively non-invasive is that the device used to
capture thermal imaging operates like a regular video camera. Participants are
seated in front of a monitor that displays the stimulus material and the video
camera is placed above or to the side of it so that a particular part of the body
is recorded (e.g., the face or hand). Although researchers can opt to restrain the
participants in order to decrease their movement and ease the analysis of the
temperature data, modern solutions do not require it. As a consequence, thermal
cameras can be used to observe physiological changes in a relatively non-invasive
manner. Moreover, given that Cyberball is typically administered via a com-

puter, thermal imaging is a viable tool to study physiological changes that occur
when people participate in this online ball tossing game.
An illustration of the use of thermal imaging in studying ostracism is provided
by Paolini, Alparone, Cardone, van Beest, and Merla (2016), who conducted
two experiments in which participants were either participating in Cyberball or
watching a game of Cyberball. In both experiments they manipulated whether
the focal player (i.e, the participant in Experiment 1 or the observed player in
Experiment 2) was equally included or ostracized. In addition, they also var-
ied whether the other players of the game were similar (ingroup) or dissimilar
(outgroup). Results were consistent across the two experiments. In both experi-
ments, there was an increase in facial temperature (the nose and mouth areas)
in the ostracism conditions compared to the inclusion conditions. This pattern
of results is consistent with a stress response (Pavlidis et al., 2002; Puri et al.,
2005; Shastri et al., 2009). Moreover, this pattern was stronger in the ingroup
conditions than in the outgroup conditions. These findings advance research on
ostracism in several ways. First, they demonstrate that the typical stress response
observed in self-reported feelings is associated with increased autonomic activity.
Moreover, expanding research on vicarious ostracism (Wesselmann, Williams,
& Hales, 2013), reveals that vicarious experience and actual experience are
remarkably similar. And finally, the findings highlight that it might be fruitful
to reconsider whether immediate responses to ostracism are relatively impervi-
ous to moderating variables (Eck, Schoel & Greifeneder, 2016; Hartgerink, van
Beest, Wicherts, & Williams, 2015). Prior research on ostracism typically shows
that self-reported need satisfaction and mood is less affected by whether people
are ostracized by similar or dissimilar others (Gonsalkorale & Williams, 2007;
Zadro, Williams & Richardson, 2004; Fayant, Muller, Hartgerink, Lantian,
2014). Yet, the findings of Paolini and colleagues show that physiological mark-
ers of stress may be mitigated by who ostracizes whom. This is in line with prior
physiological research on emotions which point to the presence of moderator
variables in the relation of affective states and autonomic nervous system activity
(Cacioppo et al., 2000). This raises the question of whether physiological meas-
ures may be more sensitive to experimental changes, as compared to self-report
measures. Unlike self-report measures, physiological measures are less prone to
reporting biases, such as social desirability and biased recollection (Thomas &
Diener, 1990).
The findings of Paolini et al. (2016) showing an increase in facial temperature
differ from those of the previously discussed findings by IJzerman et al. (2012),
which showed a decrease in the finger’s temperature. This difference in tempera-
ture from different parts of the human body is not unprecedented. For example,
prior research has observed a difference in temperature patterns when measur-
ing the hands and faces of people made to react to negative/positive films and
threatening personal questions (Rimm-Kaufman & Kagan, 1996). Specifically,
this research revealed that the temperature of the hand was more variable and
Physiostracism 125
generally lower than that of the face. Moreover, threatening personal questions
in particular led to a cooling of the hand and a warming of the face. These find-
ings highlight the different temperature patterns expected depending on the
localization of the measurement.
Another question is whether a more specific region of interest would allow
for a more careful analysis of what type of arousal is experienced. Paolini et
al., (2016) did not predefine specific regions of interest associated with specific
emotions. Given new insights on how thermal imaging may be used to capture
specific emotions (Cruz-Albarrran, et al., 2017), it seems that researchers could
thus also use this technology to tease out specific negative emotions that are
associated with ostracism. Some have argued that it may be beneficial to tease
out anger from sadness, because anger may be associated with a lowered sense of
competence, whereas sadness may be associated with a lowered sense of warmth
(Celik et al., 2013), which may itself be associated with differences in affiliative,
and anti-social or even downright aggressive behavior.
Thermal imaging might also be a good method to explore whether all mod-
erating variables are equally strong in mitigating arousal. Paolini et al. (2016)
changed the person who was responsible. That is, they highlighted the social
nature of the situation. Other researchers have also proposed that it might be
possible to mitigate the experience of ostracism by using moderators that are
perhaps less social in nature, such as whether the ostracism is associated with
financial benefits (Lelieveld et al., 2013; Van Beest & Williams, 2006) or based
on an individual’s ability to keep up (De Waal-Andrews & van Beest, 2012;
2018). Future research could explore whether social and less-social cross-cutting
variables are equally likely to mitigate immediate physiological responses.
It should be acknowledged that thermal imaging also has its limitations. One
potential limitation is that thermal imaging is not a temporally quick method
in assessing arousal. For example, Kuraoka and Nakamura (2011) observed that
GSR has a latency of three seconds, whereas the fastest observable change that
they were able to record with thermal imaging appeared to be around ten sec-
onds. Also, researchers should provide optimal conditions to reliably measure
temperature change (Fernandez-Cuevas et al., 2015). For example, it takes about
10–20 minutes for a human body to acclimatize to the temperature of a room,
so researchers should ensure that the overall temperature of the room is equal for
all participants. In short, although thermal imaging is a non-evasive measuring
tool that allows researchers to assess a wide range of physiological changes, it
remains a tool that has potential drawbacks. Researchers should take precautions
to ensure that their findings are not confounded by variations in temperature
which are not related to their experiments.
Pupillometry
Pupillometry is the technique of measuring the size of the pupil. The pupil is a
hole located in the center of the iris, through which light enters the eye and hits
the retina, thereby enabling vision. The pupil displays both large-scale changes
in size as well as minor fluctuations. The large-scale changes in size are the
result of vision-related reflexes. The light reflex changes the size of the pupil
in response to the intensity (luminance) of the light, while the accommodation
reflex results in pupillary changes as a result of focusing on objects at varying
distances (Beatty & Lucero-Wagoner, 2000). However, besides these large-scale
changes, the pupil also displays small fluctuations that appear to be the result of
affective and cognitive psychological processes, or arousal more generally.
Perhaps the most well-known pupillometric findings are from the study by
Hess and Polt (1960) who presented male and female adults with semi-nude
erotic pictures of both sexes, as well as with pictures of babies. Both males and
females showed increased pupil size while looking at pictures of the opposite
sex; only women showed greater pupil size in response to babies. These findings
have since been replicated using experimental designs in which participants were
presented with stimuli, both pictures and sounds, which varied in their affec-
tive content (Bradley & Lang, 2000; Bradley, Miccoli, Escrig, & Lang, 2008;
Partala & Surakka, 2003). Both positive and negative stimuli produced larger
pupil sizes, compared to neutral stimuli. The pupil also appeared to respond
to the experience of pain (Chapman, Oka, Bradshaw, Jacobson, & Donaldson,
1999; Ellermeier & Westphal, 1995; Höfle, Kentntner-Mabiala, Pauli, & Alpers,
2008). For example, Ellermeier & Westphal (1995) applied tonic pressure to the
fingers of participants and assessed the pupillary response, as well as subjective
pain reports. Their results show that pupil size correlated both with the intensity
of the pain-inducing stimulus and participants’ subjective judgments.
Pupillometry has also been used to study cognitive processes. Pupil dilation
has been observed during memory load (Kahneman & Beatty, 1966), mental cal-
culations (Hess & Polt, 1964), language processing (Beatty & Lucero-Wagoner,
1978), task error (i.e., being mistaken; Brown et al., 1999; Critchley, Tang,
Glaser, Butterworth, & Dolan, 2005), and expectancy violations (Preuschoff,
’t Hart, & Einhäuser, 2011; Raisig, Welke, Hagendorf, & van der Meer, 2010;
Raisig, Hagendorf, & van der Meer, 2012; Sleegers, Proulx, & Van Beest, 2015).
The role of pupil size in both affective and cognitive processes indicates that
pupil size is not a marker of a specific psychological process, but rather a state of
arousal more generally.
The relationship between pupil size and arousal stems from its association
with the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system. The LC-NE system
is involved in the regulation of engagement or withdrawal behavior by releasing
NE through projections from the LC in the forebrain (for a review, see Aston-
Jones & Cohen, 2005). Studies in both humans and non-humans have shown that
pupil size changes closely resemble LC-NE activity (Gilzenrat, Nieuwenhuis,
Jepma, & Cohen, 2010; Joshi et al., 2016; Varazzani et al., 2015; Murphy et al.,
2014). The rich history of pupillometric research in a wide variety of psychologi-
cal topics, as well as its known relationship with the brain’s adrenergic circuitry,
make pupillometry a valid proxy for the study of physiological arousal.
Physiostracism 127
Equally important, however, is the fact that technological improvements to eye

trackers have made pupillometry affordable, easy-to-use, and non-invasive. For a
long period of time, researchers had to constrain participants using headrests as
they took photographs of their pupils. Afterwards, they would manually measure
the size of the pupils using a basic ruler. Modern eye trackers, however, often
consist of screen-based solutions. Participants are seated in front of a standard
computer monitor that is equipped with a bar, often positioned above or below
the monitor, which houses infrared sensors. The infrared sensors create a reflec-
tion pattern on the participants’ cornea, which can be recorded by the eye tracker
to determine the size of each eye’s pupil. Importantly, this can be done from a
distance, without having to restrain the participant. As the participant is seated in
front of the monitor, they are free to move as they would during a standard lab
experiment, thus making modern eye trackers substantially more non-invasive.
Sleegers, Proulx, and van Beest (2017) applied pupillometry to develop a bet-
ter understanding of the predominant process responsible for the aversive experi-
ence of being ostracized. As mentioned previously, researchers in the ostracism
literature have postulated that the experience of social pain may literally resem-
ble a state of physical pain. That is, the same neural circuitry that is responsible
for the experience of physical pain is also used for social pain (Eisenberger, 2012,
2015). This idea has found additional empirical support in studies showing that
acetaminophen, a pain killer, reduces the emotional experience of social pain
(DeWall et al., 2010; Vangelisti, Pennebaker, Brody, & Guinn, 2014), and that
being socially excluded reduces pain sensitivity, both in terms of higher pain
thresholds and higher tolerance (DeWall & Baumeister, 2006). Furthermore,
Riva, Wirth, and Williams (2011) have shown that physical pain threatens
basic need satisfaction similar to how common ostracism manipulations such as
Cyberball affect basic need satisfaction. In terms of pupillometry, this means that
an ostracism experience should result in a diminished pupil size as people should
numb to the social pain.
However, some have argued that important factors in the response to ostracism
are social norms, as well as one’s own expectations (Greifeneder & Rudert, 2019;
Wesselman, Wirth, & Bernstein, 2017). Ostracizing events, particularly those
in lab settings, are often ambiguous. No reasons are provided for the ostracism.
Being ostracized without good reason violates implicit norms about fairness.
Consequently, being ostracized is a violation of one’s expectations, and should
result in an increased pupil size (e.g., Preuschoff, ’t Hart, & Einhäuser, 2011).
There is some evidence that ostracism may result in increased pupil dilation,
although this has not been investigated yet using typical ostracism paradigms.
Instead, researchers have applied pupillometry to social feedback paradigms in
which people are either accepted or rejected for a certain task. They found that
being rejected indeed results in a larger pupil size response (Silk et al., 2012;
Vanderhasselt, Remue, Ng, Mueller, & de Raedt, 2015). However, to date, no
studies have been done on pupillometry within the context of the most common
ostracism manipulation: Cyberball.
Sleegers, Proulx, & van Beest (2017) applied pupillometry to Cyberball to

see whether their participants’ pupils would increase following ostracism cues,
thereby indicating a violation of expectations and aversive arousal; or diminish,
indicating a numbing response consistent with the idea of a social-physical pain
overlap. In a first study, participants completed a standard Cyberball game of 90
ball tosses in which they were equally included. Following the first game, they
then played a second game in which they were excluded. The pupillary response
to ostracism cues (i.e., not receiving the ball) was compared between the first
inclusion game and the second exclusion game. Results were consistent with a
numbing response, as the pupillary response to not receiving the ball was smaller
in the ostracism game than it was in the inclusion game. To check for potential
ordering effects, a second study was conducted in which the order was reversed:
participants first completed a Cyberball game in which they were excluded, after
which they played an inclusion game. The results of the second study showed
that the order indeed matters. Differences in pupillary response to ostracism cues
between the inclusion and exclusion game were greatly diminished. However, a
between study comparison revealed that the numbing response was replicated:
there was less pupillary dilation in response to the ostracism cues in the first
Cyberball game of Study 2 (the exclusion game) compared to the first study of
Study 1 (an inclusion game). The results thus appear to favor a numbing response
to being ostracized.
However, the design of these two studies does not completely rule out the
role of expectations. A game of Cyberball is a single ostracism experience, begin-
ning with uncertainty about one’s stance in the game, and turning over to the
realization that one is ostracized. In other words, expectations may initially be
violated, but these are later updated by the events in the game. Not receiv-
ing the ball therefore becomes a confirmation of expectations, rather than a
violation. To test for this possibility, we conducted a new study in which we
included an overinclusion condition. In this condition, participants received the
ball more frequently than the other players in the game, and only rarely did they
not receive the ball. In this condition, not receiving the ball violates the equal
share norm in Cyberball, constituting a violation of expectations which should
result in an increase in pupil size. Receiving the ball should show the previously
found numbing response, that is, a decrease in pupil size, because it confirms
the expectation that one is being included. Because in this design the pupil-
lary response to receiving the ball was compared with not receiving the ball,
the Cyberball game was changed to a vicarious Cyberball game. Participants
were observers rather than players, so that receiving the ball was not associated
with also having to make a decision about where to throw the ball, which could
interfere with the pupillometry results. The results were again consistent with a
numbing response. The lowest pupillary response was observed for not receiving
the ball in the overinclusion condition. This rare event should have resulted in an
increase in pupil size if expectations play a role, but instead showed the opposite
pattern of the results. It thus appears that the result favor a numbing response.
Physiostracism 129
Future directions
The two examples of non-invasive measuring discussed here demonstrate that
these are valuable tools in deepening our understanding of ostracism. The study
by Paolini et al. (2016) shows that thermal imaging may be used to investigate
the impact of moderating the variables of the ostracism experience, and the study
by Sleegers et al. (2017) shows how pupillometry can be used to investigate
the underlying process, a violation of expectations or pain, during ostracism.
Of course, these are only two examples, but it is our hope that they demon-
strate the potential of non-invasive measures, and that they may also be used to
address other outstanding questions. For example, we are not aware of studies
using pupillometry and/or thermal imaging which focus directly on the relation
between experienced arousal and subsequent coping behavior.
In the beginning of this chapter, we noted that invasive measures of arousal
such as fMRI, EEG, EMG, skin conductance, and finger temperature have limi-
tations that are less present in non-invasive measures such as thermal imaging
and pupillometry. Invasive measures may induce arousal, thereby hindering the
interpretation of results, and they may also remove the possibility of demon-
strating a link between arousal and subsequent behavior. Given the difficulty in
demonstrating this link (see Mauss et al., 2005), we believe that non-invasive
measures may provide certain benefits that can help in this area of research.
Although no studies have yet been performed to explicitly test whether non-
invasive measures may be better suited for testing the arousal-behavior link,
there is some precedence to believe this may be the case. In the cognitive dis-
sonance literature, it has been demonstrated that arousal plays an important role
in how people respond to the experience of dissonance, using the misattribution
of arousal paradigm (e.g., Losch & Cacioppo, 1990; Zanna & Cooper, 1974).
In this paradigm, the participant is given a placebo pill or put in an ambiguous
situation, and told that the pill or situation may cause anxious symptoms. Then,
when the participant faces the study’s manipulation, which should result in anx-
ious symptoms, the participant can readily ascribe these symptoms to the pill
or situation, rather than the study’s manipulation. Consequently, the manipula-
tion does not have an effect on the behavior. An illustration of this limitation
is provided by Croyle and Cooper (1983), who performed a standard cognitive
dissonance paradigm in which students had to argue for a ban on alcohol. They
found the typical predicted pattern of attitude change—students in the high
choice condition displayed greater attitude change than those in the low choice
condition. Interestingly, this effect disappeared in a second study, which con-
tained a skin conductance measure of arousal. The presence of the arousal meas-
urement provided participants with a source to which they could attribute any
felt arousal, thereby removing the need to change their attitude. We argue that
invasive measures may thus be limited in demonstrating a link between arousal
and behavior that is less likely to be the case of less invasive measures. Future
research could explicitly test this assertion.
In the current chapter we have argued that thermal imaging and pupillom-
etry are non-invasive measures of psychophysiological arousal. Although it is
clear that measures differ in the extent to which they are invasive (e.g., fMRI
vs. screen-based pupillometry), the difference is one of degree rather than kind.
Relative to measures that require physical contact (e.g., SCR, EEG), we believe
that measures that do not rely on physical contact (e.g., thermal imaging, pupil-
lometry) are less invasive. However, this does not render them entirely noninva-
sive. The presence of a camera, as is the case with thermal imaging, may still be
regarded as invasive. In fact, the very idea of a physiological assessment may be
regarded as invasive.
Thermal imaging and pupillometry, despite their potentially noninvasive
capabilities to detect arousal, also share certain limitations with their more inva-
sive counterparts. Like fMRI and skin conductance, thermal imaging’s response
time is in the realm of seconds, rather than milliseconds. This prevents this tech-
nique from being used to study high time resolution phenomena; where pupil-
lometry is more suited. However, pupillometry, like EEG, produces more noisy
signals. Signal loss, blinks, and the sensitivity of the pupil to luminance changes
demand that careful thought is applied using pupillometry. Careful stimulus con-
trol and repeated measurements can increase the reliability of pupil size meas-
ures, but this may hinder the applicability of pupillometry. Nevertheless, we
believe that both thermal imaging and pupillometry are both valuable assets to
the experimenter’s toolbox.
Conclusion
Humans care deeply about their social standing; they are hurt when it is threat-
ened. We provided an overview of the biological underpinnings of the ostracism
experience. We showed that great progress was made in revealing the physi-
ological processes during ostracism by using invasive measures. However, we
also noted that these invasive measures may have limitations in that such meas-
ures may be a cause of arousal in themselves. We hope to have made a persuasive
argument to expand our physiological toolbox, with an emphasis on using non-
invasive measures of arousal. Such measures would allow researchers to make
a more precise assessment of the arousal that is experienced during belonging
threats, and it will likely also facilitate new research on the relationship between
experienced arousal and subsequent coping behavior.
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9
OBSERVING OSTRACISM
How observers interpret and
respond to ostracism situations
Selma C. Rudert and Rainer Greifeneder
“We don’t want him to play with us!,” “We’re not inviting her because…,” “I
don’t speak to him anymore since….” Most individuals have heard these sen-
tences, be it from children who wish to exclude one of their peers from a game;
from colleagues who want to go to lunch without asking one of their co-work-
ers; or even from family members or friends, who shun contact with some person
in their close social circle. Ostracism and social exclusion can be observed in
almost every social context, in informal as well as formal groups, in humans as
well as animals. Previous research on ostracism has mainly focused on the per-
spective of the target, whereas studies about how observers think about and react
to ostracism are relatively rare. In this chapter, we present an overview about
how observers detect ostracism, how they interpret and evaluate it, and how they
react to it. We conclude this chapter by suggesting how to create an interven-
tion that raises observers’ awareness of ostracism and helps them to make more
informed moral judgments that are less prone to potential bias.
Initial responses to observed ostracism

Research emphasizes individuals’ sensitivity to even the smallest signs of ostra-
cism (Rudert, Hales, Greifeneder, & Williams, 2017; Wesselmann, Cardoso,
Slater, & Williams, 2012; Williams, 2009; Williams, Hales, & Michels, 2019).
This sensitivity is so strong that it is not limited to ostracism that is directly
experienced from the ostracized target, but also extends to uninvolved others.
Neurophysiological studies suggest that when observers detect ostracism, they
think about the other’s mental state, as demonstrated by increased activity in the
dorsomedial and medial prefrontal cortex and precuneus (Masten, Eisenberger,
Pfeifer, & Dapretto, 2013; Masten, Morelli, & Eisenberger, 2011; Meyer et al.,
2012). Many studies also demonstrated that observers show a social pain and
Observing ostracism 137
distress reaction that is similar to being ostracized themselves, which is char-

acterized by activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior
insula, as well as an increase in self-reported need threat (Giesen & Echterhoff,
2018; Masten et al., 2011; Wesselmann, Bagg, & Williams, 2009). This reaction
has usually been interpreted as empathy that observers feel for the excluded tar-
get, an interpretation that is supported by findings that observers seem to “feel
the pain” more strongly when they are asked to take the perspective of the target
(Wesselmann et al., 2009), as well as when they have been rejected themselves
before watching others being ostracized (Masten et al., 2013).
However, the reasons for ostracism differ, and just as ostracism situations can
be perceived and processed differently by the targets of ostracism (Greifeneder &
Rudert, 2019; Rudert & Greifeneder, 2016), observers’ reactions may differ as
well. In other words, observers do not feel unequivocally bad for every ostracism
situation they witness: Ostracism of friends and emotionally close others seems
to activate social pain to a much stronger degree than observing a stranger being
ostracized does (Beeney, Franklin, Levy, & Adams, 2011; Masten et al., 2013;
Meyer et al., 2012). One potential explanation for these findings could be that
socially more distant others (e.g., outgroup members or immoral individuals) are
judged as being less susceptible to social pain themselves (Riva & Andrighetto,
2012; Riva, Brambilla, & Vaes, 2016). Also, culture seems to be an important
moderator, as demonstrated in studies showing that children growing up in an
independent culture consider ostracism to be more painful than children grow-
ing up in an interdependent culture (Over & Uskul, 2016). One explanation for
this phenomenon is that the latter group assumes that it is more likely that the
ostracized target will just find social connection elsewhere and thus, ostracism
represents a less threatening event (Over & Uskul, 2016; Uskul & Over, 2017).
Given these contextual effects, social cognitions about the observed situation are
likely to play a crucial role in how observers respond to ostracism.
Attributing and evaluating observed ostracism

To understand how observers think about ostracism, we take a brief look as to
why ostracism occurs in the first place, before considering the different functions
that it serves (see also Robinson & Schabram, 2019; Täuber, 2019). Ostracism
has often been described as a form of social control mechanism that occurs in
groups and serves the function of upholding and enforcing social norms (Kerr et
al., 2009; Söderberg & Fry, 2017). Individuals who violate group norms and rules
are being excluded, either for a short time as a warning, or, if they repeatedly
violate norms, they might eventually be excluded permanently, in order to get
rid of the deviant as well as to warn others not to follow the deviant’s bad exam-
ple. Think, for instance, of a student who disturbs class and violates classroom
rules: If it happens once or twice, the student might be suspended for a short time
and then be allowed back. But if the student ignores these “warning shots” and
continues to violate norms, then s/he might eventually be expelled permanently
138 Selma C. Rudert and Rainer Greifeneder
in order to uphold school discipline. Whereas this example describes a relatively

formal exclusion process, ostracism can also ensure social control in informal
groups. However, the more informal the group, the more easily can ostracism
be misused or abused: Other group members may use ostracism to demonstrate
their power, increase group cohesion, or simply avoid sharing resources with (or
even exploit) the ostracized, helpless target (Kurzban & Leary, 2001).
In sum, individuals who ostracize others may do so out of a variety of reasons
(Williams, 1997). From the observers’ perspective, this corresponds to several
attributions for ostracism that subsequently may result in very different evalua-
tions (Rudert, Sutter, Corrodi, & Greifeneder, 2018). To the present date, there
is little research investigating whether, and under which circumstances, observ-
ers perceive these underlying motives accurately or whether they use similar
categories as the sources. Here, we will thus focus on three distinct motives that
observers can attribute ostracism to: attribution to a punitive motive, to a mali-
cious motive, and to a role-prescribed motive:
First, observers might attribute ostracism to a punitive motive. This means
observers have a reason to assume that the target has done something wrong
and is therefore being ostracized by the group (the so-called sources of ostracism)
as a consequence (Robinson & Schabram, 2019; Williams, 1997). For instance,
observers may know that the target tends to be a troublemaker, or they will have
seen him or her behaving inappropriately towards the group which has excluded
the deviant. To the extent that observers disapprove of the target’s behavior,
and see the target as being responsible for getting excluded, they likely perceive
ostracism as a justified punishment and consequently side with the sources and
do not support the target (Arpin, Froehlich, Lantian, Rudert, & Stelter, 2017).
In a qualitative study, we asked participants about the instances in which they
remembered witnessing another person being ostracized and then found evi-
dence for such a punitive attribution. One such participant wrote:
In highschool there was a girl that had wanted to join our group project […] Our
group ignore her and did not let her join. […] This girl had previously been part
of our group, however she burned that bridge when she talked behind another per-
son’s back and shared some secrets. No one trusted her after. [verbatim response,
including all spelling/grammatical errors].
(Rudert et al., in press)
Beyond anecdotes, we found evidence for punitive attributions in experimen-

tal research as well. In one study, we presented participants with the log of an
online chat in which three alleged persons discussed how to set up a presentation
(Rudert et al., 2018). During the chat, the contributions and ideas of one of the
discussants were ignored, see Figure 9.1.
In one condition, the discussant had acted rudely at the beginning of the
chat by introducing himself with the words, “Can we get started already? I
always hated working in groups.” In that condition, participants assumed that
Soda: What about that? img 1 team or that img 2 team??
Jazz: Not bad but I also found some: img 3 team or img 4 team
Soda: Wow Jazz image 3 is perfect for us!!!
Cube: I think it’s pretty boring. I think it would be better if we created

a picture on our own. Then we could also make it fit to my metaphor?!
Jazz: I also prefer image 3 Soda but I m not sure yet how we can connect
that to all of the team-building methods we are supposed to include in our
presentation?! Any other ideas?
FIGURE 9.1 Excerpt from the chat paradigm we used to create an ostracism situation
that participants observed
the discussant was being ostracized because of sources’ punitive motive and as
a consequence, they were angrier and less sympathetic toward the target than
toward the sources.
Second, observers can attribute ostracism to a malicious motive of the ostraciz-
ing group, such as ingroup favoritism, racism, selfishness, or lust for power. This
attribution becomes more likely if observers either cannot make out a socially
acceptable motive for ostracism, or if there are cues which directly suggest a
malicious motive. For instance, if observers see a group of white children ostra-
cizing the only black child, they may attribute ostracism to ingroup favoritism
or even racism. When asking participants to recall ostracism situations they had
witnessed in real life, many of the answers dealt with someone being ostracized
because s/he was of a different race, social status, or had mental deficits, as in the
example cited below.
The last time I can remember someone being purposely ignored and excluded was in
elementary school. […] There was a boy in my grade who had some cognitive issues
and since it was such a small school, his differences were amplified. Looking back,
he likely had severe ADD along with some other issues affecting behavior. He rarely
was invited to birthday parties and often sat alone at lunch. [verbatim response,
including all spelling/grammatical errors].
(Rudert et al., in press)
Ostracism that is attributed to a malicious motive violates the shared default to

include others, and is thus perceived as an inacceptable and inappropriate behav-
ior. As a result, if observers attribute ostracism to a malicious motive, they typi-
cally disapprove of the sources’ behavior and side with the target. Evidence for
such a malicious attribution has been demonstrated in the majority of observer

studies, in which the target was excluded without an apparent reason. In these
studies, observers usually showed a clear preference and sympathy for the target
(Legate, DeHaan, Weinstein, & Ryan, 2013; Masten et al., 2011; Wesselmann
et al., 2009; Wesselmann, Williams, & Hales, 2013; Wesselmann, Wirth, Pryor,
Reeder, & Williams, 2013), derogating and devaluing the sources for their ostra-
cizing behavior (Güroğlu, Will, & Klapwijk, 2013; Over & Uskul, 2016; Will,
Crone, van den Bos, & Güroğlu, 2013).
Third, it is possible that observers do not even think of the sources’ behavior
as ostracism. For instance, in the case of role-prescribed ostracism, observers might
feel that an exclusion of the target is in line with the social norms of the situa-
tion, and therefore consistent with the target’s social role (Rudert & Greifeneder,
2016; Williams, 1997). Think of a meeting that is limited to employees of a spe-
cific group, or think of certain information that is only available for employees
of a certain hierarchy level. If everybody involved is aware of these norms and
endorses them, not-being-part is perceived as unproblematic and socially accept-
able (Greifeneder & Rudert, 2019 ).
Attributions about ostracism under uncertainty

Attributing ostracism is relatively easy when observers either know about the
sources’ motives or have witnessed the events that resulted in ostracism of the
target (Weiner, 2006). In many studies that have investigated possible reasons for
ostracism, participants were either informed about the deviant behavior of the
target, or had even observed it themselves (Ditrich & Sassenberg, 2016; Gooley,
Zadro, Williams, Svetieva, & Gonsalkorale, 2015; Wesselmann, Wirth et al.,
2013). In other situations in which observers know the target and the sources
well, they might at least have sufficient information to make an attribution based
on repeated observations: if a group of usually friendly and highly inclusive peo-
ple decides to ostracize a known troublemaker – someone who has previously
been ostracized by other groups – it might appear to be more reasonable to
attribute ostracism to a punitive motive rather than a malicious one (Kelley &
Michela, 1980). However, in many real-life situations, observers simply do not
have such precise knowledge. For instance, think about watching an unknown
group of children who ostracize another child: You may not have enough infor-
mation about the group of children to fully understand what is going on, or you
might not have the time or motivation to get a complete picture of why ostracism
has occurred. In other situations, it might be necessary to immediately come to
a moral judgment. Imagine starting a new job and observing that one new col-
league is shunned by the others: Whereas you may not wish to affiliate with a
group of mean bullies, you might also be happy to stay away from a potentially
selfish, unfriendly colleague, just as everyone else seems to be doing. In such
situations, observers must rely on heuristics and social stereotypes in order to
make a quick moral judgment about observed ostracism episodes. Two examples
for such heuristics that we investigated in our research were (a) the social dissimi-
larity within the observed group as well as (b) stereotypes about the facial appearance
of the observed group.
The social dissimilarity rule

When asking participants to report ostracism situations they have witnessed,
many participants describe a situation in which the ostracized target was “dif-
ferent” from the rest. For instance, in some of the situations targets were of a
different ethnicity, poorer than others, had some kind of cognitive or physi-
cal disability, or any other cue that separated them from the rest of the group
(Rudert et al., 2018). Consistent with this observation, we suggest that par-
ticipants use a heuristic called the Social Dissimilarity Rule to decide whether
ostracism was motivated by a malicious or by a punitive motive. In particular, if
observers see a dissimilar person being ostracized by two similar others, observ-
ers attribute ostracism to a malicious motive, namely discrimination of the target
by the (similar) sources. This is because individuals tend to dislike discrimina-
tion and prejudice that is displayed by others (Crandall, Eshleman, & O’Brien,
2002; Sommers & Norton, 2006), and thus perceive ostracism that is apparently
due to such motives as highly unfair. Of course, this rule is less likely applied if
the dissimilarity represents a strong norm violation in itself, such as if dissimilar-
ity results from the target being a convicted criminal. In these cases, however,
uncertainty is likely low, so that observers may not need to resort to a heuristic
such as the social dissimilarity rule.
In contrast, if targets are ostracized by sources who are apparently similar
to the target, social dissimilarity is not a plausible explanation for ostracism. In
these situations, it appears more likely that the reason must be because of some
previous misbehavior of the targets for which they are being punished. This
attribution is consistent with studies showing that individuals tend to punish and
exclude members from their own group, particularly if these members deviate
from group norms (Marques & Paez, 1994; Marques, Yzerbyt, & Leyens, 1988;
Wesselmann et al., 2014; Wesselmann, Williams, & Wirth, 2014; Wesselmann,
Wirth et al., 2013).
In several studies, we demonstrated evidence for the social dissimilarity rule
(Rudert et al., 2018). Participants either read vignettes about an alleged experi-
ment in which the sources refused to work with the target in a subsequent task
or read the abovementioned chatlog, in which the sources ignored the target’s
contributions. No matter whether the target differed because of his/her nation-
ality, his/her ethnic background, the football team s/he supported or even his/
her hairstyle: when a dissimilarity was apparent, observers attributed ostracism
to a malicious motive of the sources and devalued the sources for ostracizing.
This extends earlier research showing that targets’ own attributions focused on
malicious racial motives when the sources and targets differed in race (Goodwin,
Williams, & Carter-Sowell, 2010). In contrast, when the target was similar to
one or even both of the sources, participants attributed ostracism to a punitive

motive and blamed the target instead. Interestingly, the effect of social dissimi-
larity was neither diminished by limiting the cognitive capacity of the observers,
nor by using a dissimilarity dimension that should be perceived as non-essential,
namely, the hairstyle of the observed group. These findings suggest that the
social dissimilarity rule represents a frugal cue that can possibly be processed eas-
ily and quickly by observers.
Stereotypes about the groups’ facial appearance

In some situations, though, participants might not even be aware of the group
constellation because they do not know who the sources are or what they look
like. Instead, observers may only see the target, or more precisely, the target’s
appearance. Think again, for instance, of the colleague you observe sitting alone
for lunch. You might not know him personally, nor do you know his team or
the people he might usually surround himself with, so your attribution of your
observation might strongly depend on how the colleague looks like.
Whereas most people agree that “a book should not be judged by its cover,”
studies nevertheless frequently find that individuals’ facial appearance affects
how other people evaluate them and their actions, as well as how they react
towards them (Ballew & Todorov, 2007; Hassin & Trope, 2000). Thus, it appears
plausible that the facial appearance of the target as well as the facial appearance of
the sources can influence how people judge an ostracism episode.
When forming impressions of others, two dimensions are of especially high
importance: perceptions of warmth and perceptions of competence (Fiske, Cuddy,
Glick, & Xu, 2002). Perceptions of warmth are related to whether the evaluated
person appears to have benevolent or hostile intentions. Individuals perceived as
warm are seen as good-natured, trustworthy, tolerant, friendly, and sincere. In
contrast, perceptions of competence are related to whether an evaluated person
appears to have the capacity to fulfill his or her intentions. A person perceived as
competent is seen as capable, skillful, intelligent, and confident (Cuddy, Fiske,
& Glick, 2008).
In three studies, we presented participants with facial portraits of allegedly
ostracized persons (Rudert, Reutner, Greifeneder, & Walker, 2017). The por-
traits were manipulated with a statistical face model (Walker & Vetter, 2016) on
the personality dimensions “warmth” and “competence,” so that the depicted
persons looked either warm-and-competent, warm-and-incompetent, cold-
and-competent, or cold-and-incompetent (see Figure 9.2 for an illustration).
Participants’ task was to decide for each portrait within four seconds how accept-
able it would be to exclude this person. Results indicated that participants’ moral
judgment was influenced by facial appearance. In particular, participants felt that
it was least acceptable to exclude a person that appeared to be warm-and-incom-
petent, and felt that it was most acceptable to exclude a cold-and-incompetent
looking individual. A follow-up study revealed that this effect is mainly driven
FIGURE 9.2
Exemplary face manipulated in warmth and competence. Faces were
manipulated on both dimensions, resulting in either a low/low, low/high,
high/low or high/high combination (Walker & Vetter, 2016).The presented
face is used for illustrative purposes only and was not used in the reported
studies
by the degree of disgust that is evoked by the respective face. Whereas cold-
and-incompetent looking faces evoked stronger feelings of disgust in observers,
warm-and-incompetent looking faces evoked comparatively less disgust, and as a
result, exclusion of these persons appeared to be especially (in)acceptable.
In addition, we were also interested in whether the facial appearance of the
sources would further influence results. In another study, the faces of the sources
were therefore manipulated, too. The abovementioned pattern of the target faces
replicated best when the sources looked cold-and-incompetent. This finding
further strengthens our notion that observers, if they have no additional clue
about why ostracism occurred, tend to picture sources of ostracism as cold-and-
incompetent and consequently, tend to disapprove of ostracism. Taken together,
the results demonstrate that even minimal cues such as individuals’ facial appear-
ance can affect observers’ moral judgment of ostracism episodes.
Misattributions of observed ostracism

Misattributions of ostracism are more likely to occur when there is less diagnos-
tic information that observers have about the situation. If some of the heuristic
and stereotypical cues reviewed above are not informative or are misleading, the
result may be misattribution and biased judgments, in the sense that observers
assume a motive for ostracism that does not correspond to the actual motivation
of the sources. For instance, it has been repeatedly shown that facial character-
istics lack objective validity, and that including facial information in one’s judg-
ment lowers judgmental accuracy (Hassin & Trope, 2000; Olivola & Todorov,
2010). If people nevertheless use facial cues, two kinds of biases may occur: On
the one hand, observers could misattribute ostracism to a punitive motive and
assume that the target must have done something wrong, even though this might
not be the case, and as a consequence, fail to protect an innocent target. On the
other hand, observers might misattribute ostracism to a malicious motive, and
as a consequence, support a target who has violated group norms, while at the
same time blaming the sources who merely wanted to protect themselves or
uphold social norms. Both constellations may prove particularly problematic in
the online world, when observing cyberbullying on social networks or ostracism
situations in the media (e.g., reality TV, reports about current political affairs).
Since the audience often cannot obtain further information, or might not be
motivated to do so, the result might be an unjustified public shaming of either
the target or the sources.
A similar problem arises if there is minimal social consensus about the respec-
tive norms of the situation. For instance, sources might ostracize a target out of
a punitive motive, but an observer does not share the respective norm and there-
fore perceives the punitive intent as unjustified. Imagine a person who witnesses
a smoking target being ostracized by non-smoking sources. Depending on how
much the observer endorses non-smoking norms, s/he might either perceive
ostracism as justified because the smoker was hurting the health of the sources,
or as an intolerant and mean act from the sources. In the latter case, observers
might realize that the sources are punishing the target for a norm violation, but
because the observers do not endorse the respective norm, they might not agree
with the target being punished.
Finally, misattributing ostracism as role-consistent can also cause severe prob-
lems: In some situations, individuals are ostracized unintentionally by others,
because the sources feel that the target is not important enough to warrant their
attention, or because the sources simply forget to include the target (oblivious
ostracism; Williams, 1997). For example, a new member of a group might not be
invited to a meeting because s/he is not yet in the respective mailing list, or she
was not present when the meeting was arranged and others forgot to inform her.
These situations can be highly hurtful for targets, and the situation may become
worse if observers notice the situation and derive from the others’ behavior that
exclusion of the target is consistent with the norms or roles of the situation. In
the example above, other group members may assume that there is a reason why
the person was not invited to the meeting and, as a consequence, not invite
her either.
Behavioral responses to observed ostracism

Punishment of sources and targets
After making a judgment about whether ostracism is morally acceptable in a situ-
ation or not, an important question is how observers will react to the observed
episode. One possibility is that observers act in line with their moral judgment.
For instance, if individuals attribute ostracism to a malicious motive of the sources
and devaluate the sources for it, they may aim to restore fairness either by com-
pensating the target for being ostracized, or by punishing the sources for their
non-normative behavior. Wesselmann and colleagues (2013) demonstrated in a
number of studies that when individuals observed another person being ostra-
cized in Cyberball without an apparent reason, they tried to compensate the
target by directing more ball-throws towards that person (thereby also punishing
the sources by directing fewer ball-throws towards them). To be able to differen-
tiate between the motive to compensate the target and the motive to compensate
the sources, Will, Crone, van den Bos, and Güroğlu (2013) let their participants
play economic games after having observed exclusion in Cyberball and showed
that observers both compensated the target and punished the sources, even when
participants had to invest their own resources to do so (see also Güroğlu et al.,
2013; Over & Uskul, 2016).
In contrast, if observers feel that the targets are to blame for their own exclu-
sion and thus attribute ostracism to a punitive motive, observers should support
the sources instead of the targets. Participants in Wesselmann and colleagues’
(2013) study stopped compensating the target when s/he was throwing the vir-
tual ball more slowly than the other players in Cyberball. But observers not only
stop compensating, they are even willing to additionally punish the targets for
their misbehavior: In a series of studies, we presented participants with social
group interactions, either as imagined scenarios or as a part of an alleged previ-
ous experiment (Rudert, Ruf, & Greifeneder, 2019). In these settings, the target
either had or had not violated a social norm, and was subsequently excluded
or included by the sources in Cyberball or an alleged group task. Participants
then had the option to give a certain amount of money to both the target and
the sources, or alternatively, to allegedly subtract money from the target’s and
the sources’ bonuses. Whereas observers consistently punished the sources for
ostracizing without a socially accepted reason (by giving them less money or
even subtracting money from their bonus) we found no evidence for a monetary
compensation of the targets.
However, when observers knew that the target had violated a social norm
(e.g., lying to appear superior, moving in on one of the sources’ boyfriends,
acting greedy and uncooperative in a dilemma of the commons game), they

decided to punish the target instead. Additionally, punishment of the target was
also influenced by the sources’ behavior towards the target: Observers punished
a norm-violating target most strongly if they did not know how the sources had
reacted to the target’s norm violation. If the target had already been excluded
by the sources, evidence suggests that observers punished the target less severely,
possibly assuming that the target has already atoned for her/his misdeeds.
Interestingly, when the observers watched the sources include the target follow-
ing a misstep of the target, the degree of punishment was diminished as well.
Observers appeared to have a reduced urge to punish the target after seeing that
the target had apparently been forgiven by the same people that had actually
been hurt by the target’s actions . Thus, whereas observers seem concerned with
restoring fairness following an ostracism episode, they also take into account
which actions the sources took and adjust their own reactions accordingly (see
also Pryor, Reeder, Wesselmann, Williams, & Wirth, 2013).
Even if observers and sources agree that the target had violated a social norm
and thus deserves punishment, they might still disagree about what a “fair
punishment” looks like. Interestingly, the direction of this disagreement may
go several ways. On the one hand, given that observers are not directly affected
by the target’s norm violation—and are thus psychologically more remote to
the situation—observers might opt for a milder or more reversible punishment
than the sources do. On the other hand, for the same reason of being psycho-
logically more remote to the actual situation, observers might place stronger
emphasis on values and norms (Ledgerwood & Callahan, 2012; Liberman &
Trope, 1998) and weigh practical thoughts to a lesser extent. Thus, observ-
ers might opt for a harder punishment than the sources, who may consider
other factors such as the target’s usefulness or their relation to the target. A
classic example might be a person who gave his unfaithful partner the silent
treatment for cheating on him but eventually forgives her, even though his
friends may still advocate against it. In line with these considerations, Riva and
Andrighetto (2012) have shown that participants feel that outgroup members
(who are socially more distant) are less affected by social exclusion compared to
ingroup members, which might further decrease observers’ empathy and make
them favor a harder punishment.
Self-protection
Observers’ decisions on whether to punish or help the target might have conse-
quences for them, too. After all, observers are observed by the target, the sources,
and potentially other non-involved individuals. If, for instance, the sources see
that the observer supports the ostracized target, the observer might run into
the risk of becoming the next target. In doubt about who is to blame, observ-
ers might therefore choose not to act or even derogate and thus distance oneself
from the target, just to be on the safe side. Accordingly, it has been demonstrated
that even though observers might sympathize with the target, they will also
perceive her/him as less human, more vulnerable for exploitation, and have less
interest in interacting with him/her compared to the sources or neutral persons
(Arpin et al., 2017; Park & Park, 2015). Especially if observers have to fear direct
negative consequences from siding with the target, the motive to protect oneself
from becoming a victim might become dominant. As a consequence, observers
might eventually choose to support or even join the sources, even though they
are not morally convinced that it is the right thing to do (Klauke & Williams,
2015). Williams (1997) called this behavior defensive ostracism, stating that it may
be used to protect oneself from threats and/or to obtain control over a situation.
For instance, whistleblowers in an organization are often defensively ostracized
by their colleagues who are afraid of being associated with the whistleblower and
thus becoming a target as well (Williams, 2002).
In contrast, siding with the sources and punishing the target might also come
with certain risks, especially when the situation changes over time and the target
ends up in a powerful position, or when non-involved individuals remotely or
retrospectively evaluate the situation. Perhaps it is for these reasons that we found
in our studies that observers tend to evaluate even weak norm violations of the
target negatively, but choose only to act on behavior that they felt was highly
inappropriate. The reasons for this might be twofold: First, observers might not
be fully aware of what the specific norm in a group is, and as such, may choose
to refrain from action even if they themselves feel that the behavior is wrong.
In addition, there might be a higher ambiguity whether the public opinion will
shift in favor of the target or the sources, and if observers take the “wrong” side,
they might as well become the next target.
But even if observers choose not to act at all in order to be on the safe side,
ostracism can still represent a threat for them if they share the same environment
with the target and the sources. For instance, think of a situation when a stu-
dent observes ostracism in his or her own class. After all, if ostracism is a socially
accepted behavior within the class, then there is a chance that the observing stu-
dent might, at some point, become a target themselves. This threat may be even
more pronounced when the student shares similarities with the ostracized target:
Studies show that observers report stronger feelings of powerlessness and humili-
ation when they watch a member of their ingroup being ostracized compared to a
member of an outgroup (Veldhuis, Gordijn, Veenstra, & Lindenberg, 2014). As a
possible response, individuals might attempt to shield themselves against this threat
and engage in self-protecting behavior and attributions. For instance, observing
ostracism seems to encourage individuals to seek affiliation and increase social
attention (similar results have been shown for the targets of ostracism, see Claypool
& Bernstein, 2019; Timeo, Riva, & Paladino, 2019; Williams et al., 2019). In stud-
ies with children, it has been shown that priming third-party ostracism increases
both imitation of the experimenter (Over & Carpenter, 2009), and increases the
likelihood that the children will draw affiliative pictures (Song, Over, & Carpenter,
2015) as well as sit closer to another person (Marinović, Wahl, & Träuble, 2017).
Methodological considerations when

investigating observers of ostracism
Aside from theoretical considerations, there are some important methodological
issues that need to be considered when doing research about observers of ostra-
cism. In the majority of observer studies that have been done thus far, partici-
pants observed a stand-alone Cyberball game, usually with players that have no
common history that the observer is aware of (e.g., Giesen & Echterhoff, 2018;
Güroğlu et al., 2013; Masten et al., 2013; Masten et al., 2011; Meyer et al., 2012;
Wesselmann et al., 2009; Will et al., 2013). In this kind of situation, observers
have no reason to assume that the target is being punished for anything, and
so will usually tend to attribute ostracism to a malicious motive of the sources
and subsequently empathize with the target, as well as punish the sources. It is
important to keep in mind, though, that this finding may represent a distinctive
feature of the employed paradigm, whereas ostracism in the wild is embedded
in a context. First, in real life, there is usually the possibility that the target had
deviated from the norm prior to being ostracized by acting uncooperatively or
rudely. Second, in real life, observers usually have more cues they can draw
upon, such as characteristics of the context, the target, or the sources (see before).
If researchers rely solely on context-free paradigms in which the observed group
has never met before, they may erroneously interpret findings that are charac-
teristic for these studies as applicable to all kinds of social exclusion situations.
From this perspective, it is highly important to create or to adapt methodo-
logical paradigms so that they allow for more context. To a certain degree, cur-
rent research paradigms such as Cyberball can be adapted to include more context
(Gooley et al., 2015; Wesselmann, Williams, & Wirth, 2014; Wesselmann, Wirth
et al., 2013). Moreover, alternative paradigms might be more suitable to inves-
tigate observer effects, such as having participants recall autobiographical events
in which they observed ostracism (Rudert et al., 2018), or present them with
scenarios (Giesen & Echterhoff, 2018; Over & Uskul, 2016; Rudert et al., 2019),
chatlogs (Arpin et al., 2017; Rudert et al., 2018), videos (Song et al., 2015), or
something else. Within these paradigms, the situational context or characteristics
of targets and sources can be systematically varied to subsequently measure the
effect on an observer’s cognition and behavior. Meta-analyses could further help
identifying paradigms which are particularly sensitive to contextual changes and
thus most suitable to investigate potential moderators of observers’ interpretation
and reactions to ostracism.
Practical implications: assisting observers

to make informed judgments
In this chapter, we have emphasized that observers of ostracism have a highly
important role. Ostracism is very painful and threatening for targets, but it has
repeatedly been shown that social support can buffer the negative impact that
ostracism inflicts on an individual’s well-being (Rudert, Janke, & Greifeneder,

2017; Teng & Chen, 2012; Timeo et al., 2019; Zhou & Gao, 2008). As a result,
developing interventions that aim at raising awareness towards ostracism and
assist observers’ in making more informed moral judgments might be highly
fruitful. Such interventions could be implemented in communication and social
skill trainings or workshops, for students in the classroom or employees in the
workplace, but also in the training of individuals who are dealing with ostracism
and exclusion in professional contexts (e.g., teachers, counselors, conflict media-
tors, HR employees).
In general, the aim of these interventions should be twofold: First, participants
in these trainings should be sensitized to the negative consequences of ostracism,
about how easily an individual can ostracize another person involuntarily, and
the important difference that even one supportive or friendly person can make
for an ostracized target (Rudert, Hales et al., 2017; Timeo et al., 2019). Williams
and Nida (2014) have made several suggestions, such as to use video material to
demonstrate the consequences of ostracism, and to teach individuals to be inten-
tionally inclusive whenever possible. Second, participants should be made aware
of the possibility that their judgment of a specific situation may become distorted
by stereotypical perceptions about ostracism situations and ostracizers. As a con-
sequence, the respective program should encourage participants to, whenever
possible, seek out more information and carefully question the history that pre-
cedes an ostracism episode before making a moral judgment and acting upon it.
Third, individuals should be made aware that even if the target has committed
a norm violation, punitive ostracism might still not be the most productive way
to deal with the incident (see also Robinson & Schabram, 2019; Täuber, 2019).
After all, ostracism may create a negative climate within an organization, and
once ostracized, an excluded target often has limited possibilities to improve his
or her behavior. Individuals could thus be trained in alternative solutions, such as
mediational techniques and conflict management.
To have a maximum effectiveness, such ostracism awareness trainings should
ideally be implemented within organizational cultures that emphasize inclusion
as an important norm. For instance, further elements such as peer mentoring, an
emphasized common identity, and joint social activities can complement train-
ings (Rudert & Greifeneder, 2017). Moreover, inclusionary acts of individuals
may be specifically highlighted and acknowledged by the organization (Williams
& Nida, 2014). Taken together, the suggested measures have the potential to
improve individuals’ awareness and moral judgments about ostracism, which
in an ideal case would positively affect the general social climate within their
respective organizations, as well as in their everyday life.
Conclusion
Observers attribute ostracism situations in different ways, and these attributions
will substantially affect observers’ evaluations (and eventually their behavior)
towards targets and sources of ostracism. However, these moral judgments are
prone to many influences, including observers’ knowledge about the situation
and social norms; heuristics based on similarities or facial characteristics; and
considerations about the environment and possible consequences for the observ-
ers themselves. As a result, further research on observers and how they perceive
and interpret ostracism situations is needed, in order to create interventions that
help observers make informed moral judgments.
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10
WORKPLACE OSTRACISM
What’s it good for?
Sandra L. Robinson and Kira Schabram
Introduction
Much has been written about the harmful, lasting, and painful effects of ostra-
cism, both within (Robinson, O’Reilly, & Wang, 2013) and outside the work-
place (Williams, 2002, 2007). Indeed, we know that ostracism can cause lasting
pain, and that its negative impact surpasses even the harm of being harassed or
verbally abused (O’Reilly & Robinson, 2009; O’Reilly, Robinson, Banki, &
Berdahl, 2014; Zadro, Williams, & Richardson, 2005). But given ostracism is so
harmful, why then is it so common in work organizations? Despite its negative
effects, ostracism must clearly serve a purpose and benefit. So, cui bono? Whom
does ostracism benefit and how? The purpose of this chapter is to address this
question. We will review the existing literature that has identified functional or
beneficial effects of ostracizing behaviors relevant to organizational contexts, as
well as theorize about the potential or perceived benefits that emerge from their
occurrence. Although past studies have mentioned potential benefits or uncov-
ered actual ones, to date, these positive ramifications of ostracism have not been
integrated into a single source.
It is important to clarify at the outset of this review that the intent of this
chapter is not to diminish the importance of the well-established dysfunctional
consequences of ostracism in work organizations. Nor should it be inferred from
this chapter that we are advocating for, or encouraging, ostracizing acts in the
workplace. Instead, we are seeking to improve our understanding of ostracism so
that we may better control and reduce its occurrence. Only by acknowledging
these benefits can we fully understand the motives and mechanisms that create
and sustain workplace ostracism, and therefore more effectively predict, control,
and hopefully reduce its occurrence in organizations. Thus, the point of this
chapter is to objectively and systematically address these potential, realized, or
156 Sandra L. Robinson and Kira Schabram
imagined beneficial, positive, or functional aspects of ostracizing behaviors so as

to better understand why ostracism occurs at all.
We begin this chapter by first clarifying our definition of workplace ostra-
cism, and then briefly reminding the reader of some of the well-known, nega-
tive consequences that are associated with the experience of being ostracized or
excluded at work. In the main body of the chapter, we discuss the benefits of
ostracism. First, we speak to the unique features of ostracism that make it a desir-
able choice of behavior for organizational actors. Next, we review and categorize
the specific known potential benefits of ostracism at work.
Ostracism defined
Workplace ostracism has been defined as “when an individual or group omits
to take actions that engage another organizational member when it is socially
appropriate to do so” (Robinson et al., 2013, p. 206). This definition integrates
behaviors identified by different names − rejection, exclusion; ignoring, avoid-
ing, shunning – that share a common a core element: failure to socially engage
with one another at work. With this definition in mind, the manifestations of
ostracism in the workplace are many – and possibly even limitless. Wesselmann,
Michels and Slaughter (2019) discuss the many manifestations of ostracism, and
find that most of these can be adapted and found in the workplace. For example,
manifestations of ostracism in a work context include behaviors such as not invit-
ing someone to a work event, excluding someone from an email thread, over-
looking the input of a committee member, excluding someone from a project
team, and failing to respond to the greeting of a coworker.
The last part of this definition, “when it is socially appropriate to do so,” seeks
to capture the fact that context and perception is critical to the experience of
ostracism (Robinson, 2013; Greifeneder & Rudert, 2019). Thus it is not just the
act, but the interpretation of the act that creates ostracism. In contexts where it
would be impossible to socially acknowledge every person present, people must
selectively ignore or treat as invisible many individuals. Fortunately given the
nature of the context, those individuals given the nature of the context, do not
perceive themselves as being ostracized. However, in other contexts, such behav-
ior would be perceived as a slight. For example, if one enters a crowded cocktail
reception and heads for the stage to start the introductions, one’s failure to greet
each person passed along the way is unlikely to generate feelings of ostracism for
anyone. This is because the behavior is expected and appropriate for the context.
In contrast, if a manager enters a lunchroom and heads to the coffee maker with-
out acknowledging the presence of her assistant, the only person in the room,
it is quite likely that the assistant would feel painfully ignored. In most social
contexts, the shared understanding of cues and norms leads everyone to agree
with the script about which actors should attend to whom and how (Goffman,
1959); one only creates an experience of ostracism when one fails to socially
engage another when the script calls for such engagement. Thus, for example, in
Workplace ostracism 157
a corporate meeting, a technician attending to a broken projector may be treated

as invisible while attendees talk to one another; everyone in the room, including
the technician, is comfortable with this dynamic. In contrast, the same meeting’s
guest speaker would likely have a very different psychological experience if he
was treated as invisible like the technician. This distinction becomes important
because, although actors may be engaging in behavior that they do not perceive
as ostracizing, the behavior may nevertheless be experienced as such by the tar-
gets if they see it as a violation of an expected social script.
Ostracism’s negative side

Before we address the upsides of ostracism, it is critical to briefly revisit and
remind readers about the well-established harm that results from ostracism.
Studies published over the course of several decades have shown that being
on the receiving end of ostracizing acts is acutely painful (Eisenberger, 2012;
Ferris, 2019; Riva, Wirth, & Williams, 2011; Täuber, 2019; Williams, 2002).
Moreover, the experience of ostracism may actually cause more psychological
pain or harm than being aggressed in more obvious, overt, and dramatic ways,
such as being argued with, verbally abused or harassed (O’Reilly & Robinson,
2009; O’Reilly et al., 2014; Zadro, Williams & Richardson, 2005).
Being left out, ignored, or forgotten at work not only produces psychologi-
cal pain (Lau, Moulds, & Richardson, 2009; Sommer, Williams, Ciarocco, &
Baumeister, 2001) but also undermines employees’ work-related behaviors. For
example, studies have shown that being the target of ostracism increases the
likelihood of problematic behaviors, such as workplace deviance, social loafing,
intentions to quit, and actual resignation. Relatedly, many studies show that the
experience of ostracism can undermine valuable work attitudes and behaviors,
such as commitment, work performance, citizenship behavior, and job satisfac-
tion (Balliet & Ferris, 2013; Ferris, Brown, Berry, & Lian, 2008; Hitlan, Kelly,
Schepman, Schneider, & Zárate, 2006; Mor Barak, Findler, & Wind, 2003;
O’Reilly & Robinson, 2009; Renn, Allen, & Huning, 2013; Wu, Wei, & Hui,
2011; Zadro, Williams, & Richardson, 2004). This is only a subset of the body of
work in this area, but nonetheless it is important to appreciate the harmful effects
of ostracism as one considers its potential silver linings.
Ostracism as an attractive response

Despite the many adverse consequences of ostracism, there are several features of
ostracizing behaviors that make them an attractive alternative among many for
organizational members facing everyday problems at work. Indeed, ostracism may
be a particularly preferred behavior for actors in the workplace for several reasons.
First, previous empirical findings have shown that ostracizing behaviors in
the workplace are typically seen as relatively benign and unharmful compared to
more overt or obvious acts of aggression or harassment (O’Reilly et al., 2014).
Relatedly, most managers report that ostracizing behaviors in their organizations

are more socially accepted, and less likely to be prohibited by policy than other
kinds of harmful or harassing interpersonal behaviors (O’Reilly et al., 2014).
Thus it may not be surprising that organizational members view ostracizing
behavior as a reasonable, constructive, and possibly even professional approach
to difficult workplace interactions (O’Reilly et al., 2014). Taken together, these
findings can be explained by the omission bias. Ostracism typically involves acts
of omission: the failure to socially engage another person or group. Previous
research reveals that harmful acts of omission, in comparison to harmful acts of
commission, are judged less harshly (Baron & Ritov, 2004; DeScioli, Christner,
& Kurzban, 2011). Moreover, individuals have a preference for committing harm
through acts of omission over commission (Cushman et al., 2006), and they are
less likely to hold others responsible for their acts of omission compared to their
acts of commission (Cushman, Young, & Hauser, 2006). Thus, unlike more
overt forms of mistreatment at work, such as bullying, abuse, and harassment, for
which there may be organizational policies or laws in place that prohibit their
occurrence, ostracism may be seen in a more positive light and much less likely
to result in negative repercussions for the actor.
Moreover, even in work contexts where ostracism is deemed unacceptable
or harmful, actors engaging in ostracism are still less likely to face repercussions
than if they were to resort to more openly hostile behavior. They are less likely to
face repercussions because ostracizing acts are often covert, subtle, and ambigu-
ous, and because the target’s felt experience is often difficult to verify. Proving
to authorities that something did not happen is much more challenging than
proving that something did happen. The actors can easily deny that ostracism
occurred at all (Williams, 2002), and they can more readily resort to gas-lighting
(Gass & Nichols, 1988). Gas-lighting occurs when accused bad actors deflect
from their own behavior by focusing on the misperception or mental state of the
target. For example, instead of actors admitting to ostracizing the target when
confronted, they may instead suggest the target is simply being overly sensitive or
paranoid, and therefore imagining ostracism that did not happen.
Taken together, ostracism can be an attractive choice of behavior for organi-
zational members because even egregious acts of ostracism may be less risky
for the actor than more overt aggression (Bjorkqvist, Osterman, & Lagerspetz,
1994). One is less likely to be caught or reported for ostracizing someone, and
can therefore more easily claim a lack of intent. Furthermore, one is less likely
to be perceived in a negative light for ignoring or excluding someone than for
openly insulting, yelling at, or threatening them. This may explain the findings
of O’Reilly et al. (2014), who found that ostracism was more commonly expe-
rienced than other forms of mistreatment at work, and the findings of Williams
(2002), who reported that those who engaged in ostracism, in comparison to
those who engaged in arguing, did not experience an increase in anxiety. In sum,
relative to other forms of negative social interaction at work, ostracism may be a
preferred, common choice over more overtly negative social interactions.
Benefits of ostracism
Now we turn to the specific benefits that may emerge from the occurrence of
ostracism – those that may go to the actor of ostracism, or to the group or organi-
zation as a whole. Some of these potential benefits are intentional outcomes that
underlie the motivation for ostracism in the first place. Other potential benefits
are those which are basically positive by-products or side-benefits of the experi-
ence of ostracism. Although it is a debatable question as to whether or when these
benefits may justify, counter-balance, or outweigh the negative consequences of
ostracism, it is important for us to identify and discuss each of them in isolation.
Below, we address these positive consequences under six general categories.
Self-protection
Ostracism is often perceived in the organizational literature as a form of mis-
treatment involving the harm-doing ostracizer and the harmed target of ostra-
cism. This perspective, however, may overshadow the fact that some of those
engaging in behaviors perceived as ostracism may themselves be victims of abuse,
and that the targets of ostracism are the initial perpetrators of harm.
Organizational members who have to contend with harmful actions by oth-
ers, such as abuse from a supervisor, sexual harassment from a colleague, or a
coworker with a difficult personality, may resort to reducing or avoiding inter-
actions with that colleague in order to limit further risk. One may even encour-
age others to avoid and reduce their interactions with this harmful individual.
Such would be the case of women warning other women not to talk to a male
colleague known for sexually propositioning women at work, or more senior
colleagues warning newcomers to avoid working with certain overly political
or manipulative employees. Indeed, research on coping with difficult people at
work often points to the central importance of reducing one’s interdependency
with a harmful other (Bramson, 1988; Sutton, 2017), either as a standalone strat-
egy or one that is done in conjunction with more remedial actions. Avoidance
and ostracism may be an especially important strategy for those who lack formal
authority, status, or other mechanisms to reduce the occurrence of abuse. The
intention behind these ostracizing behaviors is not to bring harm to another,
but to simply protect oneself by disengaging from that other. Even though these
behaviors may not be intended or perceived by the actor as ostracism, they may
very well be interpreted and experienced as ostracism by the targets.
Ostracism can also be self-protective by enabling conflict avoidance or con-
flict disengagement (Rispens & Demerouti, 2016) when it is deemed necessary.
By avoiding, ignoring, or staying away from a particular coworker who evokes
strong negative emotions or with whom one has conflict, an employee may avoid
painful feelings and dysfunctional encounters. Research shows that many have
a tendency to engage in avoidance as a way to cope with conflict at work, espe-
cially in collectivist cultures (Leung, 1988; Tjosvold & Sun, 2002). Although
we in Western cultures tend to perceive direct confrontation as superior to
avoidance (Tjosvold & Sun, 2002), this may not always be the case. Studies have
revealed that ostracism, in comparison to argument, yielded stronger feelings
of control and superiority for the actor (Williams, 2002; Zadro, Williams &
Richarson, 2005). Avoidance can even be a genuine effort to strengthen rela-
tionships (Leung, Koch, & Lu, 2002). One may enact ostracizing behaviors when
emotions are running too high and one needs to gain objectivity, distance, and
calmer emotions before approaching the focal individual. In such cases, avoiding
or excluding another person may be preferred over direct engagement, especially
if one perceives that the ultimate outcome will be more constructive by wait-
ing first before carrying out the confrontation. This behavioral decision may be
especially valuable in work contexts where employees are expected to conform
to integrative emotional display rules stipulating either explicitly or implicitly
that employees should express positive emotions and suppress negative emotions
(e.g., Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002; Hochschild, 1979; VanMaanen & Kunda,
1989). It goes hand in hand with the saying, “if you can’t say something nice, it’s
best to say nothing at all.”
Justice restoration
Although ostracism is sometimes enacted to shield an individual from abuse or
conflict, as noted above, other times ostracism as “silent treatment” is used to pun-
ish (Williams, 2002). Those using ostracism know it causes pain and therefore is a
useful tool or method to punish, retaliate or restore justice. Forms of ostracism are
used for punishment and justice restoration in a variety of contexts, from giving
children “time-outs” for misbehavior, to the solitary confinement of prisoners, to
putting derelict public servants on “unpaid leave.” In the workplace, it can be used
by individuals to “get even” at the individual level, such as the common experience
of giving someone the “silent treatment” (Williams, 2002), which has a powerful
influencing effect on its targets (Faulkner, Williams, Sherman, & Williams, 1997),
and it can be used by groups and the organization as a whole. Indeed, the most
extreme form of punishment in an organization is ostracism: being fired. The use
of ostracism to “get even” is well recognized, so much so that it is not uncommon
for witnesses of ostracism to attribute it to a punitive motive for norm-violation by
a target, further blaming and punishing the target (Rudert & Greifeneder, 2019).
In this sense, ostracism can also be seen as a form of retaliation or revenge.
Revenge is any effort by a victim of harm to inflict damage, injury, discomfort,
or punishment on the party judged responsible for causing said harm (Aquino,
Tripp, & Bies, 2006). Some organizational contexts are likely to encourage more
retaliation by ostracism than others. In work environments where, culturally
speaking, conflict and overtly harmful behavior is forbidden, yet there are few
formal avenues through which one can report and remedy perceived injustices,
one may see more examples of passive aggressive retaliation in the form of ostra-
cism. When employees lack the tools or mechanisms to report or remedy wrong
doings by their coworkers, they may take it upon themselves to restore justice.
If they fear repercussions from restoring justice through more overtly harmful
acts, they may find it safest and most effective to use the “cold shoulder.” When
employees are unable to get superiors to formally reprimand a coworker who
has hurt them, and norms or policies of the workplace prevent them from taking
aggressive actions, ostracism may be seen as their best option.
As with any kind of uncivil behavior in the workplace, ostracism can involve
a tit-for-tat or spiral dynamic where it is difficult to discern who is the perpetra-
tor and who is the victim (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). Each party may begin to
engage in retaliation against the other. So for example, an initial perceived slight
by one party, however unintentional, can evoke a need to “get even” via inflict-
ing the “cold shoulder” or “silent treatment.” That ostracism, invariably painful,
may lead to actions on the part of the target that also may be a form of retaliation,
further exacerbating the tensions between both parties.
Group protection
Ostracism can also protect groups, teams, and the organization as a whole.
Excluding wayward or threatening organizational members can be a way to
avoid harm to everyone else who had to work with this person. Those who
are perceived to violate norms, threaten the group’s well-being, or overuse its
resources, are more likely to be sent away, cut off, or excluded. Thus, employees
may be left out of lunch invitations or political discussions at the water cooler, as
well as excluded from key projects, promotions, access to information, or having
their input considered.
Members of teams or organizations may be deliberately ostracized when they
are seen as possessing undesirable attributes or behaviors. Ostracism enables one
to control behavior and reinforce moral norms (Täuber, 2019). Past studies have
found that team members are more likely to be ostracized when they fail to
contribute fairly to exchanges (Kurzban & Leary, 2001), are perceived as selfish
(Feinberg, Willer, & Schultz, 2014), or when they pose other threats to the group
(Gruter & Masters, 1986; Pickett & Brewer, 2005; Wirth & Williams, 2009).
Such problem members are most likely to be ostracized when the group is not
dependent upon them in other ways. For example, Xu, Huang and Robinson
(2017) found that those with highly narcissistic personality traits were more
likely to be excluded from teams than others, but only when goal interdepend-
ence was low; when the team greatly depends upon the narcissistic member, they
are included as much as everyone else.
Even employees who are seen not as threatening or wayward, but simply as
not valued, may be ostracized from the work environment. Such is the case of
the Japanese practice of “oidashibeya” that puts “redundant” or no longer valued
employees into isolated, windowless rooms with menial, mind-numbing tasks
until they voluntarily quit.
In addition, members of teams may be subconsciously ostracized simply for
being different from the rest of the group. For example, O’Shea, Fincher, Watson
and Brown (2017) found that, consistent with parasite stress theory (Murray &
Schaller, 2016; Thornhill & Fincher, 2014), people living in regions with higher
disease or exposed to disease primes, were more likely to engage in implicit and
explicit prejudice and discrimination toward out-group members. Such ostra-
cism of “different others” may subconsciously serve as a way to protect the focal
group’s survival.
This self-protection mechanism for groups may be effective in some cases.
Feinberg, Willer and Schulz (2014) found that groups benefited most when they
were able to engage in ostracism and gossip about untrustworthy members. In a
set of experiments, teams had to make financial decisions to benefit their group.
Teams performed better on subsequent tasks when they were able to exclude and
gossip about selfish members from prior tasks. By removing the selfish members,
the more cooperative group members could more freely invest in the public good
without fear of exploitation.
Promote constructive behavior

While individuals and groups may engage in ostracizing behaviors to eschew
those who engage in problem behaviors, they may instead, or in addition, engage
in ostracizing behaviors to change the problem behavior itself. Although we
typically view ostracism as malicious, such actions might also be important for
deterring problematic behavior and for maintaining the social order of groups
(Täuber, 2019). Put another way, ostracism can be a useful “stick” to shape and
modify workplace behavior without requiring formal observation and assess-
ment by superiors. This may be especially useful in work contexts where there
is minimal supervision; where there is a strong union, so formal appraisals and
sanctions are more limited; or where many organizational members have tenure
and thus are relatively unconstrained in their day to day work behaviors.
Does ostracism of wayward members actually promote more constructive
behavior? Research shows that it does, at least sometimes. Although many studies
have shown that ostracism can undermine motivation, performance, and willing-
ness to stay in an organization (e.g., Balliet & Ferris, 2013; Renn, Allen, & Huning,
2013; O’Reilly et al. 2014; Täuber, 2019), it can also sometimes lead to more posi-
tive and constructive behavior. Research has found that ostracized people seek
to ingratiate themselves with the group that has ostracized them (Williams &
Govan, 2005), and that ostracism leads to greater conformity (Williams, Cheung,
& Choi, 2000) and increases compliant behavior with regards to willingness to
make donations (Carter-Sowell, Chen, & Williams, 2008). Williams and Sommer
(1997) found that women in collective teams were more likely to put in effort
following ostracism. Feinberg et al. (2014) found that those who were previously
excluded for being selfish but then re-included tended to conform to the group’s
more cooperative behavior in subsequent opportunities. Relatedly, individuals
who have been ostracized but then re-included are more willing to take risks for
the group (Dahl, Niedbala, & Hohman, manuscript under review).
Ostracized group members are also more likely, perhaps subconsciously, to engage
in a host of other positive social behaviors that are known to improve liking and
acceptance. For example, many studies have demonstrated that ostracism leads to the
careful processing of social information (Claypool & Bernstein, 2019). Those ostra-
cized, in comparison to those who are included, pay more attention to information
about group members (Pickett, Gardner, & Knowles, 2004) and mimic their behav-
ior (Lakin & Chartrand, 2005; Ouwerkerk, Kerr, Gallucci, & Van Lange, 2005).
The positive effects of ostracism may occur as coping strategies for the pain of
ostracism (Timeo, Riva, & Paladino, 2019). Targeted individuals may engage in
constructive behavior as they are motivated to restore their sense of belonging;
by engaging in constructive behavior, they hope to regain acceptance and reduce
the threat of future ostracism from either the ostracizing group or another, more
supportive group. Indeed, it is important to note that ostracism can motivate
individuals to engage in negative behavioral responses, such as aggression or
withdrawal from helping the group get the job done. This is because these kinds
of negative actions help to restore one’s sense of self-esteem or control that may
have been damaged when they were ostracized. However, ostracized people will
opt to engage in more pro-social behavioral responses when the importance of
restoring belongingness needs dominates over the importance of restoring self-
esteem or control (Gerber & Wheeler, 2009).
Evidence of how belonging leads to pro-social responses is found across a
large number of studies. Ostracism is more likely to lead to pro-social responses
of improvements in performance and in increased good citizenship behavior
when the target has a high motivation to be re-included ( Jamieson, Harkins, &
Williams, 2010; Williams & Govan, 2005; Williams & Nida, 2011). When the
group is seen as important to one’s identity, ostracism is more likely to lead to
positive behaviors, such as following group norms or supporting group initia-
tive (Gómez, Morales, Hart, Vázquez, & Swann Jr, 2011). Similarly, the more
important the ostracizing party is to the target, the more ingratiating behaviors
will occur following ostracism (Romero-Canyas et al., 2010).
Ostracism will also be more likely to lead to constructive behaviors if the target
believes this type of response will have more absolute impact or be more effective
than less constructive responses (Schade & Domachowska, 2017; Fischer, Moors,
Kuppens, & Mesquita, 2017; Moors, 2017). Derfler-Rozin, Pillutla, and Thau
(2010) showed that individuals will engage in inclusionary seeking behaviors
when there is only a threat of ostracism, but respond negatively once ostracism
has actually occurred. The logic behind this finding is that organizational mem-
bers who believe ostracism has not yet occurred, or has only just started, may
perceive they have a greater opportunity to address it and thereby gain re-inclu-
sion by being pro-social. In contrast, employees who experience ostracism over
a longer period of time are less likely to believe that their positive efforts will
lead to re-inclusion; thus they eschew behavioral responses that may improve
belonging in favor of negative behavioral responses that are more certain to at
least restore their sense of control and self-esteem.
This line of reasoning is also consistent with another set of studies that find
ostracism increases pro-social responses, to the extent that the ostracizing actors
have higher status over the ostracized employee. For example, targets with higher
social status, such as men compared to women, are more likely to avoid the group
or engage in free-ride behaviors following ostracism, whereas lower status indi-
viduals are more likely to engage in compensatory positive behaviors following
ostracism (Bozin & Yoder, 2008; Hitlan et al., 2006; Williams & Sommer, 1997).
As being ostracized by more powerful individuals is perceived as more threaten-
ing (Schoel, Eck & Greifeneder, 2014; Greifeneder & Rudert, 2019), employ-
ees may be more motivated to avoid ostracism by powerful others, and also
to believe that by increasing one’s in-role or extra-role behavior, they will be
rewarded with re-inclusion by higher ups. In contrast, incentives for re-inclusion
with peers or those of lower status will be fewer and thus reduce the likelihood
of positive behavioral responses. Taken together, ostracism is seen as having the
potential benefit of changing the problem behavior of targets and, under the
right conditions, ostracism can, in fact, increase their positive behavior.
Norm reinforcement
Ostracism may not only influence the positive behavior of its targets, but also of
those observing its occurrence. This is because ostracism can provide a valuable
way by which to communicate and reinforce the norms and expectations of all
members of the social unit. In work contexts, employees become acutely aware
of who is left out or treated as invisible, and gossip facilitates the sense-making
around why that was the case. Witnessing the ostracism of some members serves
as a mechanism of social learning (Bandura, 1977), and incentivizes third parties
to likewise engage in normative behavior (Rudert & Greifeneder, 2019). Indeed,
just the threat, or fear of being ostracized can lead members to behave themselves
(Feinberg, Willer & Schulz, 2014; Williams, 2002).
Group cohesion and identity

Group solidarity, cohesion, and individual identification with the group is
another potential positive consequence of the ostracism experience. The link
between ostracism, group cohesion, and identity takes multiple forms. First,
sharing ostracizing acts can provide a stronger connection between individuals.
The O-Train experiments (Williams, 2002; Zadro et al., 2005) found that those
who coordinated with another actor to mutually ostracize a third person felt a
stronger bond, and shared a sense of cohesion with their conspirator than if they
had not. Not only do ostracizing actors develop a stronger bond, but they also
convey that stronger bond to others. Ostracism can act as a social signal, reflect-
ing an exclusive relationship that is cohesive and important (Kurzban & Leary,
2001; Pickett & Brewer, 2005; Wyer, 2008; Wyer & Schenke, 2016). A study
by Wyer (2017) found that young adults, and even children, perceive a dyadic
relationship that excludes a third party to be more cohesive than one that does
not. Thus, ostracism can inform others about the value or quality of an interper-
sonal relationship (Wyer, 2017).
Ostracism also impacts the ostracized. The social reconnection hypothesis states
that those who are rejected, excluded, or ostracized are highly motivated to seek
out, affiliate, and bond in other ways with others. Although they may engage in a
variety of responses (Ren, Wesselmann, & Williams, 2016), they are often driven
to seek reconnection. Dahl, Niedbala, and Hohman (manuscript under review)
found that when group members are first ostracized but then re-included into
the group, they reported more favorable views of that group, and identified more
strongly with the group than those who were only included but never excluded.
Alternatively, they may seek out stronger ties to others who share their ostracism
experience. For example, Ramos, Jetten, Zhang, Badea, Iyer, Cui, and Zhang
(2013) found that minorities facing discrimination from a majority were more
likely to seek identification with their discriminated sub-group, thus enhancing
the cohesiveness of the sub-group. Moreover, ostracism encourages affiliating
behavior and attraction toward more accepting groups. Maner, DeWall, Schaller
and Baumeister (2007) reported that threats of social exclusion led individuals to
seek new friends, have more positive impressions of new social targets, increase
their desire to work with others, and assign more rewards to new social partners.
Relatedly, immigrants who felt rejection from their country of origin were more
likely to identify with and acculturate to their new country (Badea, Jetten, Iyer,
& Er-rafiy, 2011), and ostracism has been found to lead one to favorably judge
other social groups, even questionable ones (Wheaton, 2001; Williams, 2007).
The need to replenish belonging by seeking out affiliation can be so powerful
that ostracized others may even seek out extreme groups, such as neo-Nazis, to
fulfill that need (Williams, Hales & Michels, 2019). Thus, although ostracism
separates an individual or group from others, it may ultimately also strengthen
social bonds, either between those who share in the ostracizing, those who share
in being ostracized, or between ostracized others and accepting groups.
Summary
Much has been written about the harmful psychological and behavioral implica-
tions of ostracism. And although a small portion of the many studies on ostracism
have identified potential positive consequences of ostracism, to date, these posi-
tives have not been sufficiently reviewed and integrated into a single paper. It is
hoped that this chapter helps to fill this gap, by identifying the findings that have
noted various “silver linings” within the otherwise painful and dysfunctional
ostracism experience. Even though these positive outcomes of ostracism may
not be the intended ones, and they may not justify or offset the harmful costs
associated with ostracism, it is nonetheless important for us to acknowledge these
potential or perceived benefits, if only to understand the incentives and motives
that sustain this phenomenon in the workplace.
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11
MORALIZATION AS LEGITIMIZATION
FOR OSTRACISM
Effects on intergroup dynamics and
social cohesion
Susanne Täuber
Moralization refers to a widely used strategy aiming to persuade others to change

their attitudes and behaviors concerning an issue. Lay people and scholars typi-
cally share the belief that emphasizing the moral core of an issue stimulates those
addressed by a persuasive attempt to change their attitudes and behaviors in the
desired way. Unfortunately, however, such moralization may result in severe and
strong negative consequences that evoke damaging intergroup dynamics which
will likely undermine social cohesion. This chapter uncovers the processes by
which moralized persuasion is turned into a powerful legitimization for ostra-
cism. These processes unfold over the course of four stages. First, moralized
persuasion evokes new moral norms in society. Second, these new moral norms
lead to a rigid categorization of the social environment into morally good and
morally bad people. Third, this categorization forms the basis by which people
who deviate from these moral norms are more easily stigmatized, excluded, and
discriminated against. Fourth, the intergroup dynamics flowing from moraliza-
tion make ostracism in all social agents involved more likely: Governments and
institutions, often the social agents advocating new moral norms, are more likely
to ostracize those deviating from the moral norm by means of policy. Similarly,
citizens conforming to the moral norm will likely ostracize those deviating from
the moral norm through stigmatization and discrimination. In turn, citizens
deviating from the moral norm are more likely to ostracize those who conform
to the moral norm so as to manage threat to their moral image. Taken together,
the predominant take-home message of the present chapter is that moralization
can unfold a pervasive, negative impact on social cohesion, and can undermine
society’s capability to attain important societal goals.
172 Susanne Täuber
Persuasion and moralization

People hold attitudes towards a variety of topics, differing from relatively weak
to very strong attitudes. Relatively weak attitudes are referred to as preferences;
very strong attitudes are referred to as values. While preferences are perceived as
a matter of taste and individual choice, values are perceived as much more nor-
mative, binding, and central to the self (e.g., Rozin & Singh, 1999; Skitka, 2010).
Aligning with the above considerations, the most important difference between
preferences and values concerns their respective moral connotation: Preferences
are morally neutral but values have a moral component (Rozin, Markwith, &
Stoess, 1997). Values with a particularly strong moral connotation are referred
to as moral convictions (Sktika, 2010). Research into moral convictions demon-
strated that they differ from strong attitudes in a qualitative, not merely a quan-
titative manner (Skitka, Bauman, & Sargis, 2005). Thus, a moral conviction is
qualitatively different from a particularly strong attitude, and conceptually very
similar to what Rozin (1999) referred to as moral values.
Persuasion
I propose that persuasion will shift people’s construal of issues from weak attitudes,
thus preferences, to strong moral attitudes, thus moral values. In the remainder of
this section, I elaborate how this shift is achieved. Persuasion is typically associated
with marketing and advertisement. Big companies try to convince us that drink-
ing, wearing, or owning their product makes us better, more popular, and more
beautiful people. Indeed, people use brands to distinguish themselves from others
(e.g., Hollenbeck & Kaikati, 2012). Complying with the persuasive message in
advertisement leads people to be different from others by means of the car they
drive, the computer they own, or the soft drink they prefer. Thus, persuasion in
advertisement results in individual differentiation processes which are reflected in
the traditional scholarly interest in the impact of persuasion on those targeted by
persuasion (e.g., Olson & Zanna, 1993; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Wood, 2000).
Complementing and extending this approach, this chapter focuses on those who
are advocating a persuasive message (e.g., governments, institutions) and those
who are already complying with the message. This perspective reflects a more
recent development where governments and institutions try to persuade entire
populations, for instance to consume in sustainable ways and to live more health-
ily. One example is the Dutch King’s address to the people (Troonrede, 2013),
where he emphasized that everyone needs to take their responsibility for living
healthily and helping others in need. The persuasive message is further brought
to people’s attention by media coverage emphasizing the enormous strain on the
health care system caused by citizens who fail to take their individual responsibil-
ity for living healthily, and by emphasizing that the money spent on health care
cannot be spent on other important things (e.g., Verschoor, 2015).
What is the consequence of such persuasion in comparison with advertise-
ments by big companies? I propose that persuasion targeting entire populations
Moralization as legitimization for ostracism 173
leads to the emergence of new moral norms. These will go hand in hand with
categorization based on conformity with the moral norm in question. First, by
addressing entire populations, a new social norm emerges that involves desired
behaviors or outcomes from citizens. Thus, in contrast to distinguishing oneself
individually from others by means of a soft drink, a group-based categorization is
prompted by differentiating between citizens conforming to, and citizens devi-
ating from, the new norm. Second, emphasizing individual responsibility and
harm inflicted on others, for instance, by relying on health care in the example
above, are two key elements of communication that will prompt people to con-
sider an issue as moral (e.g., Mulder, 2008; Rozin, 1999). Finally, emphasizing
that money spent on health care cannot be spent on education or infrastructure
makes zero-sum conflicts salient, which form an important element of moral
exclusion (Opotow, 1990).
Why is it so relevant that a social norm emerging from persuasion is a moral
norm? As outlined in the beginning of this section, strong attitudes are quali-
tatively different from moral values or moral convictions about an issue. Where
a social norm lacking moral connotation allows for gradual approximation of
the ideal, a moral norm is seen as binding, and will be evaluated in an either-or
fashion. Thus, while non-moral norms are similar to preferences, moral norms
resemble values. Conformity to moral values has been significant for human sur-
vival. We are an inherently group-living species, and moral norms are impera-
tive for our survival in that they define our groups’ identity (De Waal, 1996;
Ellemers & van den Bos, 2012). When deciding what to do and what better not
to, people rely heavily on their groups’ moral norms, because adhering to these
norms predicts the respect they will receive as group members (Ellemers & van
den Bos, 2012; Haidt, 2001).
Moralization
Moralization can be defined as the “accretion of moral value to activities or sub-
stances that previously had no moral value” (Rozin & Singh, 1999, p. 321). The
process occurs over time, both on the individual and the societal level (Rozin
et al., 1997). Rozin (1999) observed that people often try to establish claims of
new moral values through new types of moral violations (moral expansion) or
by underlining how a common activity is relevant to an already existing moral
principle (moral piggybacking). Examples for increasing moral connotation of
values are, for instance, cigarette smoking (Rozin & Singh, 1999), and becom-
ing a vegetarian (Rozin et al., 1997). Both behaviors have been entirely personal
preferences in the past, but gained more and more moral connotation over the
years. Reflecting on newly formulated claims of the morality of previously non-
moral issues, Rozin (1999, p. 220) remarked that “most such claims fade away
without producing much of a ripple”. The question thus is why some issues do,
after all, become moralized. Rozin (1999) suggested that issues and behaviors
that are likely to produce lasting moralization are those that are associated with
174 Susanne Täuber
stigmatized or marginalized groups, those that inflict unwarranted harm on oth-

ers, and those that are assumed to be under a person’s self-control. All of these
factors are very present in health: Health has traditionally been seen as reflect-
ing self-control, self-denial, and willpower (e.g., Bisogni, Connors, Devine,
& Sobal, 2002); political and journalistic commentators emphasize the harm
inflicted on others by living unhealthily (e.g., Verschoor, 2015), and groups with
low socioeconomic status and a non-Western migration background have dis-
proportionally worse health outcomes than groups with higher education and
higher incomes (e.g., Adler & Ostrove, 1999).
Moral norms are of pivotal importance in regulating group life and group
members’ behaviors (Ellemers & van de Bos, 2012). It is a worrying thought that,
given the right framing and timing, any issue can become a moral norm. More
importantly, converging evidence supports the notion that the moral norms
that we adhere to in groups might be quite arbitrary in nature. For instance,
research demonstrated that people are capable of flexibly shifting from moral to
non-moral evaluations on a wide array of behaviors (van Bavel, Packer, Haas, &
Cunningham, 2012). Thus, people quickly and automatically consider the exact
same issue from both a moral and non-moral perspective when they are instructed
to do so. In a similar vein, when Wright, Cullum, and Schwaab (2008, Study 1)
instructed their participants to classify 40 different issues as moral or non-moral,
none of these issues was unanimously classified as moral. Presenting an issue as
moral does thus not imply that the issue indeed is consistently moral, but that
some group or social entity sees the issue as moral, and wants others to perceive
it as moral ( Janoff-Bulman & Sheikh, 2006). In other words, groups differ and
do not necessarily agree on which issues are perceived moral or immoral. What
one group defines as moral might be considered neutral or even immoral by
another group (Ellemers & van den Bos, 2012). Importantly, however, once a
behavior has become moralized, it will be perceived as binding for the group,
and people’s value and respectability as group members will be contingent on
their conformity with the moral behavior in question (Ellemers & van den Bos,
2012; Täuber, 2018). Once an issue is moralized, people will see others in rela-
tion to the moral norm: The world starts to consist of those conforming to and
those deviating from the moral norm, with no middle ground. This may result
in devastating consequences for the group as a whole and its capacity to achieve
important goals.
Consequences of moralization
The single most notable consequence of moralization is the absolute intoler-
ance for deviations from the moral norm, which is different when non-moral
norms are transgressed. For instance, research on smoking moralization (Rozin
& Singh, 1999) demonstrates that moralization strongly affects tolerance. When
smoking is viewed as a preference, non-smokers might tolerate spending an
evening in a smoke-filled environment every now and then. However, when
smoking is moralized, non-smokers will feel disgusted by cigarette smoke and

be absolutely intolerant towards cigarette smoking in their surroundings (Rozin
& Singh, 1999). Moreover, compared to preferences, moralized behaviors are
more likely to receive legal and institutional support, reflecting the sanctioning
of non-conformity with the moral norm by society and the authorities (Rozin et
al., 1997). Indeed, governments increasingly regulate cigarette smoking through
taxations and prohibitions, public institutions do not tolerate smoking at their
vicinities, and parental socialization transmits non-smoking as a moral value
(Rozin, 1999). Other lines of research support the notion that people toler-
ate diversity less when it concerns moral attitudes compared to non-moral atti-
tudes (e.g., Haidt, Rosenberg, & Hom, 2003; Skitka, Washburn, & Carsel, 2015;
Wright et al., 2008).
Directly resulting from the greater intolerance relating to moral norms is
harsher judgment and punishment of deviants from such norms. Where non-
moral norms or preferences are concerned, it is considered okay for people to
approximate the ideal state gradually. The question is “How far are you from
the ideal state?” By contrast, moral norms lead to much more rigid evaluation
of deviance: The question is “Do you satisfy the ideal state, yes or no?” Thus,
what can be gradually achieved when non-moral norms are concerned turns
into an either-or judgment when moral norms are concerned. Aligning with this
notion, Kessler and colleagues (2010) demonstrated that when punishing norm
violations, people took into account the degree of deviance from the norm only
when it was framed as a maximal standard, as something people should ideally
strive for. By contrast, when the same violation was framed as a minimal stand-
ard, as something people definitely adhere to, punishment was not contingent on
the degree of deviance anymore. Skitka and Mullen’s (2002, p. 36) description of
moral convictions as “nonnegotiable, terminal, and fundamental psychological
truths” reflects this. These findings further align with research by Van Bavel and
colleagues (2012), who uncovered that people make faster and more extreme
judgments when they were asked to evaluate issues in moral as opposed to non-
moral ways. Finally, people have been shown to spontaneously use morality
as another fundamental social category to sort others into groups (besides sex,
age, and race; van Leeuwen, Park, & Penton-Voak, 2012). In sum, in the moral
domain, people judge others based on a rigid dichotomous evaluation that can
only reflect one of two possible outcomes: moral or immoral.
More recently, researchers offered a number of suggestions concerning
why people evaluate deviance from moral norms more harshly (Täuber & van
Zomeren, 2013): First, from an evolutionary perspective, the morality of others
is particularly critical for survival (Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007). It is functional
for humans to actively attend to indicators of other people’s morality, because
survival is at stake when the other is a foe rather than a friend. Unfortunately, this
is also problematic because moral behavior is a suboptimal proxy for other peo-
ple’s real intentions. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that moral behavior
is often sanctioned by authorities (Täuber & van Zomeren, 2013). Reflecting this
176 Susanne Täuber
insecurity in judgment, people have a tendency to avoid false positives in the

moral domain, and are more prone to make errors in the false negative domain
(Haselton, 2007). In other words, people are generally more inclined to falsely
think of others as immoral (while they are moral in reality) than to falsely think
of others as moral (while they are immoral in reality). Indeed, people have been
shown to pay greater attention to immoral behavior than to moral behavior
when evaluating others (Wojciszke, 1994, 2005), and to actively search for cues
of immorality in others (e.g., Gantman & Van Bavel, 2014, 2015). In addition to
people’s greater sensitivity to cues about others immorality, such information also
weighs heavier in impression formation. Specifically, Skowronski and Carlston
(1987, 1989) showed a positivity bias in the competence, but a negativity bias
in the moral domain. Hence, when forming impressions of others’ competence,
people weigh positive (as opposed to negative) information heavier. By con-
trast, when forming impressions about others’ morality, people weigh negative
(as opposed to positive) information heavier. Similarly, Skowronski and Carlston
(1992) showed that the judgment of the other as immoral is much more resistant to
counter-information than non-moral judgements. The authors conclude that “an
immoral act may take a lifetime to dispel” (Skowronski & Carlston, 1992, p. 451).
Taken together, moralization elicits rigid categorization processes in which
people are dichotomously divided into “morally good” and “morally bad” peo-
ple. Social observers are more inclined to perceive other people as deviants when
morality is concerned, regardless of whether other people actually violate moral
norms, and will evaluate others more harshly on the suspicion that they violate
moral norms. In that sense, moralization is a powerful legitimization that forms
the basis on which people ostracize others.
Moralization as legitimization for ostracism

The previous section suggests that the exclusion of those deviating from moral
norms is legitimate and functional in terms of ensuring the survival of the species.
Indeed, ostracism can be functional in enforcing social norms and can thereby be
beneficial for groups (see Robinson & Schabram, 2019). Supporting this notion,
observers are more likely to blame the victim when they perceive that he or she
has been ostracized as a means to uphold ingroup norms (Rudert & Greifeneder,
2019). At first sight, moralization and the inevitable ostracism resulting from it
seem like an evolutionary adaptive mechanism that enhances group function-
ing and guarantees that all members of a social group adhere to moral norms
(e.g., Fiske et al., 2007; van Leeuwen et al., 2012). Yet when categorization
and ostracism are based on morality, deviants are not simply seen as different,
but as nonentities who are disposable and undeserving (Opotow, 1990, 1995).
Consequently, inflicting harm on them, exploiting them, and excluding them
are perceived as appropriate, acceptable, and even just (cf. Opotow, 1990). The
stigmatizing and ostracizing of moral deviants are typically legitimized through
cognitive processes revolving around categorization, but also through attribution
processes and emotion. One consequence of moralization is that people legiti-

mize their behavioral responses to deviants both ad hoc and post hoc, resulting in
pervasive patterns of stigma and discrimination. In light of the severely negative
consequences of being perceived as deviating from a moral norm, the biggest
problem of moralization arises when what is considered moral is based on more
or less arbitrary choices (Ellemers & van den Bos, 2012).
Attribution processes associated with moralization

A central element of moralization concerns the supposed controllability of the
outcome. When others are perceived as having control over an outcome they are
also held responsible: “If they had put more effort into it, they would have been
[insert the moralized outcome here, for instance rich/ beautiful/ healthy/ thin/
popular/ happy] now”. Control is treated as the equivalent of effort, because
negative outcomes are perceived as being entirely caused by a lack of effort. That
is, deviants are perceived as immoral because they did not put enough effort in
being moral (e.g., Weiner, 1986). This notion is underlined by research on deci-
sion stage models, in which people are assigned responsibility for a negative out-
come when the outcome was judged to be controllable (Mantler, Schellenberg,
& Page, 2003). When people are deemed responsible for an outcome, they will
also be deemed blameworthy (e.g., Crandall, 1994; Crandall et al., 2001).
Consequently, the assignment of responsibility for negative outcomes pro-
vides a strong legitimization for the stigmatization of non-conformers of moral
norms. As Weiner, Perry, and Magnusson (1988, p. 738) state: “to be labeled a
stigma, the normative deviations in physical attributes, character, behavior, and
so forth, must be undesirable qualities”. Deviance from moral norms is very
undesirable, and therefore strongly associated with stigmatization. This associa-
tion is a result of the strong coupling of morality with perceived controllability
and responsibility. For instance, Weiner and colleagues (1988) experimentally
varied perceived controllability of physical stigmas such as blindness, cancer, and
obesity. These authors found that ascribed responsibility and blame were much
higher for stigmas perceived as controllable. Since stigma is strongly related to
ostracism and discrimination (e.g., Crandall, 1994; Crandall et al., 2001; Link
& Phelan, 2001), it is not surprising that people responded with little pity, much
anger, and a greater willingness to neglect rather than help those with physical
stigmas perceived as controllable (Weiner et al., 1988).
Importantly, this process of attributing blame can also operate in the reverse
way. Specifically, Mantler and colleagues (2003) showed that observers with a
strong pre-existing bias will first focus on the blameworthiness of an outcome.
The decision to blame the deviant for their negative outcomes, then, is legiti-
mized post hoc by attributing responsibility and controllability for the outcome.
In other words, someone thinking that obesity is the most immoral thing –
which, unfortunately, is not that unlikely, as pointed out by numerous scholars
criticizing the highly moralized discourse about weight (e.g., Townend, 2009) –
178 Susanne Täuber
will first blame the overweight other, and only then start to legitimize their
blaming by attributing responsibility and controllability for weight (Alicke,
2000; Mantler et al., 2003).
From stigma to ostracism

The stigma that people report towards others who are perceived as violating moral
norms may result in ostracism. This might be particularly pronounced for people
holding strong moral convictions who perceive themselves as conforming to the
moral norm in question. Indeed, Skitka and Mullen (2002) point out that moral
mandates – the action readiness resulting from moral conviction – are disturbing in
some regards as they can “form the psychological foundation and justification for any
number of extreme actions to achieve a mandated end” (p. 39). Put differently, peo-
ple who act based on strong moral convictions do care about the end, but not about
the means. Unfair procedures as well as transgressive advocacy are accepted as long
as they help achieving the desired moral outcome (Mueller & Skitka, 2017; Opotow,
1990). In essence, moralization liberates people to act by granting them legitimi-
zation (Effron & Miller, 2012). Reflecting the “dark side” of moralization, such
actions in the moral domain often concern punishment. Ostracism, then, is a means
to punish those who do not conform to moral norms. It serves to enforce conform-
ity to moral norms (Rudert & Greifeneder, 2019; Robinson & Schabram, 2019) and
therefore also a discernible group identity (Ellemers & van den Bos, 2012).
Besides motivating people to act (Skitka & Mullen, 2002), as outlined above,
those ostracizing others can hope for support and understanding from observers
if the punishment of norm violation or the enforcement of norm conformity is
seen as the underlying motive for ostracism. Wright and colleagues (Wright,
McWhite, & Grandjean, 2014, p. 37) conclude that moral issues, because they
are perceived as an unnegotiable truth, elicit an expectation of consensus, mak-
ing “anyone who disagrees an outsider: an outgroup member worthy of rebuke”.
Consistent with this, moralizers’ judgments of others are often both too confi-
dent and too harsh (see Janoff-Bulman, 2006).
In sum, deviations from moral norms are punished more harshly – for instance,
through ostracizing the deviant (Rudert & Greifeneder; Robinson & Schabram,
both 2019) – than deviations from non-moral norms, which can be explained
based on evolutionary pressures (e.g., Fiske et al., 2007; van Leeuwen et al.,
2012) and group regulation (Ellemers & van den Bos, 2012). Such punishment
often involves stigmatization and ostracism, but also discrimination towards
those deviating from a moral norm. Importantly, moral issues can be rather arbi-
trary, in which case the functionality of moralization-based categorization and
the resulting negative treatment of the deviants is highly questionable. In fact, I
would argue that in such cases, moralization is more likely to elicit highly dys-
functional dynamics between those conforming to, and those deviating from,
the moral norm in question. I will provide theoretical and empirical arguments
for this suggestion in the sections below.
Moralization: A lose–lose dynamic

undermining social cohesion
In the previous sections, I have reviewed theoretical and empirical evidence for
the fundamental consequences flowing from moralization, regarding how people
categorize, judge, and behave towards others who they perceive as deviating from
a moral norm. In the remainder, I will complement this fundamental perspective
with the societal implications of moralization. I will do so by reviewing recent
empirical findings and theoretical propositions highlighting the consequences of
health moralization for those conforming to the moral norm, for those deviating
from it, and for governments, institutions, and practitioners. Presenting the com-
bined effects of moralization on these different groups highlights the pervasive
negative impact of moralization on intergroup dynamics, social cohesion, and
societies’ capability to achieve important goals.
The moralization of health

Mainly because health care costs have rocketed, governments have taken to mor-
alized persuasion in order to motivate entire populations to live more healthily.
The Dutch government, for instance, announced that the traditional welfare
state will transition into a so-called participatory society, where everyone is
required to take responsibility for their own health and to show solidarity with
others in need (Troonrede, 2013). By emphasizing each person’s own respon-
sibility for health and harming others by not living healthily, governments and
public discourse make heavy use of the two elements that have been shown to
cause moralization of an issue (Mulder, 2008; Rozin, 1999). Thus, the factors
facilitating lasting moralization as identified by Rozin (1999) are present in the
health domain: Poor health outcomes and unhealthy lifestyles are dispropor-
tionally associated with stigmatized or marginalized groups, are assumed to be
controllable by individuals, and are said to inflict unwarranted harm on others.
Health moralization effects on conformers

Based on the above, health can be expected to be moralized and should con-
sequently result in high levels of stigmatization and intolerance towards devi-
ants from the moral norm. Täuber (2018) recently examined these processes for
the health domain. Across four survey studies, she asked approximately 1500
respondents who conformed to the health norm (e.g., non-smokers, normal
weight people, people with healthy lifestyles) to indicate the extent to which
they see health as a moral issue. Across studies, the portion of respondents who
perceived health as a very moral issue was around 20–25 percent. The more con-
formers moralized health, the more they stigmatized those deviating from the
moral norm: overweight people, smokers, people with unhealthy lifestyles, and
ill people. In turn, stigmatization predicted respondents’ endorsement of une-
qual treatment, discrimination, and ostracism of those deviating from the moral
180 Susanne Täuber
health norm. Further, conformers who moralized health were less willing to help
and show solidarity with deviants. Täuber’s (2018) findings also underline the
exclusive and rigid categorization resulting from moralization by showing that ill
people were similarly negatively affected by health moralization, even though no
further information on the nature of the illness was provided. Thus, those per-
ceiving health as a moral issue neglected the fact that many diseases result from
an interplay of genetic and environmental factors (e.g., Mulder, Rupp, Dijkstra,
2015), and therefore are only partly under people’s control.
Health moralization effects on deviants

Moralization is often thought to be very motivating, simply because people hate
being seen as immoral (e.g., Monin, 2007). However, the past years have provided
converging empirical evidence for the opposite effect: Studying the motivation
to improve their group’s performance in domains such as poverty reduction and
immigration policies, Täuber and van Zomeren (2012) showed that non-moral
framing of the shortcoming resulted in a strong motivation to improve, while
moral framing of the exact same shortcoming resulted in a refusal to improve.
Why is that? Monin (2007) reviewed the effects of thinking that others are more
moral than the self. It appears that, because being deemed less moral than oth-
ers or immoral altogether is such an aversive experience, defensive responses to
threats to moral image are dominant. Different routes for self-defense involve
the trivialization of the others’ moral behavior (so called do-gooder derogation,
Monin, 2007; Minson & Monin, 2012), suspicion towards the others’ real inten-
tion (denying virtue, Monin, 2007), and disliking and distancing from more
moral others (resentment, Monin, 2007). It is important to keep in mind that
all of these responses are attempts to protect the self from an extremely aversive
threat, namely being deemed as immoral. As we have seen above, evolutionary
pressures can explain such responses, as being excluded from one’s social group
would greatly diminish chances for reproduction and survival.
Monin’s (2007) analysis was supported by research demonstrating that the
moral framing of shortcomings shifts people’s emotional focus from their own
group to the morally superior group (Täuber & van Zomeren, 2013). However,
in order to improve, anger and outrage must be directed towards the self and not
towards the other: A group’s desire to make up for past wrongdoings requires
an emotional focus on the in-group (e.g., Iyer, Schmader, & Lickel, 2007). An
impressive research program into the motivation to improve versus self-protect
revealed that concern for self-image prompts people to aim for self-improve-
ment, while concern for social image prompts people to self-defensively refrain
from improvement (e.g., Gausel, 2013; Gausel & Leach, 2011; Gausel, Leach,
Vignoles, & Brown, 2012). In integrating the above lines of research, Täuber,
Gausel, and Flint (2018) recently showed that in the health domain, overweight
people engaged in less self-determined and more other-determined behavio-
ral regulation, when confronted with the public’s view of overweight people
as immoral. For instance, moralization prompted overweight people to report

being more externally (“Other people close to me insist that I eat healthily”,
“I exercise because others will not be pleased with me if I don’t”) than intrinsi-
cally (“It is fun to create meals that are good for my health”, “I get pleasure and
satisfaction from participating in exercise”) motivated when asked about reasons
for dieting or exercising. This pattern was evident both when moral framing
was varied experimentally (Study 1), and when it was measured in a survey
study (Study 2). Thus, aligning with prior research, while non-moral framing
led to more self-determined behavioral regulation because it raised concerns for
self-image, moral framing led to more other-determined behavioral regulation
because it triggered concerns for social image. Importantly, less self-determined
behavioral regulation is associated with worse psychological functioning (e.g.,
Deci & Ryan, 1985; Pelletier & Dion, 2007), which is consistent with the mal-
adaptive responses to weight stigma observed in prior research (e.g., Haines,
Neumark-Sztainer, Wall, & Story, 2007; Puhl, & Luedicke, 2012).
Apart from the potential for eliciting defensiveness and thereby non-com-
pliance with the moral norm in question, the experience of being ostracized in
and of itself is associated with a variety of negative consequences. First, Western
societies have a strong inclusionary norm, implying that social exclusion is vio-
lating an objective norm; this, in turn increases the chance that exclusion is also
subjectively experienced as hurtful (Greifeneder & Rudert, 2019). Second, social
exclusion is experienced as painful both psychologically and physically, because
it impairs basic human needs (Williams & Nida, 2011). In line with this, being
excluded increases people’s preferences to join extreme groups (Williams, Hales,
& Michels, 2019), since those groups satisfy some of the basic needs thwarted by
social exclusion. Moreover, when anticipating rejection, individuals are likely to
emphasize their group identity in order to protect themselves (Smart Richman
& Leary, 2009). Finally, and aligning with the findings by Täuber and colleagues
(2018), social exclusion leads to self-defeating behaviors because it impairs self-
regulation (Twenge, Catanese, & Baumeister, 2002). In the case of health, for
instance, this leads to the paradoxical consequence that those being excluded
because they are overweight will make significantly more unhealthy choices than
those who are included because they are not overweight (Twenge et al., 2002
experiment 3). However, not only does exclusion as a consequence of moraliza-
tion lead to unhealthy choices, but moralization in and of itself can prompt those
who violate the moral norm to snack more unhealthily (Mulder et al., 2015).
Societal dynamics flowing from moralization

Integrating the above perspectives suggest that moralization negatively
affects those conforming to the norm in making them more intolerant, lead-
ing them to stigmatize and ostracize others (e.g., Täuber, 2018; Wright et al.,
2008, 2014). But moralization also negatively affects those deviating from the
norm in that it prompts self-defensive responses (e.g., Gausel, 2013; Täuber &
182 Susanne Täuber
van Zomeren, 2012) that often involve maladaptive behavioral regulation (e.g.,
Haines et al., 2007; Täuber et al., 2018; Twenge et al., 2002) and thus prevent
improvement. In addition, self-defensive and self-protective responses are not
what those conforming to the moral norm expect. Chances are that they will be
very angry when confronted with such prolonged refusal to improve in a domain
they deem so morally important (e.g., Weiner et al., 1988). Furthermore, among
those deviating from the moral norm, resentment of their morally superior oth-
ers is likely (e.g., Monin, 2007; Täuber & van Zomeren, 2013). The resentment
of morally superior others as described by Monin (2007) involves psychologi-
cal and physical forms of distancing, thereby essentially representing ostracism.
Thus, moralization appears to prompt the deviants from the moral norm being
ostracized by those conforming to it, and the conformers to the moral norm
being ostracized by those deviating from it. This is consistent with the sugges-
tion that moralization unfolds severe psychological consequences for how people
relate to each other (Ellemers & van den Bos, 2012). It is no wonder that indica-
tors of social cohesion would plummet in moralized domains (Täuber, 2018).
The emerging picture suggests that moralization has a strong potential to elicit a
negative self-amplifying cycle of moral condemnation by those complying with
the moral norm (the morally good) and moral defensiveness by those deviating
from the moral norm (the morally bad).
Health moralization effects on governments and institutions

So far, we have considered citizens in terms of conforming to and deviating from
a moral norm. However, these two groups do not operate in a social vacuum:
they are part of a bigger whole, society, which is represented by the government
and institutions. Surely these entities would not encourage mutually ostraciz-
ing groups of citizens? Unfortunately, this is exactly what governments, albeit
inadvertently, do. The insights presented in this chapter suggest that, with the
best of intentions, governments might create new disparities or worsen existing
disparities among their citizens. A point in case is the lower willingness to show
solidarity with others reported by Täuber (2018), which undermines the govern-
ment’s call for greater solidarity in the participation society (Troonrede, 2013).
An example that illustrates how moralization might operate towards worsening
existing disparities comes from the Northern Netherlands. Here, a strong com-
mitment to healthy living and aging unifies communities, health institutions,
and higher education. The aim is to become a “man-made blue zone”, that is,
a demographic region where people live active lives beyond 100 years of age.
One important aspect of this aim is to make the city of Groningen smoke-free
(Campus Groningen, 2017). While in and of itself, this is a commendable goal,
let us consider the proportion of smokers in different societal groups: Among
Dutch citizens with lower socioeconomic status, as indicated by lower income
and lower education, 29 percent smoke. Among Dutch citizens with higher
socioeconomic status, as indicated by higher income and higher education,
17.6 percent of them smoke (Trimbos Instituut, 2017). Importantly, this pattern
is comparable to other countries, including Great Britain, Australia, Canada,
and the United States (Hitchman et al., 2014). Thus, citizens with lower socio-
economic status will be excluded from the inner city disproportionally more
than citizens with higher socioeconomic status. Governments therefore must be
considered not only as facilitating ostracism among their citizens by moralizing
health; they also form an additional ostracizing party in society.
The negative impact of governments’ and authorities’ moralization of health
is also evident when considering responsibility for citizens’ health. Essentially,
holding their citizens responsible frees governments from their own responsi-
bility for citizens’ health outcomes. The recent liberalization of the European
sugar market might point to such a shift in perceived responsibility for health.
Sugars that were previously regulated are now allowed and are projected to be
used more often by industry. Such sugars, for instance isoglucose and high fruc-
tose corn syrup, are associated with diabetes and obesity, leading researchers to
warn the European Union to expect an epidemic of obesity and diabetes similar
to that in the United States ( Jacobsen, 2016). The above examples suggest that
the moralization of health likely worsens many of the problems governments
and employers aim to tackle, while at the same time impeding the relationships
between those conforming to the health norm, those deviating from it, and the
entities representing the higher order social category, for instance the govern-
ment, authorities, and institutions.
Summary
The analysis offered here provides a strong pointer towards moralization as pro-
moting intolerance and ostracism, while undermining people’s motivation to
implement the desired changes. The attachment of moral labels to domains and
behaviors that would otherwise have been regarded as mere social conventions
points towards the biggest problem of moralization as a persuasion strategy: We
might agree that categorizing between law-abiding citizens and criminals in terms
of morally good and morally bad people is functional. However, the functional-
ity of categorizing between healthy and ill citizens in terms of morally good and
bad people can be questioned. Because a myriad of very different behaviors can
be presented and construed as moral or non-moral (van Bavel et al., 2012; Wright
et al., 2008), undeniably one can – and should – argue about the moral core of
almost all moralized issues. For instance, a recent report by the Dutch Ministry of
Health, Welfare and Sport (In’t Panhuis-Plasmans, Luijben, & Hoogeveen, 2012)
states that the proportion of health care costs accounted for by unhealthy lifestyles
is low. Specifically, among aspects of unhealthy lifestyles such as smoking, over-
weight, and sedentary lifestyle, the costs of smoking are highest – but still, they
account for only 3.8% of the total health care costs in the Netherlands in 2010.
Thus, the controllability of health outcomes and infliction of harm on others –
important foundations for construing an issue as moral – are not backed by facts.
184 Susanne Täuber
Unfortunately, once a behavior has been moralized and gained a foothold

in society in the form of a moral norm, it becomes binding for group mem-
bers and will determine their standing, as well as the respect they receive from
the group (Ellemers & van den Bos, 2012). What results is rigid categoriza-
tion (van Leeuwen et al., 2012), intense negative emotions (Rozin et al., 1997;
Skitka & Mullen, 2002), stigmatization (Crandall, 1994; Crandall et al., 2001;
Täuber, 2018), intolerance of attitude dissimilarity (Haidt et al., 2003; Skitka
et al., 2015; Wright et al., 2008), a perceived liberty to act on behalf of (Effron
& Miller, 2012) and acceptance of unfair and transgressive means in order to
achieve the desired moral outcome (Mueller & Skitka, 2017; Skitka & Mullen,
2002), punishment insensitive to the degree of deviance (Kessler et al., 2010),
deteriorating relationships (Ellemers & van den Bos, 2012), social exclusion and
harmful outcomes (Opotow, 1990; 1995; Täuber, 2018), increasingly self-defen-
sive responses (e.g., Gausel et al., 2012; Mulder et al., 2015), declining self-
determined behavioral regulation (Täuber et al., 2018a), and plummeting social
cohesion (Täuber, 2018). The above highlights the extremely negative outlook
moralization as a persuasive strategy will create for society. However, knowing
the effects and mechanisms that operate towards these negative outcomes from
moralization also equips us with the tools to do something against it. One key
question consequently is:
Where do we go from here?

It appears that ostracism can have important socioregulatory functions (e.g.,
Rudert & Greifeneder; Robinson & Schabram, both 2019; Tetlock, 2002).
However, the evidence reviewed in this chapter demonstrates how dysfunctional
ostracism can be when it results from the moralization of more or less arbitrary
behaviors and outcomes. Integrating different strands of research, this chapter
offers a number of pointers towards interventions that might be more moti-
vating. For instance, one lesson learned is that in order to prompt behavioral
regulation that aids improvement in the domain of a shortcoming, concerns for
social image should be avoided, and concerns for self-image should be facili-
tated (Gausel, 2013; Gausel et al., 2012; Gausel & Leach, 2011; Täuber et al.,
2018). One way to achieve this is by refraining from moralization whenever
possible, because people are more motivated to improve when shortcomings are
framed in non-moral ways (e.g., Täuber & van Zomeren, 2012, 2013; Täuber,
van Zomeren, & Kutlaca, 2015).
As individual citizens, we should think twice about the judgments we make
on a daily basis. Those who are most inclined to moralize health are people
who are already fulfilling the moral norm, because “people tend to align their
moralization with their own lifestyles” (Pinker, 2008). A major problem of
moralization is that it prompts social observers to ignore the fact that effort
and outcome can be completely orthogonal. Young people, for instance, do
not observe many aspects of a healthy lifestyle – think of sleep deprivation,
alcohol consumption, and the amount of unhealthy food taken in by students.

That notwithstanding, younger adults are on average thinner and healthier than
older adults. Illustrating the opposite effect, just because the outcome appears
negative by no means implies a lack of effort on the part of smokers and over-
weight people. But looking at health through a moral lens frees people from
considering how many attempts the other might have made to quit smoking or
lose weight.
Acknowledging the pervasive negative effects of moralization on societal
stakeholders, and in particular, on those not fulfilling the moral norm, requires
that the ethical dimension of moralization needs to be acknowledged, too. This
is to say that governments, institutions, employers, the media, and all other social
agents should be open about the facts and fictions of controllability, and need
to communicate responsibly about important issues such as health. Given that
how important societal issues are presented really is controllable, neglecting the
evidence about the negative effects of moralization on society presented in this
chapter would indeed qualify as being immoral.
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12
REJECTION SENSITIVITY AS A
DETERMINANT OF WELL-BEING
DURING REENTRY
Michael J. Naft and Geraldine Downey
Carceral punishment—which we conceptualize as including both the enactment

of incarceration and the public attitudes and structural policies that construct
the conditions of reentry—is a sui generis form of social rejection in the United
States. As an immediate form of extreme penal control, incarceration enacts
nonpareil forms of social separation, segregating convicted individuals from their
families, friends, and communities. More broadly, the stigma that attaches to
criminal status imposes an array of legal and extralegal burdens and disadvan-
tages that function to distance formerly incarcerated people from the resources,
opportunities, and protections that enable full community participation, social
mobility, health, and well-being. As a result, carceral punishment gives rise to a
profound transformation of social identity, stripping formerly incarcerated per-
sons of many of the rights and privileges vested in ordinary citizenship, and
marking them as legitimate targets for material and symbolic exclusion. Carceral
punishment thus has a powerful expressive function, communicating a collective
societal judgment that, because of the presumed offender’s undesirable conduct, he
or she has become a socially undesirable person—someone who, in the eyes of the
community, does not belong.
In this chapter, we examine structural and psychosocial pathways through
which criminal stigma can directly and indirectly impact the well-being of for-
merly incarcerated persons. Our goal is to introduce an account of stigma that
conceptualizes the centrality of a rejection–expectation dynamic in the every-
day lives of formerly incarcerated persons. Drawing on the body of research on
rejection sensitivity (Downey & Feldman, 1996; Mendoza-Denton, Downey,
Purdie, Davis, & Pietrzak, 2002), as well as findings from qualitative and experi-
mental studies on reentry in New York City, we advance a social–cognitive
processing model to illuminate the processes through which criminal stigma
Rejection sensitivity as a determinant of well-being during reentry 191
likely impacts formerly incarcerated people at multiple levels of the ecological

system (Bronfenbrenner, 1977). We conclude by suggesting avenues for future
research examining criminal status rejection sensitivity as a determinant of well-
being during reentry, with an eye toward understanding how stigma-reduction
interventions might enable formerly incarcerated people to flourish in the world
beyond bars.
The stigma of criminal status

Background
By many indicators, criminal status is one of the most severely stigmatized social
categories in the United States, and a source of widespread discrimination and
devaluation in a diverse range of contexts. Stigmatizing ideas linking criminal
status to danger, mendacity, and an inability to change, contribute to extremely
aversive public attitudes about convicted persons (Naft & Downey, 2018;
Hirschfield & Piquero, 2010). In a study by Pachankis and colleagues (2018)
ranking and categorizing 93 stigmatized statuses, criminal status was ranked as
one of the most “perilous” social categories, measured as the extent to which the
stigma poses a personal threat or potential for contagion. These widely endorsed
stereotypes, and the public beliefs they inform, function to mark people with
criminal histories as legitimate targets for exclusion from multiple highly valued
life domains. Furthermore, because criminal status is predicated on the con-
victed person’s actions as opposed to an inherited or immutable characteristic
such as race, the criminally labeled can readily be viewed as responsible for the
negative outcomes associated with their stigmatized status. Together, these views
often function to justify invidious discrimination against the criminally labeled,
and render criminal stigma remarkably resistant to attenuation.
Stigma can impact well-being through multiple pathways, including indi-
vidual-level psychological processes (e.g., anticipated stigma; Pachankis et al.,
2008) and macro-level structural mechanisms (e.g., institutional policies that
intentionally or unintentionally target a group for unequal treatment; Link &
Phelan, 2001). Notably, stigma-based discrimination is frequently animated dur-
ing reentry and distinctly as rejection, which can be conveyed as overt and covert
rejection, inequitable treatment, and other manifestations of exclusion. In many
cases, these enactments of rejection result from institutional policies, including
laws, which differentially target people with criminal status for discriminatory
treatment. While it is widely acknowledged that stigma operates through struc-
tural pathways, most of the research on stigmatized identities has focused on the
health implications of individual-level psychological processes. However, there is
a growing literature on health inequalities associated with macro-level forms of
stigma in sexual-minority populations that points to the importance of widening
the investigative frame to explore the implications of stigma’s constructions at
different levels of the ecological system (Hatzenbuehler et al., 2014).
192 Michael J. Naft and Geraldine Downey
Structural stigma
Structural stigma refers to societal-level conditions, cultural norms, and institu-
tional policies that constrain the opportunities, resources, and well-being of stig-
matized individuals (Hatzenbuehler & Link, 2014). A growing body of research,
much of it focused on sexual-minority populations, has linked structural stigma
to negative physical and mental health outcomes. For example, Hatzenbuehler
and colleagues (2014) found that sexual minorities living in areas with high levels
of anti-gay prejudice (“high structural stigma”) had an increased mortality risk
compared to those who lived in areas with low levels of prejudice (“low structural
stigma”). Structural stigma can also be operationalized, and thereby impact well-
being, through laws that target members of stigmatized groups for differential
treatment (Corrigan et al., 2005). For example, sexual-minority adults in states
that had initiated constitutional bans on same-sex marriage were found to have
higher rates of psychiatric disorders than sexual minorities living in states that
had not instituted bans (Hatzenbuehler, McLaughlin, Keyes, & Hasin, 2010).
Structural stigma, operating through legal and extralegal mechanisms, is a
source of chronic unemployment among formerly incarcerated persons. One year
after being released from prison, as many as 60 to 75 percent of formerly incarcer-
ated persons in the United States are not employed (Yang, 2017; Visher, Debus, &
Yahner, 2008). Structural forces other than invidious discrimination contribute
to unemployment, including incarceration’s stunting effect on the development
of job skills and other forms of human capital (Visher et al., 2008). However, it is
clear that stigma plays a significant role in the rejection of formerly incarcerated
people from the job market. Audit research has shown that job applicants with
criminal records are between 50 and 60 percent less likely to receive an inter-
view request or job offer than identical applicants who did not have a criminal
record (Pager, 2003; Agan & Starr, 2017). Structural stigma is further opera-
tionalized through laws at the federal, state, and local levels barring people with
criminal records from certain occupations. There is evidence that factors driving
employment discrimination include employers’ concerns about safety and poten-
tial liability for negligent hiring (Agan, 2017). Moreover, laws at the state and
federal level bar people with criminal records—including low-level misdemea-
nors—from receiving occupational licenses (American Bar Association, 2016).
Notably, however, there is no empirical data supporting the view that peo-
ple with criminal records pose an increased threat to workplace safety. To the
contrary, there is evidence that people with records can have a positive impact
on businesses. A study examining hiring and worker-performance data on over
250,000 applicants for sales and customer service jobs found that employees who
had records had a much longer tenure, and were also less likely to quit their jobs
voluntarily than other workers (Minor, Persico, & Weiss, 2018). In addition,
research on performance outcomes after the United States military started allow-
ing people with felony records to enlist found that people with criminal histories
were no more likely than their peers to be discharged for bad behavior. In fact,
they were more likely to be promoted than those without records (Lundquist,
Pager, & Strader, 2018). Nevertheless, pernicious stereotypes remain deeply
entrenched in public views, informing the spread of institutional practices that
can facilitate discrimination, including criminal-record disclosure requirements
and background checks during the hiring process (Uggen & Stewart, 2014;
Agan, 2017).
The legal barriers to well-being extend far beyond the employment context,
and touch upon nearly every aspect of life after being released from prison. There
are currently over 45,000 state and federal laws in the United States that target
people with criminal status for unequal access to key resources, opportunities,
and rights (American Bar Association, 2016). Under federal law, a felony convic-
tion may restrict or bar access to housing assistance, food stamps, supplemental
nutrition assistance, student loans, and welfare benefits (Council of Economic
Advisors, 2016). In addition, state laws impose a range of barriers to full com-
munity participation after being released from prison, including restrictions
and prohibitions on exercising the franchise and serving on juries (Uggen &
Stewart, 2014)—rights and responsibilities that are fundamental to citizenship.
As Michelle Alexander (2012) observed, this astonishing array of collateral con-
sequences of a criminal conviction “send[s] an unequivocal message that ‘they’
are no longer part of ‘us.’”
Individual stigma: sensitivity to rejection

Stigma can negatively impact well-being directly and indirectly through indi-
vidual pathways, such as psychological processes that occur in response to per-
ceived or threatened discrimination. Individual-level stigma has been shown to
compromise well-being through the activation of stress that can trigger invol-
untary physiological, cognitive, and affective responses that can undermine
health, including chronic stress that can increase allostatic load (Brondolo, Ver
Halen, Pencille, Beatty, & Contrada, 2009). In addition, people who perceive
stigma may respond with coping behaviors that have negative health impli-
cations, including drug and alcohol use, smoking, and risky sexual behavior
(Pascoe & Smart Richman, 2009). While intrapersonal stigma has been studied
with respect to a diverse range of devalued social identities, there is a paucity
of research examining individual-level psychological processes related to how
formerly incarcerated persons experience and respond to stigma. This gap in the
literature invites considerations of how extant research on stigma might inform
future studies.
Much of the research on a range of stigmatized identities has focused on mod-
els of social identity threat, or the fear of being judged through the lens of nega-
tive stereotypes related to one’s social identity in the minds of others (Steele,
Spencer, & Aronson, 2002). Social identity threat can trigger involuntary phys-
iological, cognitive, and behavioral responses that can have negative implica-
tions for health and well-being (Major, Mendes, & Dovidio, 2013). In academic
contexts, anxiety about confirming a negative group stereotype can activate

stress, impair cognitive functioning, and lead to performance decrements in
educational contexts—a phenomenon termed stereotype threat (Steele et al.,
2002). In this chapter, however, we wish to focus on a different individual-
level process, rejection sensitivity, a process through which repeated experiences
of rejection can lead to anxious expectations of rejection that are defensively
activated to protect against potential threat (RS; Downey & Feldman, 1996;
Mendoza-Denton et al., 2002). Status-based RS refers to the psychologi-
cal process through which some people can develop the disposition to anx-
iously expect and overreact to rejection based on their stigmatized social status,
such as their race (Mendoza-Denton et al., 2002), gender (London, Downey,
Romero-Canyas, Rattan, & Tyson, 2012), or sexual orientation (Pachankis,
Goldfried, & Ramrattan, 2008). While sensitivity to rejection can represent a
functional adaptation to some situations, studies have shown that it can lead to
responses that negatively impact relationships and well-being, including avoid-
ance (London, Downey, Bonica, & Paltin, 2007), stress (Pachankis et al., 2008),
anger, and hostility (Ayduk, Gyurak, & Luerssen, 2008; Downey, Feldman, &
Ayduk, 2000). While they are related constructs, models of status-based RS
differ from stereotype and social identity threat. The focal point of RS is not
the activation of, or people’s concerns about confirming, negative group stereo-
types. Rather, it explicitly emphasizes the concerns about rejection that peo-
ple bring to interpersonal situations based on their prior experiences. It may
therefore be particularly apposite in the context of reentry, where, as we have
discussed, the threat of rejection is pervasive. Accordingly, we propose a rejec-
tion sensitivity framework to illuminate how formerly incarcerated people may
respond to cues of interpersonal rejection-threat, and how those responses can
contribute to negative outcomes.
Rejection sensitivity and reentry

The rejection sensitivity model
Rejection sensitivity (RS) is a cognitive–affective processing dynamic (Mischel
& Shoda, 1995) whereby some people develop a disposition to anxiously expect,
readily perceive, and overreact to rejection in situations where rejection is pos-
sible (Downey & Feldman, 1996; Mendoza-Denton et al., 2002). The original
RS framework, which drew on interpersonal theories of personality and attach-
ment theory (Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1980; Erikson, 1950; Horney, 1937; Sullivan,
1937), was developed to provide an account of how repeated experiences of rejec-
tion in important early childhood relationships can lead people to respond to
rejection cues in ways that can compromise relationships and well-being. The RS
model proposes that, when prior experience suggests that an interaction poses
the possibility of rejection that can have adverse consequences, it can lead to the
activation of expectations of rejection, and can trigger a defensively motivated

search for cues of threat. While early studies on the RS phenomenon focused on
the anxious anticipatory affect that could accompany expectations of rejection
(i.e., anxious expectations), later research recognized that rejection experiences
could also give rise instead to an angry anticipatory affect (i.e., angry expectations)
(London, Downey, Bonica, & Paltin, 2007; Downey, Bonica, & Rincon, 1999).
This heightened state of vigilance can lower the threshold for perceiving rejec-
tion, increasing the likelihood of detecting rejection in response to ambiguous
or objectively benign cues (Romero-Canyas, Downey, Berenson, Ayduk & Kang,
2010; Mendoza-Denton et al., 2002). When they perceive rejection, highly rejec-
tion sensitive people often react with hostile feelings toward others, and are more
likely than people low in RS to exhibit reactive aggression (Romero-Canyas et
al., 2010). These intense reactions can make actual rejection more likely, creating a
self-fulfilling prophecy (Downey, Freitas, Michaelis, & Khouri, 1998).
While a large body of research has linked RS to adverse interpersonal and
well-being outcomes, sensitivity to rejection can represent a functional adapta-
tion to stigmatizing environment—particularly in situations where actual rejec-
tion is likely and its consequences are severe. And these are precisely the kinds of
situations that formerly incarcerated people frequently experience as they make
the transition from prison to free society. As Miller and Alexander (2016) note,
because formerly incarcerated people are often in the perilous position of having
to rely on the goodwill of others for essential forms of assistance, even mundane
interactions and situations can invoke a sense of threat. For example, an argu-
ment with a family member can result in loss of safe housing, financial assistance,
and social support. A misunderstanding at work can lead to loss of a scarce job.
An issue with a social service worker can lead to loss of drug counseling, sup-
plemental nutrition benefits, and other desperately needed forms of assistance.
In these circumstances, heightened vigilance can make sense. However, as the
RS research has shown, it can potentially lead to anger, hostility, and reactive
aggression—responses that can have devastating implications for the well-being
of formerly incarcerated people. It is therefore important to examine the possible
role of sensitivity to rejection in how people experience the world after being
released from prison.
Evidence of a rejection–expectation dynamic: the job search

Qualitative and experimental studies with formerly incarcerated participants
provide preliminary evidence of a link between a rejection–expectation dynamic
and negative outcomes when seeking employment. Participant self-reports from
research examining psychological, affective, and behavioral outcomes during
the job search indicate that the chronic experience of rejection when applying
for jobs can lead to intense psychological reactions when completing applica-
tions and participating in interviews. In particular, questions asking applicants to
indicate whether they have a criminal conviction by checking either a “Yes” or

“No” box (often referred to as a “check-the-box” question) can function as cues
of rejection-threat, triggering anxiety, fear, and anger (Naft & Downey, 2018).
Moreover, in interactions with hiring personnel, such as telephone or in-person
interviews, participants often experienced fear about being asked about their
criminal histories, which they assumed would automatically result in not getting
the job. Many reported that this could lead them to nervousness, diminished self-
confidence, and unfriendly or defensive affect—reactions that some felt could be
perceived by the interviewer.
Moreover, in an experimental study with formerly incarcerated men, par-
ticipants were randomly assigned to complete a mock employment application
that either did or did not include a check-the-box disclosure question. Based on
findings from self-report studies, the presence of a check-the-box question was
intended to function as a cue of rejection-threat. After completing the appli-
cation, participants participated in semi-structured mock interviews with an
experimenter who was blind to condition, which were videotaped for subse-
quent coding. After the interview, the experimenter answered the following
questions using 7-point Likert scales: (i) “How well do you think the participant
performed during the interview?” and (ii) “How likely would you be to hire the
participant based on the interview?” Responses were combined into a compos-
ite score. Participants completed the RS-Adult Questionnaire, a well-validated
measure of people’s general disposition to anxiously expect rejection (Berenson
et al., 2009; Downey & Feldman, 1996). Participants also completed a meas-
ure of felt stigma, which measured expectations about the probability of being
rejected in certain situations because of one’s history of incarceration.
Controlling for general sensitivity to rejection and age, there was a signifi-
cant interaction of felt stigma and condition, such that people low in felt stigma
received significantly better interview assessments than those high in felt stigma.
There was no between-condition difference among those low in felt stigma.
However, among those high in felt stigma, assessments were significantly lower
in the check-the-box condition (i.e., where there was a cue of rejection-threat)
than the control condition (Naft & Downey, 2018).
In addition, three video coders who were blind to condition coded interviews
for demonstrations of “competence,” or evidence that the participant would be a
capable employee. Controlling for general sensitivity to rejection and age, there
was a significant interaction of felt stigma and condition, such that people low in
felt stigma were viewed as more competent than those high in felt stigma. There
was no between-condition difference among those low in felt stigma. Among
those high in felt stigma, however, competence scores were significantly lower in
the check-the-box condition (i.e., where there was a cue of rejection-threat). We
caution that these results are from preliminary studies, and additional research
needs to be done. Insofar as they may be consistent with self-reports describing
effects of enacted and threatened rejection, we are encouraged to continue to
explore the rejection–expectation pathway.
Future directions: the relationship between structural

stigma and RS
There has been little research examining the interactive effects of individual-level
and structural stigma. Findings from one of the few studies to explore this rela-
tionship provide evidence that structural stigma interacted with gay-related RS to
predict tobacco and alcohol abuse among young, sexual minority men (Pachankis
et al., 2014). Because structural stigma is such an expansive source of invidious dis-
crimination during reentry, future research should explore how structural mecha-
nisms might interact with individual-level psychological processes associated with
criminal stigma to affect health and well-being. Drawing on research on status-
based RS, researchers have begun to develop a measure of RS based on criminal
status that can be used to explore possible interactive effects in future studies (Naft
& Downey, 2018).This line of inquiry can have important implications for thinking
about both individual- and structural-level interventions, both of which are neces-
sary to disrupt the stigmatized conditions of reentry. In the following section, we
will discuss some of the complexities associated with intervening at multiple levels,
and propose strategies that target both psychosocial and structural pathways.
Intervention
Background
Because it draws so much of its power from laws and entrenched institutional
policies, interventions seeking to reduce the effects of criminal stigma will have
to address its instantiation at the structural level. Getting rid of laws that limit
or deny access to key parts of the social safety net can improve well-being by
making it easier to receive welfare benefits, nutritional assistance, and hous-
ing assistance. Removing legal barriers to receiving professional licenses can
enable people to obtain credentials that are necessary to find work in a range
of professions. Jettisoning state disenfranchisement laws, which currently pro-
hibit over 6 million Americans from voting (Uggen, Larson, & Shannon, 2016),
can enable formerly incarcerated people to exercise a right that is fundamental
to equal citizenship. Legal reform that promotes inclusion in this way has the
potential to improve well-being by increasing people’s sense of social belong-
ing (Hatzenbuehler, 2010)—a fundamental human motivation that has profound
implications for human functioning (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).
While essential, strategies for structural intervention can have downsides.
Because legal reform is contingent upon several factors, including changes in
cultural attitudes, community support, and political will, it can take a long time
to achieve (Pachankis et al., 2014). Moreover, because stigma is a multidimen-
sional construct (Link & Phelan, 2001), changes on just one dimension may
not be sufficient to effect significant change overall (Clair, Daniel, & Lamont,
2016). As we discuss below, this can sometimes have unintended and adverse
consequences.
“Ban the box”

A growing number of states and cities have passed so-called “ban the box” laws
(BTB), which prevent employers from asking about an applicant’s criminal his-
tory on job applications, and regulate when a background check can be per-
formed in the hiring process (Agan, 2017). BTB is predicated on the idea that
removing disclosure questions from applications will enable people with criminal
records to have their applications judged on their merits, which should increase
their chances of being invited for callback interviews (Agan, 2017). In most juris-
dictions, BTB does not prohibit employers from conducting background checks
before making a final offer, which leaves open the possibility of discrimination.
The hope is that employers will be less likely to discriminate if they learn about
an applicant’s criminal record after having assessed his or her qualifications. BTB
can thus be viewed as a change in a default condition—the sequencing of disclo-
sure—which, it is argued, will prevent immediate discrimination, and, in turn,
create conditions congenial to hiring people with criminal histories.
While it is too soon to know if BTB is working, there is evidence that it
may be having significant unintended consequences. Findings from recent stud-
ies indicate that removing information about applicants’ criminal histories may
cause hiring managers to engage in statistical discrimination by using race as a
proxy for whether an applicant has a criminal record (Agan & Starr, 2017). In
addition to preventing the hiring of people with criminal records, this can have
the effect of harming African-American job applicants without criminal records.
These findings suggest that, notwithstanding BTB, employers continue to be
wary of hiring people with criminal records, and may go to great lengths to
avoid what they perceive as a liability risk. This highlights a shortcoming of
BTB: it does not directly address the stigmatizing ideas that continue to inform
hiring policies and practices. This is not to suggest that BTB is doomed to fail;
indeed, many people have been hired as a result of the fair chance that BTB
seeks to provide. However, findings from Agan & Starr (2017) and other scholars
highlight the fact that stigma will not disappear simply because of changes in law.
Pathways to disruption
While strategies that seek to reduce structural stigma are essential, they should be
accompanied by interventions that address individual-level concerns specific to
the experience of criminal stigma. Future research should examine interventions
that promote resilience in several ways, including the development of tools to
manage rejection-threatening situations in functional ways; deploying narrative-
based strategies for blame reduction; and providing opportunities and resources
for interpersonal support, institutional scaffolding, personal growth, and social
belonging through a shift away from the backward-looking identity of criminal
status to the future-directed identity of being a student.
While we highlighted several negative affective and behavioral responses
associated with people’s chronic expectations of rejection, sensitivity to rejection
does not necessarily have to engender bad outcomes. Studies on RS provide

evidence that self-regulation competencies may play an important role in how
people react to cues of rejection-threat. For example, a correlational study found
that high self-regulation competencies, measured in terms of participants’ abili-
ties to delay gratification, can mitigate the negative effects of the RS dynamic
among people high in RS (Ayduk et al., 2000). Furthermore, in an experimental
study in which participants were primed to think about a significant interper-
sonal-rejection experience, both high and low RS participants who were then
asked to think about context-related information about the event were less able
to access hostile thoughts than those asked to think about their emotional and
visceral responses (Ayduk, Mischel, & Downey, 2002). These findings suggest
that strategies focused on the development of emotion-regulation skills may pro-
vide an immediate starting point for enabling people to manage expectations of
stigma in functional ways during reentry—particularly in high-stakes contexts.
Moreover, findings from a longitudinal study on stigma experienced by sexual-
minority men indicate that people’s expectations of rejection can diminish over
time—a change that the authors speculated could be driven by factors related
to psychological resilience (Pachankis, Sullivan, Feinstein, & Newcomb, 2018).
This represents a potentially fruitful line of inquiry.
In addition to interventions that focus on the development of resilience to
manage stigma, we can draw from the experiences of other marginalized groups
to consider possible ways to reduce or weaken the impact of stigma. Groups
have had varied levels of success in removing, or shifting, attributions of blame
(Clair, Daniel, & Lamont, 2016). For example, weight-based stigma draws much
of its power from the cultural view that obesity is a product of people’s choices
related to diet and exercise (Puhl & Heuer, 2009). While changes in scientific
knowledge have provided explanations of obesity that are not rooted in notions
of individual blame, these accounts have failed to significantly address cultural
attitudes about high body-weight people. This can be attributed, in part, to
messaging by prominent stakeholders—including pharmaceutical companies,
food producers, and healthcare organizations—who continue to describe obe-
sity as a problem that can be solved through the individual’s actions. By contrast,
sexual-minority populations in the United States have had success in counter-
ing blame attributions that describe homosexuality as a product of choice. This
can be linked in part to developments in scientific knowledge, but has also
been hastened by relatively quick and dramatic shifts in cultural attitudes about
sexuality over the past twenty-five years. Together, these factors have facilitated
profound changes in structural stigma, most notably through high-profile litiga-
tion that resulted in the Supreme Court’s recognition of a constitutional right
to same-sex marriage.
Blame reduction faces notably significant obstacles in the context of crimi-
nal stigma, where one’s stigmatized status is based on presumptions of action,
agency, and harm. Education-based interventions targeting multiple levels of
the ecological system—including school curricula, criminal-justice professionals
(e.g., police, judges, prosecutors, parole officers, prison guards), social and tradi-
tional media campaigns, and popular entertainment (e.g., fictional portrayals of
people who are or have been incarcerated)—can play a role in reshaping people’s
views of the criminally labeled. In particular, education about individual and
structural risk factors that increase vulnerability to criminal-justice involvement
(e.g., race, poverty, education level, the school-to-prison pipeline, gang vio-
lence, domestic violence, discrimination in policing, age-related differences in
brain development, mental illness) can inform people’s views about culpability
and punishment. Importantly, individual narratives, perhaps more so than any
statistic about America’s experiment with hyper-criminalization and mass incar-
ceration, can play a powerful role in reframing public attitudes about criminal
identity, and should be included in any education-based intervention. Whereas
the assignment of criminal status is reductive, defining the person by his or her
conduct, personal stories widen the frame and reveal complexity. They allow
people to engage in what Teju Cole (2016) calls “constellational thinking”—to
connect the dots rather than looking at them in isolation.
While the foregoing strategies address the immediate concern of managing
rejection-threat and the ongoing issue of stigma-reduction, neither one can ena-
ble formerly incarcerated people to transcend key limitations imposed by crimi-
nal stigma. Accordingly, we propose a specific pathway for disrupting stigma that
empowers individuals to make a shift from criminal identity to student identity. We
conceive this shift not as an abstract construct, but a multilevel intervention that
is evidence-based and capable of being operationalized and assessed in a program
of research.
As a point of departure, we posit that the principal constitutive elements of
student identity are in direct opposition to, and have the power to counteract,
many of the key limitations associated with criminal identity. At its core, student
identity is essentially and emphatically forward-looking: the student not only
has, but is potential, and growth is a default expectation. Criminal identity, by
contrast, is fundamentally backward-looking and fixed: people with criminal
status are defined in terms of past conduct (or that which has been attributed to
them) and stereotyped as being impervious to change.
At a more practical level, a college education provides essential opportunities
for intellectual and personal exploration, development, and growth. Furthermore,
it provides opportunities to develop skills, competencies, knowledge, and cre-
dentials that are necessary for many kinds of employment after graduation. In
the classroom, during office hours, and at campus events students are presented
with opportunities to cultivate generative and empowering interpersonal ties,
including new friendships and romantic partnerships; relationships with profes-
sors, mentors, and future employers; and introductions to people, organizations,
causes, and ideas that can change and enrich their lives.
In short, student identity and a college education create a sense of belonging
where it previously did not exist. In our work, we have seen how being a college
student can enable people to shed the backward-looking, fixed identity of criminal
status, and how education can provide the tools to develop and embrace an iden-
tity defined by growth and expansive potential. It is the opposite of a fixed narra-
tive, defined by confinement and rejection. It is an identity of belonging and hope.
Interventions that remind people to think about their valued identities can
help people to restore a global sense of self-integrity, which can prevent negative
reactions to the threat of stigma (Sherman & Cohen, 2006). Moreover, priming
students with physical disabilities with their student identity rather than their
status as a person with a disability activated more autonomy-related thoughts,
which was associated with a lower likelihood of seeking help on an academic task
(Wang & Dovidio, 2011). This effect was especially strong for students high in
stigma-consciousness, a construct that, like RS, also captures individual differ-
ences in the anticipation of discrimination (Mendoza-Denton & Leitner, 2017).
These and other findings in the stigma literature provide compelling evidence
that possession of an identity associated with psychological and social auton-
omy—specifically, student identity—has potential to enhance the psychological
resilience of people whose stigmatized statuses are associated with significant
limitations and disadvantages. We believe it is an identity that disrupts criminal
sigma in ways that can enable flourishing in the world beyond bars.
We discussed above the importance of individual narratives to the pro-
cess of destigmatization. We will close, then, with a brief story that provides
an example of how student identity can be an immediate and essential source
of empowerment and psychological resilience during reentry. A man who we
will call R. began his college education while serving a 16-year sentence in
prison. During the last months of his incarceration, R. enrolled in an advanced
psychology course at Queensborough Correctional Facility called “Children at
Risk,” which was based on a course with the same title that the authors teach
at Columbia University. Four days after being released from prison, R. visited
Columbia, where he sat in on a “Children at Risk” class session. He talked to
the class about his life before he was arrested, his incarceration, what he had
learned in “Children at Risk,” and what it was like to be home after 16 years. In
particular, he spoke about becoming a student while he was incarcerated, and the
significant ways in which his college education, which he would be completing
during reentry, had impacted him. Trying to sum up his thoughts, R. looked
around the classroom and said: “I feel like I belong here.”
And he did.
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INDEX
Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures.
abstract vs. concrete thinking styles 68–69 awareness-raising interventions on

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy 67 ostracism 148–149
acceptance-based interventions 67
accuracy as motivation for individuation Badea, C. 165
54, 59–61 “ban the box” (BTB) laws 198
affiliation behaviors 22, 56–57, 147 Barrie, J. M. 82, 95
African-Americans, ostracism studies baseline periods for experiments 123
involving 43, 57, 58, 198; see also Bastian, B. 110
race-based issues Baumeister, R. F. 9, 49–50, 165
Agan, A. 198 belonging: defined 49; and entitativity 25;
aggressive responses 18, 38, 68, 71, as fundamental need 2, 66, 70–71; in
72, 195 workplace settings 163
Albarracin, D. 94 Bentham, J. 104
alcohol ban study 129 Bernstein, M. J. 53
Alexander, M. 193, 195 bi- and multi-racial individuals 3; see also
allostatic load increases 193 race-based issues
Alparone, F. A. 124 Bilardi, Jake 18, 26
anagram (and “psyching oneself up”) biopsychosocial approach to pain 103, 105
study 94 blame, attribution and reduction of
Andrighetto, L. 146 177–178, 199–200
angry anticipatory affect 195 Bourgeois, K. S. 72
anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) 120 Brewer, M. B. 50
anterior insula 120 broken heart syndrome 111n1
arousal 123, 125–126, 128–130 Brown, D. J. 161–162
“Atimia” paradigm 55
Atlas, L. Y. 103, 109 Canada, smoking and socioeconomic
attentional deployment 51, 60–61 status in 183
attitudes and preferences 172, 175 carceral punishment see criminal stigma
Australia, smoking and socioeconomic and carceral punishment
status in 183 cardiovascular reactivity 121
autonomic physiological proxies 121 Cardone, D. 124
206 Index
Carlston, D. E. 176 Threat Scale, using 107; and Hispanic

category membership vs. behavioral student study 55; for other-race effect,
information 58 measurement of 53–54; on pain and
certainty see extreme groups; uncertainty, empathy 108; and pupillometry 128;
types of and responses to observed ostracism
Chen, Z. 60, 68 145; and skin conductance response
chronic belonging threats 61 121–122; and social norms 35–39,
chronic pain 107 41–42; and thermal imaging 124; and
cognitive dissonance paradigm 129 validation of emotion 76
cognitive mediation of reflexive response Cyberbomb paradigm 37, 42
32–34, 43–44 cyberbullying 144
cognitive processing affected by
ostracism 21 Dahl, E. 165
Cohen, G. L. 43 Davis, K. D. 104–105
cold comfort 9–10 defensive ostracism 147
Cole, T. 200 dehumanization 3
collectivist cultures 75, 159 delay of gratification, research on 90
common fate principle 25 denigration of perpetrators 70, 73
competence, perceptions of 142–143, 143 Dennett, D. 106, 111n2
conflict, cultural differences in handling depression 2, 5; and pain 107
159–160 derogation as self-defensive strategy 72,
Confucius 91 74, 180
“constellational thinking” 200 derogatory terms 3
continuum model 54 Descartes, R. 101
control issues: and aggression 38–39; DeWall, C. N. 51, 165
cognitive 89–90; and extreme groups dichotomous thinking and moralization
25–26; and fundamental needs 2, 66, 175–176
70, 73; and moralization 177; and disabilities and autonomy-related
perceived fairness of exclusion 34; thoughts 201
reaffirming 72; and self-protection discrimination 4
behaviors 160; in workplace settings 163 Dislikeball experiment 36–37
Cooper, J. 129 distanced self-talk and self-regulation
coping with exclusion see psychological 82–99; by children 90–91, 95; and
coping strategies distanced self-talk as self-control tool
criminals, relational closeness to 92–93 89–90; and mental representations of
criminal stigma and carceral punishment stressful situations 86–88; in mentoring
190–204; “ban the box” (BTB) laws and intergroup relations 93; and moral
198; and education-based interventions decisions 92–93; and motivation 94;
(targeting the public) 199–200; and and psychological distance 83, 84, 94;
individual-level interventions 198–199; and recovering from ostracism 20; in
and individual stigma 193–194; and socially stressful contexts 84–85; and
legal reforms 197; and rejection– vulnerable populations 88–89; and
expectation dynamic in job searches wise reasoning 91–92; and “you,” use
195–196; and structural stigma 192–193, of 94–95
197; and student identity concept, distraction strategy 66, 69, 74–75
shift toward 200–201; well-being, do-gooder derogation 180
affecting 191 Dolcos, S. 94
Crone, E. A. 121, 145 dorsal anterior cingulate cortex 102
Croyle, R. T. 129 “dream job” speech study 85–87, 87
Cui, L. 165 Duchenne and non-Duchenne (real and
Cullum, J. 174 fake) smiles 52–54, 59–61
Cyberball experiments: and extreme
groups 22; and face processing, Ebola-worry study 88–89
measurement of 60, 61; Fear of Social Echterhoff, G. 108
Index 207
Eck, J. 38–39 Gestalt principles 25

education-based interventions (targeting Giesen, A. 108
public attitudes about criminal Glucklich, A. 109
identity) 199–200 governments and institutions, health
Eisenberger, N. I. 44, 104 moralization affecting 182
electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings Great Britain, smoking and
121, 122 socioeconomic status in 183
electroencephalography (EEG) 93, Greifeneder, R. 36, 38–39
120–122, 129, 130 Grossmann, I. 91–92
emotion-regulation skills (among Gunther Moor, B. 121
incarcerated persons) 199 Güroğlu, B. 145
empathy 108
employment barriers faced by formerly health inequalities resulting from stigma
incarcerated persons 192–193, 195–196 174, 191, 193
entitativity 25 Hess, E. H. 126
Euroball paradigm 37 Hispanic student study 55–56
European Union 183 Hogg, M. A. 23
event-related brain potentials (ERPs) Hohman, Z. P. 165
89–90 Hornsey, M. J. 110
executive control and self-affirmation 71 Huang, X. 161
experiential avoidance 67 Hugenberg, K. 60
external help, seeking 76 hydraulic metaphor (for coping strategies)
extreme group preference hypothesis 22 73–75
extreme groups 18–31; and belonging
and identity, need for 165; certainty, Iannetti, G. D. 103–105
providing 22–25; and entitativity 25; IJzerman, H. 121, 124
impact of 25–26; and need-threat model immigrant experiences 165
of ostracism 19–22; as selective 26 immune functioning, loneliness
eye trackers 127; see also pupillometry affecting 49
impression formation 54–58, 176
face-memory 53 inclusion norms 35, 36, 42, 181
face processing 50–54, 60, 61 indiscrimination hypothesis 21
face-to-face interactions 6 individual responsibility 172, 173
facial appearance, stereotypes about individuation 54–56
142–143 infidelity and betrayal, study on 91–92
facial EMG 121 influence see social influence, types of
Fear of Social Threat Scale 107 informal groups 138
Feinberg, M. 162 insula 102
Fincher, C. 161–162 International Association for the Study of
first impressions study 85 Pain (IASP) 100–101, 103
Flint, S. 180–181 introspection 83
focus as mechanism for self-affirmation 72 Islamic State 18, 26
forgiveness, sense of power affecting 72 Iyer, A. 165
functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) 44, 89–90, 120–122, 129, 130 James, William 5
Jetten, J. 110, 165
Gardner, W. L. 21, 49–50, 61 justice restoration 160–161
gas-lighting 158
gate control theory of pain 101–102, 105 Karate Kid film 25
Gausel, N. 180–181 Kawamoto, T. 121
Gelman, S. A. 95 Kelly, M. 121
gender norms 39–40 Kessler, T. 175
Gerber, J. 72 Knowles, M. 50, 51
Germany, gender quotas in 39–40 Kouchaki, M. 121–122
208 Index
Kross, E. 91–92, 95 179–185; as legitimization for ostracism

Kuraoka, K. 125 176–177; negative societal dynamics
caused by 181–182, 184; and persuasion
Lau, G. 69 172–173; and stigma 178
Law, A. T. 45 moral mandates 178
Leary, M. R. 9, 49–50, 72, 102, 104 Moser, J. 89
Leknes, S. 110 Mouraux, A. 104–105
LGBT individuals see sexual-minority Mullen, E. 175, 178
populations Murray-Close, D. 122
Lieberman, M. D. 104
locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) Nakamura, K. 125
system 126 need-threat model of ostracism see
loneliness 38, 49–51 temporal need-threat model of
ostracism
MacDonald, L. A. 102, 104 negative affect 18
Magnusson, J. 177 negative pictures and memories (study)
majority group membership 39, 71 89–90
Maner, J. K. 51, 165 Neo-Nazi study 57, 58
Mantler, J. 177–178 Netherlands, approach to health in 172,
marginalized groups 179; see also specific 179, 182–183
groups neural indices of physical and social pain
McDonald, S. 121 102–103, 106
meaningful existence, need for: and anti- neuroimaging for measuring pain
social responses to ostracism 8; and experience 3, 102, 103, 108, 109;
coping strategies 66, 70; and perceived see also specific techniques
fairness of exclusion 34; reaffirming Nezlek, J. B. 34
72–73; threats to 2, 25 Nida, S. A. 149
mechanistic meaning of pain 105, 105 Niedbala, E. M. 165
media, ostracism in 144 Nittono, H. 121
Melzack, R. 101–102 nociception 101, 103
memory and temporal projections of non-first-person language 83–89
pain 107 non-invasive measures of assessment 123
mental-health affected by loneliness 49
mentorship and self-distancing 93 objectification see self-objectification;
Merla, A. 124 sexual objectification
Michels, C. 156 objective situations 33, 34
microaggressions 3 observing ostracism 136–154; and
Miller, R. J. 195 awareness-raising interventions
mindfulness-based interventions 67, 148–149; and cultural factors 137; and
69–70 interpreting motives for ostracism
misattribution of arousal paradigm 129 137–140; and misattributions and biased
Mischel, W. 90 judgments 144–145; and responding
Moayedi, M. 104–105 145–146; and self-protection 146–147;
moderator variables 124, 125 and sensitivity to ostracism 136–137;
Monin, B. 180, 182 and situational contexts 148; and
moral convictions 172, 175 social dissimilarity rule 141–142; and
moral decisions and self-distancing 92–93 stereotypes about facial appearance
moral expansion and moral 142–143; and uncertainty 140–141
piggybacking 173 occupational stereotypes 55
moralization 171–189; attribution offensive jokes 4
processes associated with 177–178; “oidashibeya” practice 161
consequences of 174–176, 184; defined omission bias 158
171, 173; functionality of 183; and O’Reilly, J. 158
group life, regulating 174; of health Orvell, A. 95
Index 209
O’Shea, B. 161–162 existence, reaffirming 72–73; others’

ostracism-based exclusion: defined 137–138; use of 75–76; positive reappraisal 66,
as malicious 139–141, 144, 145, 148; as 68, 74; self-distancing 68–69, 74; self-
punitive 138–139, 139, 142, 144–145, esteem, reaffirming 71–72; types of
160, 178; and romantic rejection 9; 66–67; and wellbeing, effects on 65–66
situational contexts for 148; and psychological flexibility 74
smartphones 6–7; as threatening 2, 5–6, psychology of pain 100–119; benefits and
20–21; see also social exclusion, forms of meanings associated with physical pain
other-race effect (ORE) 53 109–110; biomedical approaches to
O-Train experiments 164 104; biomedical approach to 101–102;
cognitive and emotional dimensions
Pachankis, J. E. 191 of pain 106–107; communicating pain
pain matrix 102; see also physical pain; 108–109; labelling physical and social
psychology of pain pain 103–104; pain, defined 100–101;
Paolini, D. 124, 125, 129 pain overlap theory 102–103, 105;
people of colour see race-based issues social psychological approach to pain
periaqueductal grey 102 111; social vs. physical pain 104–105,
peripheral resistance 87 105, 107, 110, 127
Perry, R. P. 177 pupillometry 125–130
phenomenological approach to pain
104, 105 qualia overlap 106, 111n2
phubbing behavior 6–7
physical health affected by loneliness 49 race-based issues 3, 93, 108, 141, 198;
physical pain 18, 32, 69; see also see also African-Americans, ostracism
psychology of pain studies involving
physiological measures of assessment: radicalization 19; see also extreme groups
invasive 122–123, 129, 130; Ramos, M. R. 165
pupillometry 125–130; and responses reflective stage of ostracism 20, 44, 66
to ostracism 120–122; thermal imaging reflexive stage of ostracism 19, 32–34,
123–125, 129, 130; see also individual 36–40, 42, 43, 66
measures and technologies rejection-based exclusion 2–4; see also
physiological responses to stress (speech romantic rejection
study) 87–88 rejection–expectation dynamic 190,
Pickett, C. L. 49–50, 61 195–196
placebo and nocebo effects for pain rejection sensitivity (RS) model 194–199
106, 107 relational value 4, 9, 75
Polt, J. M. 126 relationships, importance of and beliefs
Poon, K. T. 68 about 1, 68, 71
positive reappraisal strategy 66, 68, 74 re-living paradigm 52
Powerball experiment 38–39 resignation stage of ostracism 21, 66
power issues 37–38, 53, 72 responses to exclusion, pro- or
prayer as strategy 20 anti-social 8
preferences 172, 175 revenge, ostracism as 160
prefrontal cortex 102 Riva, P. 107, 127, 146
primary somatosensory cortex 102 Robinson, S. L. 161
Proulx, T. 127, 128 role-prescribed exclusion 34, 38, 140,
proximity principle 25 144–145, 156–157
“psychogenic pain” 102 romantic rejection 8–9, 41
psychological coping strategies 65–81; Rouby, D. A. 51
acceptance 67–68, 74; belonging, Rozin, A. 173–174, 179
reaffirming 70–71; control or power, Rude, S. S. 68–69
reaffirming 72, 73; distraction 66, 69, Rudert, S. C. 36, 39, 73
74–75; focused attention 69–70, 74; and rumination 20, 69
hydraulic metaphor 74–75; meaningful Rushby, J. 121
210 Index
Sacco, D. F. 60, 61 as negative events 75; ostracism-based

Salomons, T. V. 104–105 exclusion 2, 5–7, 9; overview 1–2;
Sandberg, S. 94 rejection-based exclusion 2–4; see also
Scarry, E. 108, 109 ostracism-based exclusion; rejection-
Schaller, M. 165 based exclusion
Schoel, C. 38–39 social identity threat 193–194
school shootings, perpetrators of 21 social influence, types of 21
Schultz, M. 162 social information processing 49–64; and
Schwab, N. 174 face processing 51–54; future research
self-affirmation as strategy 20, 70–74 on 58–62; and impression formation
self-blame 76 54–58; and Social Monitoring System
self-compassion 76 (SMS) 49–51
self-disclosure 9 social learning through witnessing
self-esteem issues 2, 25, 66, 70–73, 163 ostracism 164
self-harm 2 social media 144
self-image concerns 180, 184 Social Monitoring System (SMS) 49–52,
self-objectification 5 50, 54, 58–59
self-protection responses 146–147, 160, social norms 32–48; and cognitive
180–182 construal 34–35, 42, 44; in
self-referential emotional processing 90, 93 collectivistic economic culture
self-regulation and moralization 181–182 75; defined 35; and Dislikeball
self-reporting 108–109, 124 experiement 36–37; knowledge
self-talk see distanced self-talk and and communication of 40–41;
self-regulation methodological paradigms for
self-uncertainty 23–24 investigating 41–43; and political
semi-nude photo study 126 perspectives 39–40; and power 37–38;
sexual harassment 159 and reflexive responses 32–34; and
sexual-minority populations 4, 191, 192, responses to observed ostracism
197, 199 145–146; and self-talk 83; and timing
sexual objectification 4–5 of reactions to ostracism 44–45; see also
shame and anxiety 69 role-prescribed exclusion
Shoulberg, E. K. 122 social pain, defined 104; see also
Sijtsema, J. J. 122 psychology of pain
similarity principle 25 social reconnection hypothesis 165
situational threats 61 social support 9
skin conductance level (SCL) 121–122, social surrogates 71, 73, 74
129, 130 socio-economic status 72, 182–183
skin conductance response (SCR) “somatization” 102
121–122, 129, 130 Sommer, K. L. 162
skin temperature, measuring 121, Sowden, W. 92
124–125, 129, 130 squares-and-sphere study 45
Skitka, L. J. 175, 178 status-based rejection sensitivity 194
Skowronski, J. J. 176 Staw, B. M. 198
Slaughter, A. 156 stereotype threat 194
Sleegers, W. W. A. 127–129 stereotyping 54–58, 140–143
smart phones and ostracism 6–7 stigma and discrimination 2, 177–179,
smiles 51–54, 59–61 184; see also criminal stigma and
smoking moralization 174–175 carceral punishment
social bonds strategy 71, 73, 74 stigma-consciousness 201
social comparison seeking 24 Streamer, L. 87
social cues 50, 61 stress-phase cortisol 72
social dissimilarity rule 141–142 student identity vs. criminal identity
social distance of relationships 137 200–201
social exclusion, forms of 1–17; and aversive subjective interpretations of objective
experiences 8–10; comparing 7–8; situations 33–34, 37
Index 211
sugar market (Europe) 183 Wesselmann, E. D. 34, 145, 156

superiority, perceived 26 Wheeler, L. 34, 72
Switzerland, immigration in 40 whistleblowers 147
Will, G.-J. 145
Täuber, S. 179–182 Willer, R. 162
temporal need-threat model of ostracism Williams, K. D.: on awareness training
19–22, 32–34, 44–45 149; on being ignored 7; on cognitive
terroristic mindsets 26 mediation 44–45; on collective
thermal imaging 123–125, 129, 130 teams and constructive behavior 162;
Trainerball experiment 37, 38 Cyberbomb study 42; on defensive
transgender individuals 4 ostracism 147; face processing study 60;
flame metaphor 43, 65; on physical and
“The Ugly Duckling” fairytale 35 social pain 107, 127; on pro- and anti-
uncertainty, types of 22–24 social responses 8; on psychological
uncertainty–identity theory 23, 24 needs 66; on reflexive response 43;
United States, smoking and on workplace ostracism 158; see
socioeconomic status in 183 also temporal need-threat model of
unrequited love 9 ostracism
Ura, M. 121 Wirth, J. H. 60, 127
wise reasoning 91–92
validation of emotions 75–76 within-subjects designs 122
values and moral convictions 172 workplace ostracism 155–170;
Van Bavel, J. J. 175 constructive behavior and conformity,
van Beest, I. 42, 124, 127, 128 promoting 162–164; defined 156–157;
van den Bos, W. 145 and deniability 158; and group
van der Molen, M. W. 121 cohesion and identity 164–165; and
van Zomeren, M. 180 group protection 161–162; harmful
violence, use of 26; see also aggressive effects of 157; and justice restoration
responses 160–161; and norm reinforcement 164;
Vyogtsky, L. 91 as preferable 157–158; as self-protective
159–160
Wager, T. D. 103, 109 Wright, J. 174, 178
Wall, P. D. 101–102 Wyer, N. A. 164–165
Walton, G. M. 43
Wareham, J. 121–122 Xu, E. 161
warmth, perceptions of 142–143, 143
Watson, A. C. 161–162 “you,” use of 94–95
Weidman, A. C. 92
weight-based stigma 177–181, 199 Zajonc, R. B. 44
Weiner, B. 177 Zhang, A. 165
wellbeing, effects on 65–66 Zhang, Y. 165

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CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN

OSTRACISM, SOCIAL EXCLUSION,

This edited volume provides an up-to-date review of current research on ­ostracism,

Selma C. Rudert is Junior Professor of Social Psychology at the University of

Power and Identity

Edited by Selma C. Rudert,

1 Understanding common and diverse forms of social exclusion 1

2 Social ostracism as a factor motivating interest in extreme groups 18

3 About flames and boogeymen: social norms affect

4 Exclusion and its impact on social information processing 49

5 Dealing with social exclusion: an analysis of psychological

6 How self-talk promotes self-regulation: implications for

7 Hurt feelings: physical pain, social exclusion, and the

8 Physiostracism: a case for non-invasive measures of arousal

9 Observing ostracism: how observers interpret and respond

10 Workplace ostracism: what’s it good for? 155

11 Moralization as legitimization for ostracism: effects on

12 Rejection sensitivity as a determinant of well-being

Paladino, Maria Paola

van Beest, Ilja

physically, emotionally, or otherwise devalued socially (Riva & Eck, 2016;

Emerging research: sexual objectification

Emerging research: smart phones and ostracism

Future areas for theoretical development

Examining connections between social exclusion

In August of 2014, Jake Bilardi, an 18-year-old Australian citizen, traveled to

Temporal need-threat model of ostracism

Need-threat model and interest in extreme groups

recalled themselves as being part of a group. Additionally, on the dispositional

induced, participants report greater identification with a radical student organi-

prefer the most impactful option, regardless of whether it is pro- or anti-social

Additional reasons that extreme groups might be preferred

Hales, A. H. (2017). Death as a metaphor for ostracism: Social invincibility, autopsy,

Rainer Greifeneder and Selma C. Rudert

The reflexive response is cognitively mediated

or individual differences” (Williams, 2007a, p. 431). Yet our argument is in

Giving meaning to objective situations of not-being-part

Different inclusion rules for those in power

to the inclusion condition. In contrast, Powerball participants were generally

Different political perspectives entail different social norms

Knowledge about socially shared norms is key

Methodological paradigms as real-world analogies

A flame, a boogeyman, or both?

Belonging, or feeling socially connected to others in a meaningful way, is critical

Appraisal of state No SMS Success in future

We reasoned that excluded people might have an accuracy motivation when

Using similar logic, we reasoned that excluded people’s motivation to indi-

Collectively, these studies illustrate that excluded people engage in relatively

illustrates this full sequence: belonging threat → greater monitoring → effective/

degree to which excluded people appeared to rely on individuating behaviors, it

may be particularly likely to emerge in cases with complex social cues

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 431–444. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.53.

Susanna Timeo, Paolo Riva, and Maria Paola Paladino

Exclusion threatens the individual’s basic psychological needs (Williams, 2009)

Moreover, mindfulness is based on the pure observation of the scene from a

Restoring the threatened needs

However, the mechanism by which self-affirmation works is still under debate.

Reaffirming control or power

This edited volume provides an up-to-date review of current research on ostracism,

8 Physiostracism: a case for non-invasive measures of arousal

9 Observing ostracism: how observers interpret and respond

10 Workplace ostracism: what’s it good for? 155

11 Moralization as legitimization for ostracism: effects on

12 Rejection sensitivity as a determinant of well-being