Natalie J. Ciarocco

Social exclusion impairs self-regulation.

Six experiments showed that being excluded or rejected caused decrements in self-regulation. In Experiment 1, participants who were led to anticipate a lonely future life were less able to make themselves consume a healthy but bad-tasting beverage. In Experiment 2, some participants were told that no one else in their group wanted to work with them, and these participants later ate more cookies than other participants. In Experiment 3, excluded participants quit sooner on a frustrating task. In Experiments 4-6, exclusion led to impairment of attention regulation as measured with a dichotic listening task. Experiments 5 and 6 further showed that decrements in self-regulation can be eliminated by offering a cash incentive or increasing self-awareness. Thus, rejected people are capable of self-regulation but are normally disinclined to make the effort.

Social exclusion decreases prosocial behavior.

In 7 experiments, the authors manipulated social exclusion by telling people that they would end up alone later in life or that other participants had rejected them. Social exclusion caused a substantial reduction in prosocial behavior. Socially excluded people donated less money to a student fund, were unwilling to volunteer for further lab experiments, were less helpful after a mishap, and cooperated less in a mixed-motive game with another student. The results did not vary by cost to the self or by recipient of the help, and results remained significant when the experimenter was unaware of condition. The effect was mediated by feelings of empathy for another person but was not mediated by mood, state self-esteem, belongingness, trust, control, or self-awareness. The implication is that rejection temporarily interferes with emotional responses, thereby impairing the capacity for empathic understanding of others, and as a result, any inclination to help or cooperate with them is undermined.

Self-regulation and self-presentation: regulatory resource depletion impairs impression management and effortful self-presentation depletes regulatory resources.

Self-presentation may require self-regulation, especially when familiar or dispositional tendencies must be overridden in service of the desired impression. Studies 1-4 showed that self-presentation under challenging conditions or according to counter-normative patterns (presenting oneself modestly to strangers, boastfully to friends, contrary to gender norms, to a skeptical audience, or while being a racial token) led to impaired self-regulation later, suggesting that those self-presentations depleted self-regulatory resources. When self-presentation conformed to familiar, normative, or dispositional patterns, self-regulation was less implicated. Studies 5-8 showed that when resources for self-regulation had been depleted by prior acts of self-control, self-presentation drifted toward less-effective patterns (talking too much, overly or insufficiently intimate disclosures, or egotistical arrogance). Thus, inner processes may serve interpersonal functions, although optimal interpersonal activity exacts a short-term cost.

Ostracism and Ego Depletion: The Strains of Silence

Two studies examined whether ostracizing someone depletes psychological resources in the ostracizer. In Study 1, people who followed instructions to avoid conversation with a confederate for 3 minutes later showed decrements in persistence on unsolvable problems. In Study 2, ostracizers showed subsequent impairments in physical stamina on a handgrip task. Although ostracism affected mood too, mood did not appear to mediate the main findings. Past work has shown that ostracism has negative consequences for the victim, but the present results indicate that ostracism has a harmful impact on the ostracizer too.

Hungry for Love: The Influence of Self-Regulation on Infidelity

ABSTRACT The current research examines the effect of self-regulation on the likelihood of committing infidelity. Thirty-two college students in exclusive romantic relationships interacted through a private chat room with an opposite-sex confederate. Prior to this interaction, a food-restriction task depleted half the participants of self-control. As predicted, depleted levels of self-regulation increased the likelihood of infidelity. Specifically, depleted participants were more likely to both accept a coffee date from and supply a personal telephone number to the confederate than non-depleted participants. Weakened self-control may be one potential cause for the levels of infidelity occurring in romantic partnerships today.

Traditional and New Approaches to Career Preparation through Coursework.

Traditional career preparation courses provide students with a variety of benefits. Students taking these courses report a better understanding of psychology-related careers, less indecision about their future careers, and are more knowledgeable about themselves in relation to careers. Yet only 37% of undergraduate psychology programs offer formal career preparation through the curriculum. Given the lack of experience and training faculty have on career preparation issues, they may be uncomfortable developing such courses. This article addresses considerations one should make when developing a career preparation course for undergraduate psychology majors as well as potential topics and assignments for the course. It also outlines how to place career preparation within the major using modules when career preparation courses are not available.

The Impact of a Multifaceted Approach to Teaching Research Methods on Students’ Attitudes

A multifaceted approach to teaching five experimental designs in a research methodology course was tested. Participants included 70 students enrolled in an experimental research methods course in the semester both before and after the implementation of instructional change. When using a multifaceted approach to teaching research methods that included both active learning and a form of scaffolding, students reported a greater efficacy in American Psychological Association style writing, a higher perceived utility of research and statistics, better attitudes toward statistics, and higher perceived skills/abilities in statistics. This approach benefitted students’ perception of an often disliked but required course in psychology.

Integrating Professional Development Across the Curriculum An Effectiveness Study

The current study empirically tested the effectiveness of a modular approach to integrating professional development across an undergraduate psychology curriculum. Researchers conducted a two-group, between-subjects experiment on 269 undergraduate psychology students assessing perceptions of professional preparedness and learning. Analysis revealed those participating in the modular approach had a higher understanding of and investment in the psychology major, a higher awareness of professional development opportunities, higher knowledge of career options with a background in psychology, and better knowledge of professional development activities. Quiz scores indicate that students learned about professional development from the modules. Overall, the results imply that a modular approach to professional development can be effective and beneficial to students. Psychology programs should consider utilizing similar approaches in their curricula.

The inner world of rejection: effects of social exclusion on emotion, cognition, and self-regulation

By expanding dissonance theory to include collectively shared conceptions of self, this chapter predicts that dissonance can be experienced on behalf of other people that is, and it can be experienced vicariously. Arousal caused by uncertainty about the outcomes of ones own behavior is aversive. The chapter conducts four studies that explored the vicarious dissonance concept: Its goal is to establish the conditions that simulate the scenario described in the chapter. The chapter explores the position that group identification expands the social self and that the occurrence of vicarious dissonance depends on this expanded sense of self. In the research described in the chapter, attitude change by vicarious dissonance was not related either to attitude similarity or to liking for the speaker, two common markers of interpersonal closeness. The chapter develops support for the proposition that the fusing of the individual self with ones social group causes an individual to experience what other members of the group are experiencing.

The Employable Skills Self-Efficacy Survey: An assessment of skill confidence for psychology undergraduates.

The American Psychological Association (APA) advocates for professional development within undergraduate psychology programs, emphasizing the development of several employable skills before graduation (APA, 2013). However, there are few resources to help psychology programs, or students themselves, monitor skill development. The Employable Skills Self-Efficacy Survey (ESSES) allows departments, faculty, and students to determine a baseline of skill efficacy, as well as monitor the development of skills throughout a psychology program or as a result of a particular experience. We assessed the psychometric properties of the ESSES. The scale has strong internal consistency (&agr; = .66 to .87) and test–retest reliability (r = .76 to .89), as well as convergent validity between particular skill domains and various professional self-efficacy measures. We discuss the ways departments, faculty, and students may use the ESSES as a tool for skill development.