The world in black and white: Ostracism enhances the categorical perception of social information

Understanding the link between theory of mind and loneliness among primary school students: A cross-lagged panel model analysis

This study aimed to investigate the longitudinal association between theory of mind (ToM) and loneliness as well as the potential moderating effects of parenting style on this association. A total of 689 Chinese third-grade students (341 girls and 348 boys; Mage = 9.23 years, SD = 0.66) were recruited from eight primary schools and were followed from Grade 3 to Grade 5. These students reported their primary caregivers' parenting style in third grade and completed the same ToM task and loneliness questionnaire at each time point from Grade 3 to Grade 5. The study's results indicated a bidirectional relationship between ToM and loneliness, implying that children with less developed ToM abilities tend to feel lonelier and, conversely, that higher levels of loneliness are associated with lower ToM skills. Moreover, the study demonstrated that parenting style influenced the association between ToM and loneliness. Specifically, the impact of ToM at Grade 3 on reducing loneliness at Grade 4 was greater among children who experienced high levels of rejection from their caregivers compared with those with low levels of rejection. In addition, this study found that loneliness at Grade 3 had a greater influence on ToM at Grade 5 for children experiencing low levels of emotional warmth from their caregivers than for those who experienced high levels of emotional warmth. These findings highlight the significance of ToM as both a precursor and consequence of children's loneliness and emphasize the variation in these longitudinal relationships based on the parenting styles of primary caregivers.

Effects of two different social exclusion paradigms on ambiguous facial emotion recognition

Social exclusion is an emotionally painful experience that leads to various alterations in socio-emotional processing. The perceptual and emotional consequences that may arise from experiencing social exclusion can vary depending on the paradigm used to manipulate it. Exclusion paradigms can vary in terms of the severity and duration of the leading exclusion experience, thereby classifying it as either a short-term or long-term experience. The present study aimed to study the impact of exclusion on socio-emotional processing using different paradigms that caused experiencing short-term and imagining long-term exclusion. Ambiguous facial emotions were used as socio-emotional cues. In study 1, the Ostracism Online paradigm was used to manipulate short-term exclusion. In study 2, a new sample of participants imagined long-term exclusion through the future life alone paradigm. Participants of both studies then completed a facial emotion recognition task consisting of morphed ambiguous facial emotions. By means of Point of Subjective Equivalence analyses, our results indicate that the experience of short-term exclusion hinders recognising happy facial expressions. In contrast, imagining long-term exclusion causes difficulties in recognising sad facial expressions. These findings extend the current literature, suggesting that not all social exclusion paradigms affect socio-emotional processing similarly.

Ostracism modulates children's recognition of emotional facial expressions

Ostracism has been shown to induce considerable physiological, behavioral and cognitive changes in adults. Previous research demonstrated its effects on children's cognitive and behavioral abilities, but less is known about its impact on their capacity to recognize subtle variations in social cues. The present study aimed at investigating whether social manipulations of inclusion and ostracism modulate emotion recognition abilities in children, and whether this modulation varies across childhood. To do so, 5- and 10-year-old children participated in a computer-based ball tossing game called Cyberball during which they were either included or ostracized. Then, they completed a facial emotion recognition task in which they were required to identify neutral facial expressions, or varying levels of intensity of angry and fearful facial expressions. Results indicated lower misidentification rates for children who were previously ostracized as compared to children who were previously included, both at 5 and 10 years of age. Moreover, when looking at children's accuracy and sensitivity to facial expressions, 5-year-olds' decoding abilities were affected by the social manipulation, while no difference between included and ostracized participants was observed for 10-year-olds. In particular, included and ostracized 10-year-old children as well as ostracized 5-year-olds showed higher accuracy and sensitivity for expressions of fear as compared to anger, while no such difference was observed for included 5-year-olds. Overall, the current study presents evidence that Cyberball-induced inclusion and ostracism modulate children's recognition of emotional faces.

Hostility bias or sadness bias in excluded individuals: does anodal transcranial direct current stimulation of right VLPFC vs. left DLPFC have a mitigating effect?

Exclusion has multiple adverse effects on individual's well-being. It induces anger and hostile cognitions leading to aggressive behavior. The purpose of this study was to test whether exclusion would affect recognition of anger on ambivalent faces of the excluders. We hypothesized that exclusion would elicit more anger encoding (hostility bias) than inclusion, but this effect would be mitigated by anodal tDCS of right VLPFC or left DLPFC-regions engaged in negative affect regulation. Participants (N = 96) were recognizing emotions (anger, sadness, happiness) on ambiguous faces of individuals who-as they were told-liked them or not. Results showed that exclusion induced more sadness bias. tDCS to VLPFC decreased anger and increased sadness recognition on excluders' faces compared with includers' faces, expressing a mixture of these two emotions. Additionally, stimulation to VLPFC and DLPFC decreased latencies for faces expressing sadness (sad-angry and happy-sad) but increased for happy-angry faces. Stimulation to VLPFC also increased reaction time to excluders faces while stimulation of DLPFC decreased reaction latency to includers faces. Results were discussed with the reference to the form of exclusion, motivational mechanism affected by disliking but also to lateralization (valence vs. arousal theory) and cortical regions engaged in encoding sadness after a threat to belonging.

Social Context and Rejection Expectations Modulate Neural and Behavioral Responses to Social Feedback

When meeting other people, some are optimistic and expect to be accepted by others, whereas others are pessimistic and expect mostly rejections. How social feedback is evaluated in situations that meet or do not meet these biases and how people differ in their response to rejection and acceptance depending on the social situation are unknown. In this study, participants experienced rejection and acceptance by peers in two different social contexts, one with high (negative context) and the other with low probability of rejection (positive context). We examined how the neural and behavioral responses to rejection are altered by this context and whether it depends on the individual's sensitivity to rejection. Behavioral results show that, on average, people maintain an optimistic bias even when mostly experiencing rejection. Importantly, personality differences in rejection sensitivity affected both prior expectations to be rejected in the paradigm and the extent to which expectations changed during the paradigm. The context also strongly modulated ERPs and theta responses to rejection and acceptance feedback. Specifically, valence effects on neural responses were enhanced in the negative context, suggesting a greater relevance to monitor social feedback in such a situation. Moreover, midfrontal theta predicted how expectations were changed in response to prediction errors, stressing a role for theta in learning from social feedback. Surprisingly, interindividual differences in rejection sensitivity did not affect neural responses to feedback. Our results stress the importance of considering the interaction between subjective expectations and the social context for behavioral and neural responses to social rejection.

Witnessed inclusion improves identification of Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles

Social exclusion threatens a person's need to belong and prompts them to behave in ways that often facilitate reaffiliation. For adults, direct exclusion increases attention to social information and facial cues, including an enhanced identification of Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles. Furthermore, inclusion can buffer or mitigate the effects of exclusion. This study investigated children's (N = 44) and adults' (N = 52) sensitivity to perceptual changes in smiles following witnessed inclusion and exclusion and inclusion's mitigating and buffering effects on perceptual abilities. Contrary to our predictions, participants in our study demonstrated improved accuracy after witnessing inclusion, rather than exclusion, and showed no buffering or mitigating effects of inclusion. This contradiction with previous findings points to a further need to explore the effects of witnessed versus direct inclusion and exclusion, especially if witnessed inclusion and exclusion have the ability to impact perception and shape our behavior.

Perceiving faces through reconnection-colored glasses after social exclusion: Evidence from N100

Social exclusion motivates individuals to selectively reconnect with others, in which face categorization plays an important role. However, it remains unknown how reconnection possibility interacts with perception at the very early stage of face categorization. To address this issue, after social exclusion or social inclusion priming, participants were instructed to select one person from two gender-matched strangers as a future "coworker" (with high reconnection possibility; the left one is a future "stranger," with low reconnection possibility) for another ostensible task, and then complete an orientation judgment task of self-face, coworker face and stranger face, with event-related brain potential (ERP) recordings. Results showed that excluded participants produced larger N100 to future coworker face than to stranger face, but no such difference was found among included participants. Compared with included participants, excluded participants produced significantly larger N100 to future coworker face. Moreover, N100 elicited by future coworker face was significantly negatively correlated with rating scores of exclusion only for social excluded participants. These findings indicate that social reconnection desire may contribute to the biased face perception which facilitates face categorization of socially excluded people.

Neural and Linguistic Considerations for Assessing Moral Intuitions Using Text-Based Stimuli

This review takes a focused look at neural and linguistic considerations for assessing moral intuitions using text-based stimuli. Relevant neural correlates of moral salience, emotional processing, moral emotions (shame and guilt), semantic processing, implicit stereotype activation (e.g., gender, age, and race stereotypes), and functional brain network development (the default mode network and salience network) are considered insofar as they relate to unique considerations for text-based instruments. What emerge are not only key considerations for researchers assessing moral intuitions using text-based stimuli but also considerations for the study of moral psychology more broadly, especially in developmental and educational contexts.

Social exclusion modulates dual mechanisms of cognitive control: Evidence from ERPs

Many studies have investigated how social exclusion influences cognitive control but reported inconsistent findings. Based on the dual mechanisms of control framework, this study investigated how social exclusion influences proactive and reactive modes of control (Experiment 1) and the underlying mechanisms (Experiment 2). The Cyberball game was used to manipulate social exclusion. Eighty-six female participants (about 40 for each experiment) performed cognitive control tasks while event-related potentials were recorded. In Experiment 1, an AX Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT) was adopted to differentiate between proactive and reactive control. Results showed that social exclusion weakened proactive control but enhanced reactive control, as reflected by the weaker proactive control indicators (i.e., P3b and CNV), but strengthened reactive control indicators (accuracy and N2) in excluded individuals. More importantly, in Experiment 2, through varying in whether task cues were available before or after target onset in a cued-flanker task, we further manipulated the possibility of engaging proactive control, and found the weakened proactive control could be attributed to both impaired cognitive ability and lowered motivation to engage proactive control in excluded individuals. Together, these results provide insight on how social exclusion influences cognitive control and suggest promising implications for designing effective interventions to relieve the negative impact of social exclusion.

Turning Away From Averted Gazes: The Effect of Social Exclusion on Gaze Cueing

Past studies showed increased sensitivity to other people’s gaze after social exclusion. In the present research, across two studies, we tested whether social exclusion could affect the basic cognitive phenomenon of gaze-cueing effect, namely, the tendency to redirect visual attention to the same location that other people are looking at. To this purpose, participants were socially excluded or included using the Cyberball manipulation. In Study 1, after the manipulation, participants performed a gaze-cueing task in which an individual’s gaze, oriented rightward or leftward, preceded a peripheral target stimulus requiring a simple categorization response. The gaze direction could be congruent or incongruent with the location of the target. Results revealed a reduced gaze-cueing effect for socially excluded than for socially included participants. In Study 2, where human gazes were replaced by arrow cues, such an interaction between social exclusion and trial congruency disappeared, indicating a specific effect of social stimuli. We interpreted these findings with the notion that excluded participants can perceive an averted gaze as a further sign of social exclusion, thus showing a reduced gaze-cueing effect.

The effects of social exclusion on processing of social information - A cognitive psychology perspective

In this article, we review the research investigating the effects of social exclusion on processing of social information. We look into this topic from the point of view of cognitive psychology aiming to provide a systematic description of the effects of exclusion on workings of different cognitive mechanisms involved in social information processing. We focus on four lines of inquiry. First, we present the research on the effects of exclusion on memory for social information. Second, we review studies, which have investigated how exclusion changes the way people view and evaluate their social environment. Third, we look into the research which has investigated whether exclusion modulates early social information processing at the perceptual level. Finally, we discuss the research on the effects of exclusion on attentional processes. Importantly, we also present gaps in our understanding on these issues and provide suggestions as to how future research could provide a more detailed view on how exclusion modulates social information processing.

I don't need your attention: ostracism can narrow the cone of gaze

Previous research has shown that ostracized participants seek inclusive cues, such as gaze directed at them, when trying to reaffiliate. However, instead of seeking reinclusion, ostracized individuals may sometimes withdraw from interactions if not offered an opportunity for reaffiliation. In the current study, after an ostracism manipulation with no reaffiliation opportunity, participants judged whether faces portraying direct gaze or slightly averted gaze (2°-8° to the left and to the right) were looking at them or not. Compared to an inclusion group and a non-social control group, ostracized participants accepted a smaller range of gaze directions as being directed at them, i.e., they had a narrower "cone of gaze". The width of the gaze cone was equally wide in the inclusion and control groups. We propose that, without an opportunity for reaffiliation, ostracized participants may start to view other people as particularly unapproachable, possibly indicative of a motivational tendency to disengage from interactions.

To defend or to affiliate: The effects of categorical similarity cues after social exclusion

This article proposed that after social exclusion, individuals may react in a hostile or amiable manner, which depends on the type of categorical similarity cues that new groups possess. For excluded individuals, groups that resemble their excluder would provoke a defensive attitude. They also exhibit hospitality to groups that resemble themselves to gain inclusion. In Experiment 1, social exclusion was manipulated by providing a scenario story regarding an individual who was excluded and subsequently wanted to join in new groups. The results indicated that participants in the social exclusion condition avoided groups that resembled the previous excluder, whereas groups that fit their characteristics were preferred. In experiment 2, the cognitive load was manipulated. Heavy cognitive load made participants in the social exclusion condition only avoid groups that resembled the excluder; in contrast, they exhibited no preference for groups that may be suitable for them.

Are you looking my way? Ostracism widens the cone of gaze

Ostracized individuals demonstrate an increased need for belonging. To satisfy this need, they search for signals of inclusion, one of which may be another person's gaze directed at oneself. We tested if ostracized, compared to included, individuals judge a greater degree of averted gaze as still being direct. This range of gaze angles still viewed as direct has been dubbed “the cone of (direct) gaze”. In the current research, ostracized and included participants viewed friendly-looking face stimuli with direct or slightly averted gaze (0°, 2°, 4°, 6°, and 8° to the left and to the right) and judged whether stimulus persons were looking at them or not. Ostracized individuals demonstrated a wider gaze cone than included individuals.

Black Groups Accentuate Hypodescent by Activating Threats to the Racial Hierarchy

One reason White people categorize Black–White Biracial people as Black (called hypodescent) is to maintain the existing racial hierarchy. By creating a strict definition of who can be White, the selectivity, and thus status, of White people increases. Given that racial hierarchies are about the relative status of groups, we test whether perceiving Black groups increases hypodescent by activating fears about shifts in the racial hierarchy (i.e., a majority/minority shift). Indeed, White people rated (Study 1) and stereotyped (Study 4) Black–White Biracial people as more Black in Black groups (but not White groups; Study 2) than when alone. Critically, this pattern was driven by White people relatively high in fear of a majority/minority shift (Study 3a) or those experimentally led to feel this threat (Study 3b). We conclude that Black groups increase hypodescent by activating fears about shifts in the racial hierarchy, posing consequences for racial stereotyping.

When Silence Is Not Golden: Why Acknowledgment Matters Even When Being Excluded

Following ostracism, individuals are highly sensitive to social cues. Here we investigate whether and when minimal acknowledgment can improve need satisfaction following an ostracism experience. In four studies, participants were either ostracized during Cyberball (Studies 1 and 2) or through a novel apartment-application paradigm (Studies 3 and 4). To signal acknowledgment following ostracism, participants were either thrown a ball a few times at the end of the Cyberball game, or received a message that was either friendly, neutral, or hostile in the apartment-application paradigm. Both forms of acknowledgment increased need satisfaction, even when the acknowledgment was hostile (Study 4), emphasizing the beneficial effect of any kind of acknowledgment following ostracism. Reinclusion buffered threat immediately, whereas acknowledgment without reinclusion primarily aided recovery. Our results suggest that minimal acknowledgment such as a few ball throws or even an unfriendly message can reduce the sting of ostracism.

Social exclusion modulates priorities of attention allocation in cognitive control

Many studies have investigated how exclusion affects cognitive control and have reported inconsistent results. However, these studies usually treated cognitive control as a unitary concept, whereas it actually involved two main sub-processes: conflict detection and response implementation. Furthermore, existing studies have focused primarily on exclusion’s effects on conscious cognitive control, while recent studies have shown the existence of unconscious cognitive control. Therefore, the present study investigated whether and how exclusion affects the sub-processes underlying conscious and unconscious cognitive control differently. The Cyberball game was used to manipulate social exclusion and participants subsequently performed a masked Go/No-Go task during which event-related potentials were measured. For conscious cognitive control, excluded participants showed a larger N2 but smaller P3 effects than included participants, suggesting that excluded people invest more attention in conscious conflict detection, but less in conscious inhibition of impulsive responses. However, for unconscious cognitive control, excluded participants showed a smaller N2 but larger P3 effects than included participants, suggesting that excluded people invest less attention in unconscious conflict detection, but more in unconscious inhibition of impulsive responses. Together, these results suggest that exclusion causes people to rebalance attention allocation priorities for cognitive control according to a more flexible and adaptive strategy.

Attachment Status Affects Heart Rate Responses to Experimental Ostracism in Inpatients with Depression

Depression is assumed to be both a risk factor for rejection and a result of it, and as such constitutes an important factor in rejection research. Attachment theory has been applied to understand psychological disorders, such as depression, and can explain individual differences in responses to rejection. Research on autonomic nervous system activity to rejection experiences has been contradictory, with opposing strings of argumentation (activating vs. numbing). We investigated autonomic nervous system-mediated peripheral physiological responses (heart rate) to experimentally manipulated ostracism (Cyberball) in 97 depressed patients with organized (n = 52) and disorganized attachment status (n = 45). Controlling for baseline mean heart rate levels, depressed patients with disorganized attachment status responded to ostracism with significantly higher increases in heart rate than depressed patients with organized attachment status (p = .029; ηp2 = .051). These results suggest that attachment status may be a useful indicator of autonomic responses to perceived social threat, which in turn may affect the therapeutic process and the patient-therapist relationship.

Ostracism Online: A social media ostracism paradigm

We describe Ostracism Online, a novel, social media-based ostracism paradigm designed to (1) keep social interaction experimentally controlled, (2) provide researchers with the flexibility to manipulate the properties of the social situation to fit their research purposes, (3) be suitable for online data collection, (4) be convenient for studying subsequent within-group behavior, and (5) be ecologically valid. After collecting data online, we compared the Ostracism Online paradigm with the Cyberball paradigm (Williams & Jarvis Behavior Research Methods, 38, 174-180, 2006) on need-threat and mood questionnaire scores (van Beest & Williams Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91, 918-928, 2006). We also examined whether ostracized targets of either paradigm would be more likely to conform to their group members than if they had been included. Using a Bayesian analysis of variance to examine the individual effects of the different paradigms and to compare these effects across paradigms, we found analogous effects on need-threat and mood. Perhaps because we examined conformity to the ostracizers (rather than neutral sources), neither paradigm showed effects of ostracism on conformity. We conclude that Ostracism Online is a cost-effective, easy to use, and ecologically valid research tool for studying the psychological and behavioral effects of ostracism.

Semantic Information Influences Race Categorization From Faces

It is well established that low-level visual features affect person categorization in a bottom-up fashion. Few studies have examined top-down influences, however, and have largely focused on how information recalled from memory or from motivation influences categorization. Here, we investigated how race categorizations are affected by the context in which targets are perceived by manipulating semantic information associated with the faces being categorized. We found that presenting faces that systematically varied in racial ambiguity with race-congruent (vs. incongruent) semantic labels shifted the threshold at which perceivers distinguished between racial groups. The semantic information offered by the labels therefore appeared to influence the categorization of race. These findings suggest that semantic information creates a context for the interpretation of perceptual cues during social categorization, highlighting an active role of top-down information in race perception.

Balancing competing motives: adaptive trade-offs are necessary to satisfy disease avoidance and interpersonal affiliation goals

The current research provides novel evidence for motivational trade-offs between the two fundamental human goals of pursuing social affiliation and avoiding disease. In Study 1, participants completed a writing prime that manipulated inclusionary status and found that socially excluded participants indicated lower feelings of current disease susceptibility compared with control and socially included participants. In Study 2, participants were included or excluded via Cyberball and then indicated their preferences for symmetrical versus asymmetrical faces. Socially excluded participants displayed lower preferences for symmetrical faces--a cue associated with greater disease resistance. Finally, in Study 3, participants were primed with either disease threat or a general negative affective state and then indicated their current affiliation interest. Activated disease concerns uniquely led participants to display less interest in social affiliation. Taken together, affiliation needs result in disease avoidance down-regulation to aid reaffiliation, whereas disease concerns result in affiliation down-regulation to facilitate pathogen avoidance.

When One Is Ostracized, Others Loom

Social rejection causes a host of interpersonal consequences, including increases in reaffiliative behaviors. In two experiments, we show that reaffiliation motivation stemming from rejection biases perceptions of one’s distance from a social target, making others seem closer than they are. In Experiment 1, participants who had written about rejection underthrew a beanbag when the goal was to land it at the feet of a new interaction partner, relative to control participants. In Experiment 2, rejected participants provided written underestimates of the distance to a person relative to control participants, but only when the target was a real person, and not a life-sized cardboard simulation of a person. Thus, using multiple manipulations of social rejection, and multiple measures of distance perception, this research demonstrates that rejection can bias basic perceptual processes, making actual sources of reaffiliation (actual people), but not mere images of people, loom toward the self.