The Effect of Social Closeness on Reactions to Social Rejection

Home , Belongingness, Embarrassment, Social rejection

THESIS

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Kathleen DeSales Burke

Graduate Program in Psychology

The Ohio State University

2014

Master's Examination Committee:

Dr. Baldwin Way, Advisor

Dr. Jennifer Crocker

Dr. Lisa Libby

Copyrighted by

Kathleen DeSales Burke

2014

Abstract

There has been a debate in the rejection literature about whether social exclusion causes hurt feelings or instead a numbing of emotion. Paralleling this dispute, there have also been mixed findings on whether social exclusion affects self-esteem. This study attempted to discern whether the severity of social rejection causes emotional numbing.

Severity was manipulated by having participants interact for 0 or 15 minutes with a group before being rejected by them. It was predicted that social exclusion after a longer period of interaction would be more severe than social exclusion after a shorter interaction. This greater severity of reaction to exclusion was hypothesized to lead to emotional numbing.

It was also hypothesized that the rejection feedback would elicit self-presentational concerns, such that explicit self-esteem would be affected by the rejection, but implicit self-esteem would. The present study tests these two hypotheses.

The results did not provide support for either the numbing hypothesis or the self- presentation hypothesis. Instead, participants showed increased hurt feelings after rejection compared to those who were not rejected, irrespective of the duration of the interaction that took place prior to the rejection manipulation. There was no effect of the manipulation on explicit self-esteem as expected, but there was also no effect on implicit self-esteem. Implications for social exclusion’s effects on hurt feelings and self-esteem are discussed.

Acknowledgments

First of all, I would like to thank God for all of His blessings and for the ability to write this thesis.

I would also like to thank my advisor, Baldwin Way, for his valuable guidance and support throughout this process. His helpful and thoughtful feedback made writing this thesis a very fruitful and educational experience.

I am also very appreciative of the members of the Way lab such as Ian Roberts,

Sara DeMaria, Brooke Plotkin, and Kyle Ratner for their continued encouragement and support throughout my two years at Ohio State.

Next, I would also like to thank the members of my cohort, the “Type 3’s,” for their continued optimism and friendship. Thank you to Porscha Haynes, DeWayne

Williams, Stephanie Freis, and Pin-ya Tseng.

I am grateful for my parents, siblings, and all of my relatives here in Columbus for helping me to make it through this process with all of their words of encouragement and unconditional love.

Furthermore, thank you to my committee members, Jennifer Crocker and Lisa

Libby for their beneficial feedback and the time and effort they placed into serving on my committee.

iii

Finally, I would especially like to thank my husband, Douglas Burke, for his care, patience, understanding, and immense love that he has given me throughout this process.

I am forever thankful to have him by my side.

Vita

June 2005………………………………………...... Hunterdon Central High School

May 2009…………………………………….……B.A. in Psychology, The Pennsylvania

State University

2009-2011……………………………………………Teach for America, First Grade and

Kindergarten Teacher

2011-2012…………………………………………..……Charlotte Mecklenberg Schools,

Kindergarten Teacher

2012-2013………………….…………..Distinguished University Fellow, The Ohio State

University

2013-present……………..Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Psychology, The

Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: Psychology

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgements ...... iii

Vita ...... v

List of Figures………………………………………………………………..…………………...……..vii

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 2: Methods ...... 13

Chapter 3: Results ...... 19

Chapter 4: Discussion ...... 29

References ...... 34

List of Figures

Figure 1. The Duration of group interaction’s effects on perceived closeness to group members………………………………………………………………...………………..19

Figure 2. Effect of rejection condition by duration of group interaction on hurt feelings…………………………………………………………………………………...20

Figure 3. Effect of Rejection condition by duration of group interaction on need threat...... 22

Figure 4. Self-esteem (standardized) as a function of whether individuals were rejected or not and the type of self-esteem measured (explicit or implicit)…………………...……..23

Figure 5. The effect of rejection and perceived closeness on hurt feelings……………...24

Figure 6. The effects of rejection condition and perceived closeness to group members on threatened needs………………………………………………………………………….25

Figure 7. The effects of rejection and perceived closeness to group members on explicit self-esteem……………………………………………………………………………….26

Figure 8. The effects of rejection condition by the need to belong on hurt feelings. ……27

vii

Chapter 1: Introduction

Humans possess an innate need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Being accepted and valued by others has been argued to be as essential for survival as is food and water. Consequently, humans have evolved a strong motivation to pursue acceptance and avoid rejection. Since the need to belong is a primary human motivation, humans possess a desire to affiliate with others. Consequently, individuals are compelled to create at least a minimum number of relationships that are durable, positive, and significant in order to accomplish a feeling of belongingness. Feeling a sense of belongingness is vital to one’s continued existence, hence when one is excluded many negative outcomes may arise.

Exclusion from a group, or rejection, serves as a threat to belongingness

(Williams, 2007) and can cause many negative outcomes. People who lack connection with others are more likely to suffer from mental illness (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).

Excluded individuals experience higher levels of stress as evidenced by increased cortisol after rejection (Blackhart, Eckel, & Tice, 2007). These findings provide evidence that rejection negatively affects one’s psychological well-being.

Social Exclusion and Negative Affect

There is presently a debate in the rejection literature regarding whether experiences of rejection cause greater magnitude of negative emotion or rather a numbing 1 of emotion. According to some researchers, a common psychological reaction to social rejection is experiencing negative emotions such as hurt feelings, sadness, anger, and loneliness (Leary, 2010). The common perception that rejection instigates such social pain has received wide support. One of the prominent paradigms showing this effect is the Cyberball manipulation. This rejection paradigm involves playing a computerized game of catch with two other participants. The participant is informed that the other two participants will be playing catch with him/her through their computer screens as well.

However, the computer program predetermines to which person the ball is passed, since in reality, there are no other participants involved with the game. In the exclusion condition, participants are ignored after the first few tosses and therefore do not have the ball tossed to them for the rest of the game. When Cyberball is employed, rejection has been shown to cause an increase in negative affect1 (Williams, 2007).

A meta-analysis was conducted across eighty-eight studies that used Cyberball as well as other laboratory rejection paradigms in order to observe how rejection influences affective state (Gerber & Wheeler, 2009). Within this meta-analysis, the researchers coded for the type of rejection paradigm and the types of measures used in each study.

They found that across rejection paradigms that directly induce rejection by making it obvious that one is excluded from the other participants, negative affect is decreased.

1 The majority of Cyberball studies assess distress using the Need Threat Scale (Jamieson et al., 2010), which assesses a participant’s level of belongingness, meaningful existence, self-esteem, and control. In keeping with two meta-analyses on the topic that have considered this a measure of affect (Blackhart, Nelson, Knowles, & Baumeister, 2009; Gerber & Wheeler, 2009), responses on this scale will be considered affective in nature. 2

In contrast, there have been multiple studies demonstrating that rejection does not elicit negative affect but instead produces a dampening of emotion. This was noted in a set of studies by Twenge, Catanese, and Baumeister (2003). This team of researchers employed a social exclusion manipulation that involves a group of four participants engaging in a get-to-know-you task in which they take turns asking each other questions in order to better acquaint themselves with each other. After this group discussion, participants are then asked to provide two names of individuals from this group that they would like to work with on a future task in this same study. In the exclusion condition, participants are told that no one wants to work with them and consequently they will work alone instead. Essentially they are “left out.” In the inclusion group, the participant is told that everyone wanted to work with them, but that since this is not conducive to the task they will be working alone as well. For present purposes, this task will be referred to as the “Leave-You-Out” rejection paradigm. They found that participants did not report an increase in emotional distress, but rather had no affective response. This finding was interpreted as a numbing of emotion in that one did not feel badly but at the same time one did not feel good (Twenge et al., 2003; DeWall & Baumeister, 2006).

Implementing this same Leave-You-Out paradigm (adopted from Twenge et al.,

2003) here at The Ohio State University, Mischkowski, Way, and Crocker (unpublished) found that participants who had been socially excluded reported a numbing of hurt feelings instead of increased hurt feelings. Thus, when using the hurt feelings scale used by Buckley, Winkel, and Leary (2004) there was no significant difference in hurt feelings

(denoted by a composite of the adjectives hurt, pained, and wounded) between the rejected group and the control group.2

This lack of an effect of rejection on emotional response is supported by a different meta-analysis. Blackhart, Nelson, Knowles, & Baumeister (2009) conducted a meta-analysis of 192 social exclusion studies and found that rejection caused participants to report feeling affectively neutral. While the majority of studies revealed that rejected participants reported feeling worse than participants who were either accepted by their peers or who were in a neutral control group, they did not necessarily report feeling bad or negative. The immediate response to rejection was feeling emotionally neutral as denoted by responses being near the mid-point of the scale. Baumeister, DeWall, and

Voh (2009) believe that it is important to remain open to the possibility of rejection causing a numbing of emotion. Accordingly, evidence supports a numbing of emotion under certain circumstances.

Therefore, there are two contradicting opinions in the literature each supported by a separate meta-analysis. One opinion is that social exclusion increases negative affect

(Gerber & Wheeler, 2009) while the other is that it leads to a numbing response

(Blackhart et al., 2009). Aside from the methodological issues related to these meta- analyses (Baumeister, DeWall, & Vohs, 2009), this raises the perplexing question of how to explain these discrepant conclusions. One potential explanation may arise from a theoretical perspective on the neural origins of responses to social rejection.

2 These data are from the placebo group. There were significant changes in hurt feelings in the drug treatment group. 4

One theory that has been proposed to improve understanding of the different responses to social rejection is physical and social pain overlap theory (Nelson &

Panksepp, 1979; Eisenberger & Lieberman 2004). Through evolution, it has been hypothesized that a system proficient at identifying and reacting to social pain

“piggybacked” onto the physical pain system (Nelson & Panksepp, 1979). According to this theory, the body’s pain response system may become activated by either social exclusion or physical pain (Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003). Similar language is used to describe social pain and physical pain. For example, social rejection can be described as feeling “painful.” The term “painful” applies to physical pain, yet people tend to use it interchangeably to describe emotional pain as well. Across languages there are words that people use to describe social injuries that overlap with words that are used to describe physical injuries (Leary & Springer, 2001). For instance,

“a dog bites” denotes a physical pain, while “a biting remark” describes a social pain.

Additionally, one may claim to suffer a stomachache which describes a physical pain, while one can also say they are undergoing heartache, a social pain.

Physical pain and social pain may overlap because they serve common psychological functions. A system responsible for tissue damage and one that is accountable for dealing with threats of distance from others may both be important for our continued existence and well-being. This skill of recognizing impending harm to both one’s emotional self (e.g. social separation) or physical self (e.g. physical harm) may have evolved to help gain resources in order to cope with threats to survival

(Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004). As a result of this evolved pain system, social exclusion may have the ability to affect both physical and social pain.

According to one interpretation of the social pain-physical pain overlap hypothesis, increasing social pain should increase physical pain because they are processed by the same underlying system. To test this hypothesis of overlap in physical pain and social pain, Eisenberger, Jarcho, and Lieberman (2006) asked participants to rate how painful a source of heat on their skin was perceived to be before and after playing Cyberball. It was demonstrated that the more social distress that was exhibited after rejection in Cyberball, the more physical pain one felt as well.

DeWall and Baumeister (2006) examined this same question of the relationship between social pain and physical pain using a different rejection manipulation, the

Future-Life task. This task involves participants answering 90 items on the Eysenck

Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1976). Subjects in the exclusion condition gain the insight that they are predicted to end up alone later in life based on their extraversion score from the Personality Test. Those in the acceptance condition are informed they will have a future filled with many social connections. Unlike in the work by Eisenberger et al. (2006), social rejection led to a numbing of physical pain in this study. Those who were told that they were going to spend their future alone showed reduced sensitivity to physical pain. Thus, just as with the findings for social distress after rejection, there are also contradictory findings for physical pain after rejection as well.

One potential explanation for these contradictory results is that the paradigms used to study social rejection may elicit different reactions. In order to find out if the difference in paradigms could cause these differing results, Bernstein and Claypool

(2012a) compared the results of physical pain sensitivity between these two rejection paradigms: Cyberball and Future-Life. They found that the Future-Life task led to a numbing of physical pain while Cyberball caused a hypersensitivity to physical pain.

Thus physical pain elicited the opposite response in these two paradigms, which might explain the differences in results seen in the literature. Furthermore, Bernstein and

Claypool (2012b) looked at the emotional responses elicited by rejection in these two paradigms as well. They found that Cyberball caused an increase in negative affect for those rejected compared to those included, while no differences in negative affect were found between the inclusion and exclusion conditions of the Future-Life paradigm, which suggests numbing occurred.

Thus, it appears that one explanation for the differences in reaction to social rejection is the paradigm. The Future-Life and Cyberball paradigms appear to elicit different responses. What is the psychological difference between these two paradigms that could lead to these different reactions?

Bernstein and Claypool (2011) suggest that the severity of the social injury produced by the rejection paradigm is the underlying mechanism for the observed contradictory effects. To test this hypothesis, they employed the standard Future-Life exclusion manipulation to measure the impact of a highly severe social injury. The authors also created a newer version of the Future-Life paradigm that was less hurtful and

7 thus provided the less-severe social pain condition. The standard, highly-severe Future-

Life exclusion condition caused a numbing of physical pain while the less-severe version of the Future-Life paradigm led to hypersensitivity of physical pain. Thus, the severity of social pain appears to explain whether participants felt a numbing of physical pain or hypersensitivity to pain in response to rejection. The worse the social pain, the more likely one was to experience a numbing of physical pain.

In line with attempting to uncover whether the severity of the social pain moderates the rejection response, the present study built on Bernstein and Claypool’s

(2011) study. Instead of using the Cyberball or Future-Life rejection paradigms, the

Leave-You-Out paradigm was used. As mentioned earlier, like in the Future-Life paradigm, numbing of emotional responses has been found in this rejection manipulation as well (Twenge et al., 2003). Hurt feelings instead of physical pain were assessed. To manipulate severity, the closeness to their group members before rejection was manipulated.

In the close relationships literature, it is has been shown that people who felt closer to their previous dating partner felt more emotional distress after the breakup

(Simpson, 1987). This indicates that greater perceived closeness leads to more hurt feelings after the relationship ends. In a similar vein, the more self-expansion that occurs within a relationship, the more the self-concept will contract when the two partners separate (Lewandoski, Aron, Bassis, and Kunak, 2006). Feeling closer and self- expansion increase over time in a relationship, so it is postulated that as people spend

8 more time together they feel closer to each other, which is proportional to the magnitude of heartbreak when a relationship ends.

In order to vary the perceived sense of closeness with one’s group members in the laboratory using the Leave-You-Out task, we varied the time participants interact with each other. This manipulation is built upon a widely used task that has been implemented in laboratories with the goal of creating social closeness among strangers (Aron, Melinat,

Aron, Vallone, & Bator, 1997). In this task, an individual is given 45 minutes to progressively divulge personal information to another participant, and listen to the other participant’s information as well. This task creates an increase in perception of social closeness with another participant that was not present beforehand. Varying the number of self-disclosing questions in this task has been shown to affect attraction between partners (Reis, Maniaci, Caprariello, Eastwick, & Finkel, 2011). Therefore, we hypothesized that a similar variation would also affect social closeness.

Accordingly, we hypothesized that the longer one interacts with other people, the closer one will feel to the others, and hence the greater social pain one will feel when rejected by them. Because prior work by our group and in the literature (Twenge et al.,

2003) has shown emotional numbing after fifteen minutes of interaction time between the participants, we chose this time period as one duration of interaction. For the condition designed to produce less social closeness and potentially less severity of social rejection, we had participants do a brief introduction before experiencing rejection. The reason for doing this is it closely mimics the way Cyberball has been typically implemented (e.g.

Way, Taylor, & Eisenberger, 2009), which generally increases negative affect.

Therefore, in this latter condition, the only difference between Cyberball and Leave-You-

Out is the nature of the exclusion manipulation. In this way, it is expected that participants in the fifteen minute interaction condition will develop more of a bond with each other and feel closer to one another than will those that do not have time to interact besides a brief introduction in the beginning of the study.

In the present study, it was hypothesized that the duration of the personal interaction with one’s group mates would affect the degree of hurt feelings experienced after the social exclusion experience. Thus, we tested the hypothesis that exclusion from those with which one interacts for a longer period of time will be more severe and therefore cause emotional numbing when compared to exclusion for those with which one only briefly introduces themselves.

Social Exclusion and Self-Esteem

Paralleling the debate over whether rejection causes hurt feelings or a numbing of emotion, there is a similar controversy in the literature over whether rejection causes a decrease in self-esteem or whether it has a numbing-like effect, much like it does for pain. The Sociometer Hypothesis postulates that self-esteem reflects one’s inclusionary status (Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995). It alerts an individual when their relationships appear to be failing or insufficient in quality. Thus, according to this theory, one’s self-esteem should be negatively impacted after experiencing social exclusion in order to warn the individual that his/her inclusionary status is threatened.

Mixed findings exist in the social exclusion literature on whether or not rejection influences self-esteem. Multiple studies have shown that self-esteem decreases after exclusion (Bernstein, Sacco, Brown, Young, & Claypool, 2010; Bernstein, Young,

Brown, Sacco, & Claypool, 2008; Williams, Cheung, and Choi, 2000; Zadro, Williams,

& Richardson, 2004). Gerber and Wheeler (2009) conducted a meta-analysis on the effects of self-esteem after rejection and found that self-esteem decreased after rejection.

Indeed, the authors stated that this occurred due to one feeling bad about oneself, worthless, and incompetent after social exclusion.

On the other hand, studies have also found that self-esteem is not affected by social exclusion. Blackhart and colleagues (2009) conducted a meta-analysis involving

192 studies on social exclusion’s effects on self-esteem. While they found a moderate increase in self-esteem after one was accepted, overall no effects were found on self- esteem after one experienced rejection. Much of this research involves the Future-Life paradigm discussed earlier (Twenge, Baumeister, Tice, & Stucke 2001), and so perhaps the type of rejection paradigm that is utilized may moderate the effects of rejection on self-esteem.

One factor that may contribute to the lack of reported self-esteem effects of rejection in the Future-Life task is self-presentation concerns. Since the experimenter notifies the participant of their fate, the participant might feel embarrassed and as a result not want to admit openly how they’re feeling after being told they will spend their future life alone. Accordingly, in recent studies incorporating the Future-Life paradigm conducted by Bernstein and Claypool (2013), they found that social exclusion resulted in

11 lowered self-esteem only when implicit measures were used. For instance, a decrease in self-esteem was found when the experimenters employed the Self-Esteem Implicit

Association Task (Greenwald & Farnham, 2000). Participants were not explicitly reporting that their self-esteem was decreased by the life-alone manipulation, but their implicit self-esteem scores were decreasing, indicating that their self-esteem was in fact affected. To confirm this interpretation, the experimenters then manipulated whether or not the feedback was to be shown to anyone besides the participant. In the high self- presentation motivation condition, participants were told that the feedback they received would not be anonymous and that it would be reported for the purposes of the study. In the low self-presentation condition, it was stated that the feedback would be completely anonymous and that no one would ever see it, including the experimenters, nor would it be recorded on the computer. When there were high self-presentation concerns present, only implicit self-esteem showed a decrease. However, when self-presentational concerns were not as relevant, both implicit and explicit self-esteem showed decreases.

Therefore, Bernstein and Claypool (2013) were able to confirm that self-presentation concerns were explaining why rejection in the Future-Life paradigm was not appearing to have an effect on explicit self-esteem.

A secondary goal of this study is to determine if self-presentational concerns might explain the lack of an effect of the Leave-You-Out Paradigm on explicit self- esteem (Blackhart et al., 2009). Therefore, it was hypothesized that the rejection manipulation in the Leave-You-Out paradigm would lead to no change in self-esteem

(e.g. numbing) on an explicit report but a decrease in self-esteem on implicit measures.

Chapter 2: Methods

Participants

There were 118 students (68 males, 50 females) that participated in this study from the Research Experience Program. This pool consists of students in the Introduction to Psychology course at The Ohio State University. Students participated in this study in exchange for partial course credit.

Procedure

Participants were tested in the laboratory in groups of three to five. The experimenter greeted the participants in the hallway outside of the laboratory and asked for them to introduce themselves to each other. Each individual said his/her name and shook the hand of the other participants. At this time, a name tag with the participant’s name already written on it was also given to each person to wear on his/her shirt. The experimenter then led the group of participants into the laboratory and read aloud the instructions for the upcoming tasks and asked everyone to read and sign their consent form before the study began. Once the consent forms were all signed, the experimenter led each participant to a separate room to complete the first set of questionnaires on the computer that consisted of demographic questions, the rating of their current feelings, and their self-esteem. Thus, each participant had a private space to fill out the questionnaires.

After completion of this questionnaire, the procedure differed for the two conditions. Each participant was assigned to either the zero minute or fifteen minute

13 interaction condition based on an allocation determined before the start of the session.

Furthermore, within both the zero minute and fifteen minute interaction conditions, each participant was assigned to either a rejection or control condition.

In the fifteen minute condition, after participants finished the first set of questionnaires on qualtrics, each was led back to the main laboratory room where the participants were then seated around a table and given instructions for the group task.

Participants were directed to learn each other’s names and told that the name tags would help with this. Next, everyone was told to work through the given questions (Sedikides,

Campbell, Reader, & Elliot, 1999) together as a group, and that they could start by having everyone speak in turn, especially for the first group of questions. As the questions became more complex, they were allowed to let their interaction evolve into a conversation. It was also explained that they did not have to get to every single question or to do them in order. Following the group task, participants were then led back to their previous computers and were asked to complete another set of questionnaires about their interaction with the group. They were also then asked to write down the two people’s names that they would like to work with on the next group task. If the participant did not remember the other participants’ names they were asked to write down a description of what the participants looked like.

In the zero minute condition, once all participants completed the first set of questionnaires on qualtrics, participants were asked to write down two other participants’ names of whom they would like to work with on a future group task. If the participant did not remember their names, they were asked to write down a description of what the

14 participants looked like. Participants also completed another set of questionnaires on qualtrics regarding their perception of their interaction with the other participants.

For both the zero and fifteen minute conditions, the experimenter then returned to each participant after they finished the questionnaires about the group task. The experimenter closed the door behind him/herself upon entering the participant’s room to ensure no one else could hear the news that was going to be given to each person individually. Those in the rejection condition then heard the experimenter explain,

“Usually what I do is look at those sheets everyone filled out saying who they want to work with. This time what happened is no one chose you. So because of that you will have to complete some pre-testing questionnaires and tasks for a different study alone.

This will allow you to still receive credit for participating today.” On the other hand, participants in the control condition heard the experimenter declare, “We won’t be doing the partner task for a while. In the meantime, I’m going to have you complete some pre- testing questionnaires and tasks for a different study.”

Once the rejection manipulation was administered, participants then completed several more questionnaires including rating their current emotions, the need threat scale, the need to belong questionnaire, an implicit self-esteem assessment, and an explicit self- esteem measure. After these questionnaires were completed, each participant was probed for suspicion about the deception using a funnel debriefing procedure and then led back into the main laboratory room where they were debriefed with the other participants on the actual intention of the study, and thanked for completing the study before being dismissed.

Measures

Demographics. Participants were asked to report their age, ethnicity/cultural background, and gender.

Hurt feelings. Participants filled out a state emotions measure on which they rated the extent to which they currently felt in relation to twelve emotional adjectives (modified from Buckley, Winkel, & Leary, 2004). Participants were asked to rate how they feel at this present moment on a Likert scale from 1 (not at all) to 7 (extremely) on the following adjectives: irritated, angry, cheerful, pleased, hurt, pained, wounded, anxious, tense, sad, down, and mad. The emotional adjectives hurt, pained, and wounded were used to compute the composite measure of hurt feelings.

Need Threat. In order to measure how threatened participants felt their needs of control, belonging, self-esteem, and meaningfulness were, the Need Threat Scale (Jamieson,

Harkins, & Williams, 2010) was employed. Example items include, “I felt

‘disconnected,’” “My self-esteem was high,” “I felt powerful,” and “I felt I had control over the course of the interaction.”

Explicit Self Esteem. To attain a measure of participant’s explicit self-esteem, we utilized the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (1965). Participants were asked to assess how they generally felt by indicating the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with each statement on a Likert scale anchored from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).

Such statements consisted of, “I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal plane with others,” “I wish that I could have more respect for myself,” and “At times I think that I am no good at all.”

Perception of Group Interaction. We used the Perceived Group Reinforcement Scale

(PGRS; Creswell, Sayette, Manuck, Ferrell, Hill, & Dimoff, 2012) to assess the participant’s perception of how well the group interaction went on a Likert scale from 1

(strongly agree) to 9 (strongly disagree). Example items are: “I like this group,” “I feel included in this group,” and “My presence is irrelevant to this group.”

Implicit Self Esteem. The Self Esteem Implicit Association Test (IAT) (Farnham &

Greenwald, 2000) was used to determine one’s implicit self-esteem score. The IAT directs participants to categorize stimuli of four concepts into two different response categories. It is expected that participants will respond more quickly to concepts that are within the same response category if the concepts are associated. They should respond slower if the concepts in the same response category are not related. In this study, participants categorized items into self and other categories, and in other trials participants categorized items into good and bad categories. Each participant’s implicit self-esteem score is calculated by subtracting one’s average response latency on compatible trials from his/her average response latency on incompatible trials. Any individual reaction time faster than 300 ms or slower than 3000 ms was recoded to those boundaries, respectively. Trials on which participants made errors (i.e. pressed the wrong key) were included in each participant’s average response latency, as recommended by

Greenwald, Nosek, and Banaji (2003). The larger a participant’s difference score, the more positive his/her implicit self-esteem.

Need to Belong. To gauge the degree to which participants had a dispositional need to belong, we used the Need to Belong Scale (Leary, Kelly, Cottrell, & Schreindorfer,

2013). Such questions included, “I try hard not to do things that will make other people avoid or reject me,” “I do not like being alone,” and “It bothers me a great deal when I am not included in other people’s plans.”

Chapter 3: Results

Of the 118 participants, 21 reported being suspicious of the study’s intentions and stated that they were not deceived with the rejection manipulation. Therefore, analyses were run on 97 participants (54 males, 43 females). Of these 97 participants, 72.2% identified themselves as Caucasian, 10.3% as African American, 11.3% as Asian, 1% as

Latino/Hispanic, 1% as Native American/Pacific Islander, and 4.1% as Mixed/Other.

To assess successful randomization, inspection of the dependent measures across the different groups was assessed using a two-tailed, independent samples t-test. There was no difference in the baseline dependent measures between the zero minute and the 15 minute condition (p’s > .1). However, there was a significant difference in baseline explicit self-esteem between the rejection and control conditions (t(95)=3.34, p < .001) with lower levels of self-esteem in the rejection condition (M=5.18, SD=1.11) than the control condition (M=5.88, SD=.98). The affect measures were not significantly different

(p’s > .45). Therefore, baseline explicit self-esteem was used as a covariate in analyses of explicit self-esteem.

Manipulation Check

It was expected that the longer one interacts with their group members, the closer one would feel to one’s group mates. A two-tailed, independent-samples t-test was used

19 to analyze these data. The perceived closeness to group members, as measured by the

Perceived Group Reinforcement Scale, significantly differed according to time condition, t(95)=3.63, p<.01. The participants in the fifteen minute interaction condition reported feeling closer to their group members (M=6.52, SD=1.67) than did the participants in the zero minute interaction condition (M=5.45, SD=1.20) (Figure 1).

9 8

7 6 5 4 3

PerceivedCloseness 2 1 0 0 Mins 15 Mins Duration of Group Interaction

Figure 1: Duration of group interaction’s effects on perceived closeness to group members.

The Effects of Duration of Interaction on Rejection

Hurt Feelings

Our hypothesis suggested that hurt feelings should not differ across any of the four conditions. To test the hypothesis that the rejection would not interact with duration of interaction to affect hurt feelings after rejection, a 2 X 2 (rejection condition x time condition), between-groups, ANOVA was used to analyze these data, with hurt feelings at baseline entered as a covariate. There was a significant main effect of rejection, F 20

(1,91)=8.61, p<.01. Participants in the rejection condition (M=1.81, SD=1.12) reported more hurt feelings after rejection than those in the control condition (M=1.31 SD=.77).

There was no main effect of time condition, F(1,91)=.25, p=.62. There was also not a significant rejection by time condition interaction, F(1,91)=1.96, p=.17 (Figure 2).

2.5

Control Rejection Hurt Feelings 1.5

1 0 Mins 15 Mins Duration of Group Interaction

Figure 2: Effect of rejection condition by duration of group interaction on hurt feelings.

The same analyses were conducted on the adjective composites of happiness, sadness, and anger to further assess whether or not numbing was occurring. When controlling for happiness at baseline, there was a main effect of rejection, F(1, 91)=8.47, p<.01. Participants in the rejection condition (M=3.27, SD=1.73) reported less happiness than participants in the control condition (M=2.95, SD=1.64). However, there was no main effect of time condition, F(1,91)=.69, p=.41, nor was there a significant interaction,

F(1,91)=1.23, p=.27. While controlling for sadness at baseline, there was a main effect of rejection, F(1,91)=14.36, p<.01. Participants in the rejection condition reported 21 significantly more sadness (M=2.16, SD=1.48) than participants in the control condition

(M=1.30, SD=.72). There was no main effect of time condition, F(1,91)=.00, p=.99, nor was there a significant interaction, F(1,91)=.38, p=.54. For the adjective composite of anger, while controlling for anger at baseline, there was a main effect of rejection,

F(1,91)=8.04, p=.01. Participants in the rejection condition (M=1.83, SD=1.11) felt more angry than participants in the control condition (M=1.44, SD=.91). However, there was no significant main effect of time condition, F(1,91)=.40, p=.53, nor was there a significant interaction, F(1,91)=1.64, p=.20. Thus, for each affective state there was a significant main effect of rejection, but no effect of time condition and no interaction effect.

Need Threat

As a supplement to the affect ratings, participants also completed the Need-Threat

Scale. A 2 X 2 (rejection condition x time condition), between-groups ANOVA was used to assess the effects of the manipulation on threatened needs. There was a main effect of rejection condition on need threat, F(1,92)=34.83, p<.01. This indicates that participants who were rejected (M=2.84, SD=.09) experienced threatened needs more than those participants who were not rejected (M=2.11, SD=.09). We also found a main effect of duration of interaction on need threat, F(1,92)=4.80, p=.03. This provides evidence that participants in the fifteen minute interaction condition (M=2.34, SD=.55) felt significantly less threatened than did those in the zero minute interaction condition

(M=2.61, SD=.62). However, the main effects were not qualified by a significant interaction, F(1,92)=.41, p=.52. (Figure 3).

3.5

2.5

1.5 Control

NeedThreat Rejection 1

0.5

0 0 Min 15 Min Duration of Group Interaction

Figure 3: Effect of Rejection condition by duration of group interaction on need threat.

Self-Esteem

It was hypothesized that reported explicit self-esteem would not significantly differ across the four conditions due to presentation concerns. A 2 X 2 (rejection condition x time condition), between-groups, ANOVA was used to analyze these data, with explicit self-esteem at baseline entered as a covariate. There was neither a significant main effect of rejection condition, F(1, 90)=.01, p=.91, nor a significant main effect of time condition, F(1, 90)=.72, p=.40. There also was not a significant interaction between rejection and time condition, F(1, 90)=1.72, p=.19. Participants’ explicit self- esteem was not affected by either rejection or duration of interaction.

It was hypothesized that explicit self-esteem may be affected by self- presentational concerns, and therefore that implicit self-esteem would show effects from the rejection and time conditions instead. Explicit and implicit self-esteem were negatively but not strongly correlated, r(88)=-.026, p=.80. A 2 X 2 (rejection condition x 23 time condition), between-groups, ANOVA was used to analyze these data. Similar results were found with implicit self-esteem as were observed with explicit self-esteem.

There was neither a significant main effect of rejection condition, F(1, 86)=.63, p=.43, nor was there a significant main effect of time condition, F(1,86)=.01, p=.95. The interaction between rejection condition and duration of interaction was also not significant, F(1,86)=.41, p=.53. Neither participants’ explicit or implicit self-esteem were affected by the rejection manipulation or length of interaction (Figure 4).

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

Score) - Explicit 0

Rejected Control Implicit esteem (Z

- -0.1

Self -0.2

-0.3

-0.4

Figure 4. Self-esteem (standardized) as a function of whether individuals were rejected or not and the type of self-esteem measured (explicit or implicit).

The Effects of Measured Closeness on Rejection

Hurt Feelings

To determine if measured perceived closeness to group members would interact with rejection to affect hurt feelings after rejection, these data were analyzed using linear 24 regression, with hurt feelings at baseline entered as a covariate. Rejection was entered as the predictor variable with perceived closeness as the moderator. The rejection manipulation significantly predicted hurt feelings after rejection, B=-.53, t=-2.88, p=.01.

Perceived closeness to group members did not significantly predict hurt feelings after rejection, B=.01, t=.09, p=.92. Perceived closeness to group members also did not significantly moderate the effects of the rejection condition on hurt feelings after rejection, B=-.09, t=-.73, p=.47. (Figure 5).

2.5

1.5 Rejection

1 Control Hurt Feelings

0.5

0 Low Close Med Close High Close

Figure 5. The effect of rejection and perceived closeness on hurt feelings.

Need Threat

To test the hypothesis that rejection would interact with perceived closeness to group members to threaten one’s needs, these data were run using linear regression.

Rejection was entered as the predictor variable and perceived closeness was entered as the moderator. Consistent with the results of the ANOVA above, the rejection 25 manipulation significantly predicted threatened needs after rejection, B=-.64, t=-5.52, p<.01. Perceived closeness to group members also significantly predicted threatened needs after the manipulation, B=-.17, t=-4.39, p<.01. The closer one felt to their group mates the less threatened needs one reported. However, perceived closeness to group members did not significantly moderate the effects of rejection on threatened needs,

B=.05, t=.70, p=.49. (Figure 6).

3.5

2.5

Rejection 2 NeedThreat Control

1.5

1 Low Med High Perceived Closeness to Group Members

Figure 6. The effects of rejection condition and perceived closeness to group members on threatened needs.

Self-Esteem

It was hypothesized that perceived closeness to group members would not moderate the relationship between the rejection manipulation and explicit self-esteem.

Both rejection condition and perceived closeness to group members’ main effects and

26 interaction were entered into a regression predicting explicit self-esteem after rejection, while controlling for explicit self-esteem at baseline. Perceived closeness to group members marginally moderated the relationship between rejection condition and explicit self-esteem, B=-.11, t=1.8, p=.08. (Figure 7). Simple slope tests indicated that among those in the rejection condition, there was not a significant relation between perceived closeness and explicit self-esteem, B=.06, t=1.24, p=.22. In the control condition, there was also not a significant relation between perceived closeness and explicit self-esteem,

B=-.052, t=-1.31, p=.20.

5.7

5.65

5.6

Esteem - 5.55 Rejection

5.5 Control Explicit Explicit Self 5.45

5.4 Low Med High Perceived Closeness to Group Members

Figure 7. The effects of rejection and perceived closeness to group members on explicit self-esteem.

Dispositional Moderator of Rejection Effects: Need to Belong

We then tested whether one’s need to belong moderates hurt feelings after the rejection manipulation. These data were analyzed using linear regression. Rejection was entered as the predictor variable with need to belong as the moderator. There was a main 27 effect of rejection, B = .51, t = 2.94, p = .004. There was also a main effect of the need to belong B = .31, t = 2.08, p = .04. There was a significant interaction between rejection condition and the need to belong score, B=-.80, t = 2.66, p=.01 (see Figure 8). The lower one scores on the need to belong scale, the less one experienced a change in hurt feelings.

Participants who score higher on the need to belong scale experience a greater change in hurt feelings than those in the control condition. Simple slope tests indicated that among those in the rejection condition, there was a significant positive relation between need to belong and hurt feelings, B=.71, t=-.3.52, p<.01. There was not a significant relation between need to belong and hurt feelings in the control group, B=-.092, t=-.41, p=.68.

1.4

1.2

0.8

0.6 Rejected

Hurt Feelings Control 0.4

0.2

0 1 2 3 4 Need to Belong

Figure 8: The effects of rejection condition by the need to belong on hurt feelings.

Chapter 4: Discussion

Social Exclusion and Hurt Feelings

There were two goals the present study aimed to investigate. The first objective was to determine whether the severity of rejection affects the degree of hurt feelings one reports after social exclusion. This study attempted to replicate Bernstein and Claypool’s

(2011) study using a different paradigm. Specifically, the Leave You Out paradigm was employed to manipulate severity of rejection. It was thought that the longer people interact with their group members, the closer they would feel to them and thus the more severe the rejection would be. It was hypothesized that the more severe the rejection, the more numb people would report feeling after the manipulation. This was predicted due to the literature on physical pain showing that the body will numb itself in response to intense physical distress, and the social and physical pain overlap theory that social pain may follow the same pattern of physical pain (Nelson & Panksepp, 1979; Eisenberger et al., 2004). While it was revealed that the longer one interacted with their group mates the closer they perceived being to them, the results from this study did not provide evidence that numbing had occurred. Across time conditions, rejected participants reported feeling significantly more hurt than participants who were not rejected. Thus, whether or not one interacted with their group members did not affect the degree of hurt feelings one reported after the rejection. Specifically, rejected participants who had interacted with their group members for fifteen minutes did not exhibit a numbing of emotion after the

29 rejection. Instead, rejected participants in both the zero and fifteen minute interaction conditions reported feeling an increase in hurt feelings due to their social exclusion experience.

Based on our data, it does not appear that the numbing hypothesis is occurring in the fifteen minute interaction condition. Therefore our results do not support the conclusion reached in the Blackhart et. al. (2009) meta-analysis that rejection leads to a numbing of emotional response. It is possible that the Leave-You-Out paradigm as implemented here may not have induced the same regulatory process that leads to numbing as when the Leave-You-Out paradigm or the Future-Life task are used by other researchers. Furthermore, our findings do not support Bernstein and Claypool’s (2011) findings with the Future-Life paradigm. Instead, our study found that regardless of the severity of the rejection, the mere experience of being rejected increased emotional distress. This finding could indicate that individuals experience similar levels of hurt feelings whether they are rejected by someone they feel close to or someone with whom they do not feel close. Perhaps rejection elicits an increase in hurt feelings despite how severe it is perceived to be. It was thought that a person would emotionally react to rejection in the same way that the body reacts to physical pain. In this case, however, the severity of the rejection may not affect the body’s reaction to social pain as it does physical pain.

As further support that severity of rejection did not differentially impact hurt feelings, we found a similar pattern when looking at the effects of perceived closeness on hurt feelings. While those who were rejected felt more hurt feelings than those in the

30 control group, perceived closeness did not impact the degree of hurt feelings one experienced.

Consistent with past findings (Williams, 2009), the current findings suggest that rejected individuals perceive their fundamental needs of belonging, self-esteem, meaningful existence, and control to be threatened more than those who were not rejected. However, in the current study participants in the fifteen minute interaction condition felt these needs less threatened than those in the zero minute condition. Along these same lines, the closer participants felt to their group mates, the less threatened needs they perceived, irrespective of whether they were rejected or not. This suggests that perhaps higher levels of perceived closeness are acting as a buffer to the experience of rejection rather than making the experience worse as originally hypothesized.

It is interesting to note that those who were lower on perceived closeness had higher need-threat scores even in the control condition (r(46)=-.44, p = .002). It is conceivable that the participants who reported relatively lower closeness to their group mates and high need threat may not let themselves feel close to people since they may always feel higher need threat in most social situations. Since we did not measure attachment styles (such as attachment avoidance; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007), however, this conjecture is purely speculative and should be taken into consideration in a future study.

Social Exclusion and Self-Esteem

The second goal of this study was to ascertain whether self-presentational concerns may prevent a participant from admitting that rejection caused a decrease in

31 their self-esteem. Drawing from Bernstein and Claypool (2013), it was hypothesized that due to such impression management, participants would not want to admit to their self- esteem dropping after rejection due to embarrassment. Therefore, we expected not to find a decrease in explicit self-esteem, but instead a decrease in implicit self-esteem. The data from this current study failed to provide clear evidence for this hypothesis. Though there were significant differences in explicit self-esteem between the rejection and control conditions, these differences were present at baseline. Thus, the change in explicit self-esteem resulting from the rejection manipulation was not significant. This could be interpreted as support for the conclusion reached in the meta-analysis by Blackhart and colleagues (2009). However, interpretation of these data is problematic due to the use of a trait self-esteem measure rather than a state self-esteem measure (e.g. Heatherton &

Polivy, 1991). There were no effects of the manipulation on implicit self-esteem. The reasons for this lack of an effect are not clear. In future studies, the effect of self- presentational concerns might be better assessed by having the rejection feedback delivered on a computer screen in one condition instead of in person. This way the participant feels less self-conscious when receiving their feedback.

Need to Belong

Individuals with higher dispositional need to belong are more sensitive to rejection (e.g. Pickett, Gardner, & Knowles, 2004). Therefore, the rejection manipulation was hypothesized to be more severe for these individuals. Our findings show that those with a higher need to belong felt more hurt feelings when rejected than those with a lower

32 need to belong. These results help support the notion that rejection will hurt more when one is longing to feel like they belong with others. Presumably, these individuals are the ones who will find rejection the most distressing and yet they did not show any indication of numbing.

Limitations and Future Directions

An interesting question for future research is whether the duration of interaction and the greater felt-closeness it induces buffers against the effect of subsequent rejection or exacerbates it. One factor that may have impacted the results was that many of the groups consisted of only 3 participants due to the limited subject pool during much of the spring semester. Because the participant selects two people to work with in the Leave-

You-Out manipulation, when there are only 3 people it is expected that one person will be left out. This may reduce the severity of the exclusion experience when compared to being left out by a group of four or five participants.

Conclusion

The present study sought to uncover whether the severity of rejection could affect the degree to which one experienced hurt feelings and if self-presentational concerns would affect whether one accurately reported their explicit self-esteem. The data do not suggest that being rejected by those who you feel closer to elicits a numbing response or is necessarily more distressing. Future research will be needed to delineate when social rejection increases pain sensitivity or decreases pain sensitivity.

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