Ostracism hurts, but why for so long? The role of cognitive processes in prolonging the negative effects of ostracism

Abstract

Ostracism, defined as being excluded and ignored, is a painful and pervasive social phenomenon. To date, very little research has explored why the adverse psychological consequences of ostracism persist for some individuals but not for others. Therefore, the primary aim of the present thesis was to examine cognitive processes that cause the negative effects of ostracism to persist. In Chapter Two, a clinical model of social phobia was used to identify focus of attention as a factor that may cause the negative effects of ostracism to persist. It was hypothesised that the aversive effects of ostracism would persist for participants who maintained self-focused attention, relative to those who maintained externally-focused attention. The results of this chapter demonstrated that focus of attention did not influence persistence of ostracism’s aversive effects. However, post-hoc analyses revealed that participants who were self-focused and did not spontaneously reappraise the ostracism episode recovered more slowly than those who did spontaneously reappraise. As reappraiser status (i.e., reappraiser vs. non-reappraiser) was not manipulated in the experiments in this chapter, it was not possible to comment on its causal role in prolonging the negative effects of ostracism. Therefore, in Chapter Three, attempts were made to manipulate reappraiser status using two different methodologies. As reappraiser status was resistant to change, it was still not possible to comment on its causal role in recovery from ostracism. However, consistent with the post-hoc findings from Chapter Two, results from Chapter Three demonstrated that the aversive consequences of social exclusion persisted for spontaneous non-reappraisers, relative to spontaneous reappraisers. Finally, in Chapter Four, based on a model of mood regulation, it was hypothesised that retrieving negative autobiographical memories after being excluded would prolong the aversive effects of exclusion. Results indicated that the persistence of the adverse effects of ostracism may not necessarily be the result of retrieving negative memories specifically, but rather may be due to engaging in a task that prolongs the aversive mood state produced by being socially excluded. Taken together, the above findings elucidate several factors that prolong the negative impact of ostracism and have several theoretical and clinical implications.