The impact of social exclusion on anticipatory attentional processing

Behavioral and neural responses to social exclusion in women: the role of facial attractiveness and friendliness

The behavioral and neural responses to social exclusion were examined in women randomized to four conditions, varying in levels of attractiveness and friendliness. Informed by evolutionary theory, we predicted that being socially excluded by attractive unfriendly women would be more distressing than being excluded by unattractive women, irrespective of their friendliness level. Our results contradicted most of our predictions but provide important insights into women's responses to interpersonal conflict. Accounting for rejection sensitivity, P300 event-related potential amplitudes were largest when women were excluded by unattractive unfriendly women. This may be due to an expectancy violation or an annoyance with being excluded by women low on social desirability. An examination of anger rumination rates by condition suggests the latter. Only attractive women's attractiveness ratings were lowered in the unfriendly condition, indicating they were specifically punished for their exclusionary behavior. Women were more likely to select attractive women to compete against with one exception-they selected the Black attractive opponent less often than the White attractive opponent when presented as unfriendly. Finally, consistent with studies on retaliation in relation to social exclusion, women tended to rate competitors who rejected them as being more rude, more competitive, less attractive, less nice, and less happy than non-competitors. The ubiquity of social exclusion and its pointed emotional and physiological impact on women demands more research on this topic.

"A 'Cool' Kid Wears a Brand, and Everyone's following Him" Hierarchal Social Status in Preadolescence: A New Developmental Perspective

Inequality in hierarchical social status, especially among socially excluded children, profoundly affects preadolescents. Historically viewed through a lens of psychopathology and moral deficiencies, it challenges the education system's approaches and interventions. This article introduces a developmental perspective, highlighting the hierarchical social status' role in shaping classroom cohesion, strength, and distinctiveness. This study's phenomenological, qualitative methodology aimed to gain preliminary insight into the children's perspectives. Drawing from 12 focus group discussions involving 140 latency-age (grade 5) children in Israel, it uniquely reveals the dynamic nature of hierarchical social status influenced by children's connections with the group. This dynamism promotes group unity, strengthens bonds, and prioritizes collective concerns, contributing to the development of a "social self" in the latency phase. Beyond theory, this study proposes innovative interventions to address social status disparities.

Active Inference and Social Actors: Towards a Neuro-Bio-Social Theory of Brains and Bodies in Their Worlds

Although research including biological concepts and variables has gained more prominence in sociology, progress assimilating the organ of experience, the brain, has been theoretically and technically challenging. Formal uptake and assimilation have thus been slow. Within psychology and neuroscience, the traditional brain, which has made brief appearances in sociological research, is a "bottom-up" processor in which sensory signals are passed up the neural hierarchy where they are eventually cognitively and emotionally processed, after which actions and responses are generated. In this paper, we introduce the Active Inference Framework (AIF), which casts the brain as a Bayesian "inference engine" that tests its "top-down" predictive models against "bottom-up" sensory error streams in its attempts to resolve uncertainty and make the world more predictable. After assembling and presenting key concepts in the AIF, we describe an integrated neuro-bio-social model that prioritizes the microsociological assertion that the scene of action is the situation, wherein brains enculturate. Through such social dynamics, enculturated brains share models of the world with one another, enabling collective realities that disclose the actions afforded in those times and places. We conclude by discussing this neuro-bio-social model within the context of exemplar sociological research areas, including the sociology of stress and health, the sociology of emotions, and cognitive cultural sociology, all areas where the brain has received some degree of recognition and incorporation. In each case, sociological insights that do not fit naturally with the traditional brain model emerge intuitively from the predictive AIF model, further underscoring the interconnections and interdependencies between these areas, while also providing a foundation for a probabilistic sociology.

Uncovering the underlying factors of ERP changes in the cyberball paradigm: A systematic review investigating the impact of ostracism and paradigm characteristics

The Cyberball is the most commonly employed paradigm for the investigation of the effects of social exclusion, also called ostracism. The analysis of event-related potentials (ERPs), short-term stimulus-induced fluctuations in the EEG signal, has been employed for the identification of time-sensitive neural responses to ostracism-related information. Changes in ERPs during the Cyberball are normally attributed to the effect of ostracism, but it has been argued that characteristics of the paradigm, not ostracism, are the driving force for these changes. To elucidate the origin of the ERP changes in the Cyberball, we systematically reviewed the Cyberball-ERP literature of healthy, adult populations, and evaluated whether the social context of ostracism or characteristics of the paradigm are better suited for the explanation of the found results. Our results show that for many components no clear origin can be identified, but that expectancy violations, not ostracism, best explains the results of the P3 complex. Future research should therefore also employ other paradigms for the research into the effects of ostracism on ERPs.

Effects of high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation on implicit emotion regulation of social pain in healthy individuals

BACKGROUND

Implicit emotion regulation (ER), a form of ER, is essential for protecting mental health in the process of social interaction. Both the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) have been shown to be involved in ER processes, including explicit ER of social pain, but whether they play a role in implicit ER is unclear.

METHODS

We investigated whether anodal high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) of the right VLPFC (rVLPFC) or the right DLPFC (rDLPFC) influences implicit ER. In total, 63 healthy participants completed an emotion priming task, which measures the implicit ER of social pain, before and after receiving active or sham HD-tDCS (2 mA for 20 min, 10 consecutive days). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during task performance.

RESULTS

Combined with the results of the behavioral and electrophysiological indices indicated that stimulation of both the rVLPFC and the rDLPFC by anodic HD-tDCS could significantly reduce the affective responses caused by social exclusion. The further results also suggested that rDLPFC activation may contribute to promoting the involvement of early cognitive resources in the implicit ER process of social pain, thus helping to reduce the subjective negative experience of individuals.

LIMITATIONS

There were no dynamic interactive emotional stimuli to induce social pain, and only static images of social exclusion were used.

CONCLUSION

Our study provides cognitive and neurological evidence that expands our knowledge of the role of the rDLPFC and the rVLPFC in social ER. It can also serve as a reference for targeted intervention of implicit ER in social pain.

Excluded and myopic: Social exclusion increases temporal discounting

Social exclusion is a painful yet ubiquitous experience that modulates affect, behavior, and cognition. Decision-making is an essential cognitive ability that some forms of it are altered following social exclusion. However, how intertemporal decision-making is influenced by social exclusion is scarcely studied. Here, using Future Life Alone paradigm we demonstrated that experiencing social exclusion increases temporal discounting. We further tested whether the increased temporal discounting is mediated by either time perception or risk-taking. Our results revealed that although time perception is influenced by social exclusion, neither time perception nor risk-taking mediated the changes in temporal discounting. Our results are providing further evidence corroborating that social exclusion evokes cognitive deconstruction and therefore alters temporal discounting.

The electrophysiological characteristics of social exclusion: the perspective of close and distant relationships

The sources of social exclusion are very wide, ranging from the closest people to strangers. However, current studies mainly reveal the electrophysiological characteristics of social exclusion by means of binary comparison between social exclusion and social inclusion, and lack of in-depth analysis of the differences caused by different sources of exclusion. In this study, a static passing ball paradigm system including close and distant relationship identity information was used to reveal the electrophysiological characteristics of individuals when they were excluded by people with different close and distant relationships. The results showed that there was a degree effect of P2, P3a, and LPC components when individuals were excluded by people with different close and distant relationships. Specifically, the amplitude of P2, P3a, and LPC components was larger when individuals were excluded by more distant people. The results indicated that individuals would become more alert and perceive stronger exclusion experience when they were excluded by more distant people, which provided more diversified evidence for the conclusion that electrophysiological components were larger under the condition of exclusion, and revealed the electrophysiological basis behind the multiple motivation models. The results also helped to explain the physiological reasons behind individuals' different coping behaviors toward excluder with different importance of relationship.

Attentional Biases toward Face-Related Stimuli among Athletes after State Thwarting Need for Relatedness

The present study aimed to examine attentional biases' components and processes toward the interpersonal evaluation information among athletes after state thwarting need for relatedness. 51 athletes completed a visual dot-probe task while their eye-movements were tracking. Results indicated athletes showed different attentional bias pattern. Acceptance information is early orientation (directional bias); early acceleration detection; sustained to late attention maintenance (difficulty in disengaging). Rejection information is early orientation (directional bias); early accelerated detection; continuous attention to maintenance (attention avoidance); late attention to maintenance (difficulty in disengaging). That is to say, they had motivation to seek acceptance toward the accepted interpersonal evaluation information and to avoid rejection information toward the rejected one. Therefore, it is suggested that the coaches provide more interpersonal communicating opportunities, so as to help them to restore their demands toward interpersonal communication, and provide the customized attentional bias trainings to improve their coping response after state thwarted need for relatedness.

"Scapegoat" for Offline Consumption: Online Review Response to Social Exclusion

Previous research has mostly focused on Internet use behaviors, such as usage time of the Internet or social media after individuals experienced offline social exclusion. However, the extant literature has ignored online response behaviors, such as online review responses to social exclusion. To address this gap, drawing on self-protection and self-serving bias, we proposed three hypotheses that examine the effect of offline social exclusion on online reviews, which are verified by two studies using different simulating scenarios with 464 participants. The results show that when individuals are socially excluded offline, regardless of where the exclusion comes from (businesses or peers), they will be more likely to give negative online reviews. In addition, brand awareness moderates the effect of offline social exclusion on online reviews. Specifically, if the brand is less known, compared with social inclusion, offline social exclusion will lead individuals to give more negative online reviews; conversely, for well-known brands, no significant difference exists in the online reviews between social exclusion and inclusion.

The Effect of Social Distance on Intertemporal Choice of Reward Processing: An Event-Related Potentials Study

Social factors can affect the processing of intertemporal choice, but the influence of social distance on the rewarding process of intertemporal choice is unclear. Therefore, by designing a novel cognitive resource competition paradigm for undifferentiated intertemporal choice, this article aims to explore the influence of social distance on intertemporal choice reward processing at the electrophysiological level. It was found that compared with the stranger condition, P3a is greater in the friend condition, which means social distance is evaluated in the early stage. In addition, different brain regions in the early stages are taking charge of processing the soon-but-small (SS) and later-but-lager (LL) reward in intertemporal choice. There is an interaction effect between social distance (friend vs. stranger) and intertemporal choice (SS reward vs. LL reward) on P3b. Under friend conditions, the P3b induced by LL reward is more positive than SS reward. Under the condition of choosing the LL reward, the P3b induced by friend is more positive than stranger. This result shows that in the latter stage of reward processing, the evaluation process of time discounting is less sensitive in LL reward for friend caused by lack of cognitive resources which is occupied when dealing with social distance in advance, and thus the degree of time discount was reduced. These findings demonstrate that P3b is the key index of time discounting and immediate and delayed rewards are valued in different brain regions.

Processing of increased frequency of social interaction in social anxiety disorder and borderline personality disorder

We investigated how patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) process an increase in the frequency of social interaction. We used an EEG-compatible version of the online ball-tossing game Cyberball to induce an increase in the frequency of social interaction. In the first condition, each player received the ball equally often (inclusion: 33% ball reception). In the following condition, the frequency of the ball reception was increased (overinclusion: 45% ball reception). The main outcome variable was the event-related potential P2, an indicator for social reward processing. Moreover, positive emotions were assessed. Twenty-eight patients with SAD, 29 patients with BPD and 28 healthy controls (HCs) participated. As expected, HCs and patients with BPD, but not patients with SAD, showed an increase in the P2 amplitude from the inclusion to the overinclusion condition. Contrary to our expectations, positive emotions did not change from the inclusion to the overinclusion condition. EEG results provide preliminary evidence that patients with BPD and HCs, but not patients with SAD, process an increase in the frequency of social interaction as rewarding.

Neurophysiological and Psychological Consequences of Social Exclusion: The Effects of Cueing In-Group and Out-Group Status

Exclusion by outgroups is often attributed to external factors such as prejudice. Recently, event-related potential studies have demonstrated that subtle cues influence expectations of exclusion, altering the P3b response to inclusion or exclusion. We investigated whether a visual difference between participants and interaction partners could activate expectations of exclusion, indexed by P3b activity, and whether this difference would influence psychological responses to inclusion and exclusion. Participants played a ball-tossing game with two computer-controlled coplayers who were believed to be real. One period involved fair play inclusion while the other involved partial exclusion. Avatars represented participants, with their color matching participant skin tone, and either matching or differing from the color of coplayer avatars. This created the impression that the participant was an ingroup or outgroup member. While ingroup members elicited enhanced P3b activation when receiving the ball during exclusion, outgroup members showed this pattern for both inclusion and exclusion, suggesting that they formed robust a-priori expectations of exclusion. Self-reports indicated that while these expectations were psychologically protective during exclusion, they were detrimental during inclusion. Ultimately, this study reveals that expectations of exclusion can be formed purely based on visual group differences, regardless of the actual minority or majority status of individuals.

Trait empathy modulates brain response to empathy for social rejection: Evidence from electrophysiology

Empathy which can understand and respond to the unique affective experiences of others plays an essential role in social interaction. Although many neuroimaging studies have investigated the neural mechanisms underlying empathy for social pain, how its mechanisms are modulated by trait empathy remains unknown. The present event-related potential (ERP) study used Chatroom Interact Task to examine how trait empathy modulates brain response to empathy for social rejection. The behavior results showed that participants were less pleasant when observing rejection compared to observing acceptance in both high- and low-levels empathy groups. The ERP results revealed more negative-going N2 for social acceptance compared to rejection in both groups, but there was no difference in N2 between high- and low- empathy group. However, the late components, i.e., the P3b, N400 and LPP, revealed significant difference between social acceptance and rejection in high empathic participants rather than low empathic participants. These findings suggested that individuals with high empathic traits could devote more attention and mental resources to process observing ostracism.

Social exclusion in schizophrenia: Psychological and cognitive consequences

Social exclusion is associated with reduced self-esteem and cognitive impairments in healthy samples. Individuals with schizophrenia experience social exclusion at a higher rate than the general population, but the specific psychological and cognitive consequences for this group are unknown. We manipulated social exclusion in 35 participants with schizophrenia and 34 demographically-matched healthy controls using Cyberball, a virtual ball-tossing game in which participants believed that they were either being included or excluded by peers. All participants completed both versions of the task (inclusion, exclusion) on separate visits, as well as measures of psychological need security, working memory, and social cognition. Following social exclusion, individuals with schizophrenia showed decreased psychological need security and working memory. Contrary to expectations, they showed an improved ability to detect lies on the social cognitive task. Controls showed a decrease in psychological security after exclusion that was larger than that seen in the schizophrenia group. The results suggest that social support and interventions targeting social integration may benefit community functioning by reducing cognitive impairments and psychological stress.

Tick-tock goes the croc: a high-density EEG study of risk-reactivity and binge-drinking

Links between individual differences in risk processing and high-risk behaviors such as binge-drinking have long been the focus of active research. However, investigations in this area almost exclusively utilize decision-making focused paradigms. This emphasis makes it difficult to assess links between risk behaviors and raw risk reactivity independent of decision and feedback processes. A deeper understanding of this association has the potential to shed light on the role of risk reactivity in high-risk behavior susceptibility. To contribute toward this aim, this study utilizes a popular risk-taking game, the crocodile dentist, to assess links between individual differences in decision-free risk-reactivity and reported binge-drinking frequency levels. In this task, participants engage in a series of decision-free escalating risk responses. Risk-reactivity was assessed by measuring late positive potential responses toward risk-taking action initiation cues using high-density 256-Channel EEG. The results indicate that, after controlling for overall alcohol consumption frequency, higher rates of reported binge-drinking are associated with both increased general risk-taking responsivity and increased risk-reactivity escalation as a function of risk level. These findings highlight intriguing links between risk reactivity and binge-drinking frequency, making key contributions in the areas of risk-taking and affective science.