Heather M. Claypool

Social Exclusion and Pain Sensitivity: Why Exclusion Sometimes Hurts and Sometimes Numbs

Some research indicates that social exclusion leads to increased emotional- and physical-pain sensitivity, whereas other work indicates that exclusion causes emotional- and physical-pain numbing. This research sought to examine what causes these opposing outcomes. In Study 1, the paradigm used to instantiate social exclusion was found to moderate the social exclusion-physical pain relation: Future-life exclusion led to a numbing of physical pain whereas Cyberball exclusion led to hypersensitivity. Study 2 examined the underlying mechanism, which was hypothesized to be the severity of the “social injury.” Participants were subjected to either the standard future-life exclusion manipulation (purported to be a highly severe social injury) or a newly created, less-severe version. Supporting our hypothesis, the standard (highly severe) future-life exclusion led to physical-pain numbing, whereas the less-severe future-life exclusion resulted in hypersensitivity. Implications of these results for understanding the exclusion–pain relation and other exclusion effects are discussed.

Positivity Can Cue Familiarity

Given that familiarity is closely associated with positivity, the authors sought evidence for the idea that positivity would increase perceived familiarity. In Experiment 1, smiling and thus positively perceived novel faces were significantly more likely to be incorrectly judged as familiar than novel faces with neutral expressions. In Experiment 2, subliminal association with positive affect (a positively valenced prime) led to false recognition of novel words as familiar. In Experiment 3, validity judgments, known to be influenced by familiarity, were more likely to occur if participants were in happy mood states than neutral mood states. Despite their different paradigms and approaches, the results of these three studies converge on the idea that, at least under certain circumstances, the experience of positivity itself can signal familiarity, perhaps because the experience of familiarity is typically positive.

Arousal, Processing, and Risk Taking: Consequences of Intergroup Anger

Intergroup emotions theory (IET) posits that when social categorization is salient, individuals feel the same emotions as others who share their group membership. Extensive research supporting this proposition has relied heavily on self-reports of group-based emotions. In three experiments, the authors provide converging evidence that group-based anger has subtle and less explicitly controlled consequences for information processing, using measures that do not rely on self-reported emotional experience. Specifically, the authors show that intergroup anger involves arousal (Experiment 1), reduces systematic processing of persuasive messages (Experiment 2), is moderated by group identification (Experiment 2, posttest), and compared to intergroup fear, increases risk taking (Experiment 3). These findings provide converging evidence that consistent with IET, emotions triggered by social categorization have psychologically consequential effects and are not evident solely in self-reports.

Not all social exclusions are created equal: Emotional distress following social exclusion is moderated by exclusion paradigm

Although ones intuition may be that social exclusion causes emotional distress, evidence both supports and refutes this perception. Some research has shown that exclusion results in decreased mood, self-esteem, and other needs, whereas other work has shown that exclusion results not in distress but rather in a relatively flat affective state. We assert that the paradigm used to induce social exclusion may moderate its effect on emotional distress. We found in two studies that Cyberball exclusion resulted in decreased basic needs satisfaction and mood relative to Cyberball inclusion, whereas no differences emerged on these same measures between Future-Life exclusion and inclusion conditions. Implications of these results for understanding the broader effects of exclusion paradigm are discussed.

Never Let Them See You Cry Self-Presentation as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Exclusion and Self-Esteem

A debate exists concerning whether exclusion harms self-esteem. We hypothesized that social exclusion does harm self-esteem, but that this effect is evident only when self-presentational concerns to “appear fine” are minimal or people are unable to alter their report of self-esteem. In the first three studies, participants’ explicit and implicit self-esteem were measured following an exclusion or comparison condition where self-presentational pressures were likely high. Because respondents can easily control their reports on explicit measures, but not on implicit ones, we hypothesized that exclusion would result in lower self-esteem only when implicit measures were used. Results confirmed this hypothesis. In the final study, self-presentational concerns were directly manipulated. When self-presentational concerns were high, only implicit self-esteem was lowered by exclusion. But, when such concerns were low, this impact on self-esteem was seen on implicit and explicit measures. Implications for the sociometer hypothesis and the recent self-esteem debate are discussed.

Social Inclusion Facilitates Interest in Mating

According to a life history framework, variability across an organisms lifespan necessitates trade-offs between behaviors that promote survival and those that promote reproduction. Adopting this perspective, the current work investigates how social acceptance or rejection can influence the differential priority placed on mating and survival motivations. Because social acceptance is an important survival-related cue (i.e., group living provides protection from predators and sharing of resources), we predicted that recent experiences of social acceptance should increase peoples motivation to mate. In support of this prediction, Study 1 found that participants who were included in an electronic ball-toss game showed more interest in mating (regardless of the potential mates attractiveness) than excluded and control participants. In Study 2, participants who recalled an experience of social acceptance viewed sexual affiliation as more important than did participants in rejection and control conditions. Collectively, these results suggest an adaptive trade-off such that interest in mating increases upon satiation of affiliative needs. Furthermore, these findings demonstrate that the experience of social acceptance can have unique effects and should not be treated as the sole comparison condition when studying social rejection.

Social exclusion and stereotyping: why and when exclusion fosters individuation of others.

Exclusion triggers a desire to re-capture connections with others. To facilitate this goal, excluded individuals typically process social information especially carefully. One implication of this is that exclusion may foster judgments of others that are reliant on a careful consideration of their idiosyncratic behaviors rather than on more superficial features. We predicted, therefore, that excluded individuals should individuate more and stereotype less than non-excluded individuals and that such effects should be in service of identifying appropriate re-affiliation candidates. In 3 replications of Experiment 1, excluded (compared to non-excluded) individuals rendered less stereotypic judgments of occupational and racial group members described with mildly or ambiguously counter-stereotypic information. Confirming such processes aid with re-affiliation, Experiments 2 and 3 showed that these effects occurred for social targets that represented reasonable sources of re-affiliation, but not for offensive social targets (i.e., Skinheads) or non-social agents. Experiment 4 underscored that excluded participants process presented social information more carefully (individuate), showing greater differentiation in judgments of highly stereotype-consistent and stereotype-inconsistent targets. Implications for the social exclusion literature are discussed.

Easing in: Fluent processing brings others into the ingroup:

Four experiments demonstrated that perceptual fluency can facilitate categorization of others as ingroup members. In Experiment 1 (replications A, B, and C), White participants were first exposed to a group of White target individuals and later judged whether fluent (repeated) and disfluent (novel) targets were members of a particular ingroup or not. In each replication, fluent targets were categorized as ingroup members more readily than were disfluent ones. Experiment 2 replicated and extended this finding by showing that both White (racial ingroup) and Black (racial outgroup) targets were more frequently perceived as school ingroup members when fluent (repeated). In Experiments 3 and 4, fluency was manipulated via visual clarity and, again, fluency engendered more ingroup categorizations than did disfluency, for both racial ingroup and outgroup targets. Moreover, findings from Experiment 4 suggested that liking fully mediated the fluency–ingroup categorization relation. Implications of these findings for the literatures on fluency and intergroup relations are discussed.

Stimulus Threat and Exposure Context Modulate the Effect of Mere Exposure on Approach Behaviors

Mere-exposure (ME) research has found that initially neutral objects made familiar are preferred relative to novel objects. Recent work extends these preference judgments into the behavioral domain by illustrating that mere exposure prompts approach-oriented behavior toward familiar stimuli. However, no investigations have examined the effect of mere exposure on approach-oriented behavior toward threatening stimuli. The current work examines this issue and also explores how exposure context interacts with stimulus threat to influence behavioral tendencies. In two experiments participants were presented with both mere-exposed and novel stimuli and approach speed was assessed. In the first experiment, when stimulus threat was presented in a homogeneous format (i.e., participants viewed exclusively neutral or threatening stimuli), ME potentiated approach behaviors for both neutral and threatening stimuli. However, in the second experiment, in which stimulus threat was presented in a heterogeneous fashion (i.e., participants viewed both neutral and threatening stimuli), mere exposure facilitated approach only for initially neutral stimuli. These results suggest that ME effects on approach behaviors are highly context sensitive and depend on both stimulus valence and exposure context. Further implications of these findings for the ME literature are discussed.