The social pain of Cyberball: Decreased pupillary reactivity to exclusion cues

Causal effects of appearance-related social exclusion on state body dissatisfaction among young Chinese adults

OBJECTIVES

Numerous studies have linked experiences of appearance-related interpersonal rejection to body dissatisfaction (BD), though few experimental studies have been conducted. This study assessed causal effects of appearance-related social exclusion during an online Cyberball game on state BD as well as potential moderators of this association.

METHODS

Young Chinese adults (60 women, 37 men; age 20.08 ± 1.32 years) were asked to provide an image of themselves that would be sent to other players prior to a visual perception study involving Cyberball, a virtual ball-tossing game that is used to elicit temporary social exclusion effects. Participants completed a trait Fear of Negative Appearance Evaluation (FNAE) measure before or after engaging in the Cyberball task in addition to post-task state measures of BD and positive mood facets.

RESULTS

Participants randomly assigned to the social exclusion condition (i.e., receiving 2 of 30 possible throws) reported significantly higher post-Cyberball state BD and significant happiness/energy level/self-confidence deficits compared to peers in a social inclusion condition (i.e., receiving 12 out of 30 throws). A hierarchical regression analysis indicated social exclusion condition membership and trait FNAE elevations, but not their interaction, were significant predictors of higher state BD scores, independent of the impact of gender.

CONCLUSIONS

Social exclusion experiences linked to physical appearance are a significant causal influence on increases in state BD and positive mood decrements among young Chinese adults.

Influence of Social Exclusion on Cool and Hot Inhibitory Control in Chinese College Students

Social exclusion can affect nearly every aspect of a person's mental health, both on an emotional and cognitive level. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether cool or hot inhibitory control capacity varied under social exclusion. More precisely, participants who had experienced and not experienced social exclusion were compared to explore the influence of social exclusion on cool and hot inhibitory controls. Social exclusion was induced through the use of a Cyberball game, and participants were divided into an exclusion group and an inclusion group. The number Stroop task and emotional face Stroop task were used to measure the cool and hot inhibitory control, respectively. In the cool Stroop task, participants had to refrain from reading printed digits to identify the number of items presented in the array. In the hot Stroop task, participants had to inhibit the meaning of the word to identify the emotion displayed on the face. Reaction time, accuracy, and Stroop interference were analyzed to compare the inhibitory control between the exclusion group and the inclusion group. The results showed an extension of the response time in the exclusion group compared to the inclusion group. We found a higher interference effect in the number of Stroop tasks in the exclusion group than that in the inclusion group, but it was not significant in the emotional face Stroop task. The results suggest that the cognitive and emotional basis of inhibitory control may differ during social exclusion. The present findings expand our understanding of how social exclusion affects cool and hot inhibitory controls and their internal psychological mechanism.

Pupil Size Predicts Partner Choices in Online Dating

People's choices for specific romantic partners can have far reaching consequences, but very little is known about the process of partner selection. In the current study, we tested whether a measure of physiological arousal, pupillometry (i.e., changes in pupil size), can predict partner choices in an online dating setting. A total of 239 heterosexual participants took part in an online dating task in which they accepted or rejected hypothetical potential partners, while pupil size response was registered using an eye tracker. In line with our main hypothesis, the results indicated a positive association between pupil size and partner acceptance. This association was not found to depend on relationship status, relationship quality, gender, or sociosexual orientation. These findings show that the body (i.e., the pupils) provides an automatic cue of whether a potential partner will be selected as a mate, or rejected.

Personality as a moderator of immediate and delayed ostracism distress

Although ostracism is known to have negative consequences, individuals are affected to differing extents and show different patterns of recovery. To better understand these differences, the Big-Five personality model was used to examine the moderating role of personality on immediate and delayed ostracism distress. In this laboratory study, 408 participants played Cyberball and completed batteries on needs satisfaction and mood distress. The results show that more Agreeable or Conscientious individuals experienced greater distress on the immediate and the delayed distress measures (needs satisfaction and mood). Greater Openness to experience was related to greater effects of Agreeableness or Conscientious on distress experienced after being ostracized than when included. The discussion centers on the steps that can be taken to achieve greater relief after ostracism. This research contributes new theoretical insights and presents practical implications leading to a better understanding of those individuals who are at greater risk of being affected by ostracism, the personality characteristics that moderate ostracism distress, and when.

The Presence of Another Individual Influences Listening Effort, But Not Performance

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this study was to modify a speech perception in noise test to assess whether the presence of another individual (copresence), relative to being alone, affected listening performance and effort expenditure. Furthermore, this study assessed if the effect of the other individual's presence on listening effort was influenced by the difficulty of the task and whether participants had to repeat the sentences they listened to or not.

DESIGN

Thirty-four young, normal-hearing participants (mean age: 24.7 years) listened to spoken Dutch sentences that were masked with a stationary noise masker and presented through a loudspeaker. The participants alternated between repeating sentences (active condition) and not repeating sentences (passive condition). They did this either alone or together with another participant in the booth. When together, participants took turns repeating sentences. The speech-in-noise test was performed adaptively at three intelligibility levels (20%, 50%, and 80% sentences correct) in a block-wise fashion. During testing, pupil size was recorded as an objective outcome measure of listening effort.

RESULTS

Lower speech intelligibility levels were associated with increased peak pupil dilation (PPDs) and doing the task in the presence of another individual (compared with doing it alone) significantly increased PPD. No interaction effect between intelligibility and copresence on PPD was found. The results suggested that the change of PPD between doing the task alone or together was especially apparent for people who started the experiment in the presence of another individual. Furthermore, PPD was significantly lower during passive listening, compared with active listening. Finally, it seemed that performance was unaffected by copresence.

CONCLUSION

The increased PPDs during listening in the presence of another participant suggest that more effort was invested during the task. However, it seems that the additional effort did not result in a change of performance. This study showed that at least one aspect of the social context of a listening situation (in this case copresence) can affect listening effort, indicating that social context might be important to consider in future cognitive hearing research.

The Arousal Effect of Exclusionary and Inclusionary Situations on Social Affiliation Motivation and Its Subsequent Influence on Prosocial Behavior

Given the negative costs of exclusion and the relevance of belongingness for humans, the experience of exclusion influences social affiliation motivation, which in turn is a relevant predictor of prosocial behavior. Skin conductance is a typical measure of the arousal elicited by emotions. Hence, we argued that both inclusion and exclusion will increase skin conductance level due to the increase of either positive affect or anger affects, respectively. Moreover, we argued that emotional arousal is also related to social affiliation motivation and prosocial behavior. A total of 48 students were randomly allocated to either an inclusionary or exclusionary condition and their skin conductance levels were recorded during an experiment in which they completed an online questionnaire and played the game “Cyberball.” Results indicated that (a) individuals who perceived high exclusion felt angrier than individuals perceiving high inclusion, who feel positive affect; (b) no differences were evidenced in terms of skin conductance between exclusion and inclusion situations; (c) over-aroused individuals were less motivated to affiliate; and (d) individuals with lower affiliation motivation behaved in a less prosocial way. The results were congruent to the argument that behaving prosocially may be a way to gain the desired affiliation.

Dynamics of the immediate behavioral response to partial social exclusion

Social rejection and exclusion (ostracism) represent main stressors in daily life and even threaten mental and physical health. Abundant data from subjective measures in social exclusion paradigms are available, but the dynamic behavioral response is largely unexplored. Here, we applied modified variants of the Cyberball paradigm in two consecutive experiments to investigate the adaptive behavioral and emotional reactions to partial social exclusion. In experiment 1, 68 healthy participants (females, mean age 24.76 ± 4.05 years) played 2 min inclusion, 5 min partial exclusion and 2 min total exclusion. In experiment 2, 94 healthy participants (48 females, mean age 34.50 ± 12.08 years) underwent an experimental condition (2 min inclusion, 10 min partial exclusion) and a control condition (12 min inclusion only) in randomized order. In experiment 1, behavioral responses to partial exclusion showed two characteristics: (1) an immediate increase in ball passes to the excluding player followed (2) by a later return of participants’ behavior to baseline. This finding was replicated for both genders and in comparison to a control condition in experiment 2. The dynamic behavioral response observed here may point to overlapping principles of cooperation in this ball tossing paradigm and serves as a novel experimental proxy.

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.

Interaction between social pain and physical pain

People often experience two types of pain: social pain and physical pain. The former is related to psychological distance from other people or social groups, whereas the latter is associated with actual or potential tissue damage. Social pain caused by interpersonal interactions causes negative feelings in individuals and has negative consequences to the same degree as physical pain. Various studies have shown an interaction between social pain and physical pain, not only in behavioral performance but also in activities within shared neural regions. Accordingly, the present paper reviews: (1) the interaction between social pain and physical pain in individuals’ behavioral performances; and (2) the overlap in neural circuitry as regards the processing of social pain and physical pain. Understanding the relationship between social pain and physical pain might provide new insights into the nature of these two types of pain, and thus may further contribute to the treatment of illnesses associated with both types of painful experience.

Loss of control as a violation of expectations: Testing the predictions of a common inconsistency compensation approach in an inclusionary cyberball game

Personal control relies on the expectation that events are contingent upon one’s own behavior. A common ‘inconsistency compensation approach’ posits that a violation of expectancies in social interaction triggers aversive arousal and compensatory effort. Following this approach, we tested the hypothesis that interventions affecting participants' decisions violate the expected personal control. In a modified version of the established cyberball paradigm, participants were not excluded, but consistently included. However, their decisions regarding the recipient of a ball throw in the virtual game were occasionally overruled (expectancy violation). We hypothesized that this intervention will trigger a P3 response in event-related brain potentials (ERP). Since this component is related to subjective expectancies, its amplitude was assumed to depend on the frequency of interventions (independent factor: loss of control). Further, we manipulated the vertical position of the participants’ avatar on the computer screen (independent factor: verticality). Building on research showing that verticality is related to the self-assigned power and influences the expected level of control, we hypothesized that the ERP effects of intervention should be more pronounced for participants with avatars in superior position. As predicted, both experimental factors interactively affected the expression of the ERP response: In case of low intervention frequency, P3 amplitudes were significantly pronounced if the participants’ avatar was positioned above as compared to below co-players (high > low self-assigned power). The effect of verticality could be traced back to a lack of adaptation of P3 amplitudes to recurring aversive events. By demonstrating that loss of control triggers ERP effects corresponding to those triggered by social exclusion, this study provides further evidence for a common cognitive mechanism in reactions to aversive events based on an inconsistency in expectancy states.

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.

Immediate and delayed neuroendocrine responses to social exclusion in males and females

Social exclusion is a complex phenomenon, with wide-ranging immediate and delayed effects on well-being, hormone levels, brain activation and motivational behavior. Building upon previous work, the current fMRI study investigated affective, endocrine and neural responses to social exclusion in a more naturalistic Cyberball task in 40 males and 40 females. As expected, social exclusion elicited well-documented affective and neural responses, i.e., increased anger and distress, as well as increased exclusion-related activation of the anterior insula, the posterior-medial frontal cortex and the orbitofrontal cortex. Cortisol and testosterone decreased over the course of the experiment, whereas progesterone showed no changes. Hormone levels were not correlated with subjective affect, but they were related to exclusion-induced neural responses. Exclusion-related activation in frontal areas was associated with decreases in cortisol and increases in testosterone until recovery. Given that results were largely independent of sex, the current findings have important implications regarding between-sex vs. within-sex variations and the conceptualization of state vs. trait neuroendocrine functions in social neuroscience.

The impact of social exclusion on anticipatory attentional processing

The importance of understanding how we anticipate and prepare for social rejection is underscored by the mental and physical toll of continual social vigilance. In this study, we investigate the impact of social rejection on anticipatory attentional processes using the well-known Cyberball task, a paradigm in which participants engage in a game of catch with virtual avatars who after an initial period of fair-play (inclusion condition) then exclude the participant from the game (exclusion condition). The degree of anticipatory attention allocated by subjects towards the avatars was assessed by measuring P3b responses towards the avatars' preparatory actions (i.e. the phase preceding their exclusionary actions) using high density EEG. The results of the study show that relative to the inclusion, participants exhibit elevated levels of anticipatory attentional allocation towards the avatars during the exclusion block. This shift was however significantly moderated by participants' self-reported cognitive regulation tendencies. Participants with higher levels of self-reported cognitive reappraisal tendencies showed larger anticipatory P3b increases from the inclusion to exclusion block relative to participants with reduced levels of reappraisal tendencies. These results highlight the impact of social exclusion on anticipatory neural processing and the moderating role of cognitive reappraisal on these effects.