Mark R. Leary

The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.

A hypothesized need to form and maintain strong, stable interpersonal relationships is evaluated in light of the empirical literature. The need is for frequent, nonaversive interactions within an ongoing relational bond. Consistent with the belongingness hypothesis, people form social attachments readily under most conditions and resist the dissolution of existing bonds. Belongingness appears to have multiple and strong effects on emotional patterns and on cognitive processes. Lack of attachments is linked to a variety of ill effects on health, adjustment, and well-being. Other evidence, such as that concerning satiation, substitution, and behavioral consequences, is likewise consistent with the hypothesized motivation. Several seeming counterexamples turned out not to disconfirm the hypothesis. Existing evidence supports the hypothesis that the need to belong is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation.

Impression management: A literature review and two-component model.

Impression management, the process by which people control the impressions others form of them, plays an important role in interpersonal behavior. This article presents a 2-component model within which the literature regarding impression management is reviewed. This model conceptualizes impression management as being composed of 2 discrete processes. The 1st involves impression motivation ― the degree to which people are motivated to control how others see them. The 2nd component involves impression construction. The 2-component model provides coherence to the literature in the area, address controversial issues, and supplies a framework for future research regarding impression management

A Brief Version of the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale

Although the Fear of Negative Evaluation (FNE) Scale has widespread applicability to many areas of research in personality and social psychology, its utility is sometimes limited by its length. This article presents a brief, 12-item version of the FNE that correlates very highly (f96) with the original scale and that demonstrates psychometric properties that are nearly identical to those of the full-length scale.

The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory

Publisher Summary This chapter describes self-esteem and provides an overview of existing perspectives on self-esteem. Self-esteem is a sociometer, essentially an internal monitor of the degree to which one is valued or devalued as a relational partner. The chapter evaluates a series of specific, testable hypotheses about self-esteem and examines laboratory and other findings in relevance to the sociometer theory and its specific hypotheses. This sociometer theory also reinterprets several interpersonal phenomena that have been explained previously in terms of the self-esteem motive. In specific, self-esteem refers to a persons appraisal of his or her value. Global self-esteem denotes a global value judgment about the self, whereas domain-specific self-esteem involves appraisals of ones value in a particular area. Self-esteem is an affectively laden self-evaluation. Self-evaluations are in turn assessments of ones behavior or attributes along evaluative dimensions. Some self-evaluations are dispassionate. whereas others are affectively laden. Self-esteem focuses primarily on individual differences in dispositional or trait self-esteem.

Social anxiety and self-presentation: A conceptualization model.

This article presents a self-presentation approach to the study of social anxiety that proposes that social anxiety arises when people are motivated to make a preferred impression on real or imagined audiences but doubt they will do so, and thus perceive or imagine unsatisfactory evaluative reactions from subjectively important audiences. We presume that specific situational and dispositional antecedents of social anxiety operate by influencing peoples motivation to impress others and their expectations of satisfactorily doing so. In contrast to drive models of anxiety but consistent with social learning theory, it is argued that the cognitive state of the individual mediates both affective arousal and behavior. The traditional inverted-U relation between anxiety and performance is reexamined in this light. Implications of the approach for counseling situations are considered, especially the recommendation that treatments be tailored to the specific type of selfpresentational problem encountered by clients,

Why Does Social Exclusion Hurt? The Relationship Between Social and Physical Pain.

The authors forward the hypothesis that social exclusion is experienced as painful because reactions to rejection are mediated by aspects of the physical pain system. The authors begin by presenting the theory that overlap between social and physical pain was an evolutionary development to aid social animals in responding to threats to inclusion. The authors then review evidence showing that humans demonstrate convergence between the 2 types of pain in thought, emotion, and behavior, and demonstrate, primarily through nonhuman animal research, that social and physical pain share common physiological mechanisms. Finally, the authors explore the implications of social pain theory for rejection-elicited aggression and physical pain disorders.

Evolutionary origins of stigmatization: the functions of social exclusion.

A reconceptualization of stigma is presented that changes the emphasis from the devaluation of an individuals identity to the process by which individuals who satisfy certain criteria come to be excluded from various kinds of social interactions. The authors propose that phenomena currently placed under the general rubric of stigma involve a set of distinct psychological systems designed by natural selection to solve specific problems associated with sociality. In particular, the authors suggest that human beings possess cognitive adaptations designed to cause them to avoid poor social exchange partners, join cooperative groups (for purposes of between-group competition and exploitation), and avoid contact with those who are differentially likely to carry communicable pathogens. The evolutionary view contributes to the current conceptualization of stigma by providing an account of the ultimate function of stigmatization and helping to explain its consensual nature.

Interpersonal Rejection as a Determinant of Anger and Aggression

This article reviews the literature on the relationship between interpersonal rejection and aggression. Four bodies of research are summarized: laboratory experiments that manipulate rejection, rejection among adults in everyday life, rejection in childhood, and individual differences that may moderate the relationship. The theoretical mechanisms behind the effect are then explored. Possible explanations for why rejection leads to anger and aggression include: rejection as a source of pain, rejection as a source of frustration, rejection as a threat to self-esteem, mood improvementfollowing aggression, aggression as social influence, aggression as a means of reestablishing control, retribution, disinhibition, and loss of self-control.

Reactions to discrimination, stigmatization, ostracism, and other forms of interpersonal rejection: a multimotive model.

This article describes a new model that provides a framework for understanding peoples reactions to threats to social acceptance and belonging as they occur in the context of diverse phenomena such as rejection, discrimination, ostracism, betrayal, and stigmatization. Peoples immediate reactions are quite similar across different forms of rejection in terms of negative affect and lowered self-esteem. However, following these immediate responses, peoples reactions are influenced by construals of the rejection experience that predict 3 distinct motives for prosocial, antisocial, and socially avoidant behavioral responses. The authors describe the relational, contextual, and dispositional factors that affect which motives determine peoples reactions to a rejection experience and the ways in which these 3 motives may work at cross-purposes. The multimotive model accounts for the myriad ways in which responses to rejection unfold over time and offers a basis for the next generation of research on interpersonal rejection.

Reactions to acceptance and rejection: Effects of level and sequence of relational evaluation

Abstract Two experiments examined the effects of various levels and sequences of acceptance and rejection on emotion, ratings of self and others, and behavior. In Experiment 1, participants who differed in agreeableness received one of five levels of acceptance or rejection feedback, believing that they either would or would not interact with the person who accepted or rejected them. In Experiment 2, participants who differed in rejection sensitivity received one of four patterns of feedback over time, reflecting constant acceptance, increasing acceptance, increasing rejection, or constant rejection. In both studies, rejection elicited greater anger, sadness, and hurt feelings than acceptance, as well as an increased tendency to aggress toward the rejector. In general, more extreme rejection did not lead to stronger reactions than mild rejection, but increasing rejection evoked more negative reactions than constant rejection. Agreeableness and rejection-sensitivity scores predicted participants’ responses but did not moderate the effects of interpersonal acceptance and rejection.