The Social Outcast

Ostracism, Social Exclusion, Rejection, and Bullying

Kipling D. Williams, Joseph P. Forgas, William Von Hippel

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781841694245
• eBook ISBN: 9781135423377
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book focuses on the ubiquitous and powerful effects of ostracism, social exclusion, rejection, and bullying. Human beings are an intrinsically gregarious species. Most of our evolutionary success is no doubt due to our highly developed ability to cooperate and interact with each other. It is thus not surprising that instances of interpersonal rejection and social exclusion would have an enormously detrimental impact on the individual. Until 10 years ago, however, social psychology regarded ostracism, rejection and social exclusion as merely outcomes to be avoided, but we knew very little about their antecedents and consequences, and about the processes involved when they occurred. Furthermore, the literatures of ostracism, social exclusion and rejection have not until now included discussions of the bullying literature.

1
The Social Outcast

An Overview

KIPLING D. WILLIAMS
JOSEPH P. FORGAS
WILLIAM VON HIPPEL
LISA ZADRO

Introduction
Part I:	Theoretical Foundations
Part II:	Deep Roots of Exclusion: Neuropsychological Substrates of Isolation and Exclusion
Part III:	Individual and Population Differences and the Impact of Social Exclusion and Bullying
Part IV:	Influences of Rejection on Emotion, Perception, and Cognition
Part V:	Effects of Social Exclusion on Pro- and Anti-Social Behavior
Summary

INTRODUCTION

We are essentially social creatures. Throughout most of our evolutionary history, we lived, loved, and labored within the confines of small, intimate groups where we knew, and were known by, each member. Within these groups, we were sheltered from the elements, protected from predators, and ultimately given the opportunity to propagate and prosper. To be rejected and excluded from the group, and thus from all the benefits of membership, would have been a death sentence—left alone without food, shelter, and vulnerable to outside attack, the life of a social outcast would have been brutal and brief. Hence our survival would have depended on our ability to detect imminent rejection and thereby act—cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally—to regain our membership in the group.

This work was supported by an Australian Research Council Grant to Kipling D. Williams and a Special Investigator award from the Australian Research Council, the Research Prize by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to Joseph P. Forgas. Address correspondence to: Kipling D. Williams, Department of Psychological Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907–2004, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

As technology advanced and our civilization evolved, the dynamics of our day-to-day existence changed, and our social ties to those around us gradually became more complex and impersonal. Yet, despite this shift from face-to-face communities to sprawling metropolises, the potential for rejection and exclusion continues to permeate our society. Every aspect of our day-to-day lives contains the potential for some form of ostracism—for instance, in the workplace, our colleagues may deliberately or inadvertently fail to answer our e-mails, or may exclude us from after-hours social gatherings; in the home, our loved ones may punish us for some misdemeanor by leaving the room when we enter and refusing to meet our gaze over the dinner table; even in public transport, we may sit in such close proximity to a fellow passenger that we are forced to spend the entire journey uncomfortably wedged against one another, yet we will sit in silence and act as though we are traveling alone. Thus, it seems that regardless of whether it is socially sanctioned or personally directed, exclusion and rejection have remained a fundamental part of our social existence, as too has our very primitive and automatic adaptive sensitivity to even the slightest hint of social exclusion.

Understanding how people relate to each other, why they choose to exclude and ignore others, and what determines their response to rejection and exclusion has never been of greater importance than today. Recent research has linked being excluded to aversive psychological effects (e.g., depression, alienation, suicide), as well as to aversive behavioral outcomes (e.g., mass killings such as the shootings at Columbine High School; see Leary, Kowalski, Smith, & Phillips, 2003). Yet despite the far reaching implications of social exclusion on both the social outcast and on society as a whole, it was only in the last decade that social psychology began to regard social exclusion as an area worthy of investigation rather than merely an outcome to be avoided.

This book represents the culmination of a little more than a decade’s worth of research, bringing together researchers across allied fields to understand more about the antecedents and consequences of social exclusion and rejection, and about the processes involved when they occurred. The subtitle of this book reflects the fact that as yet, four conceptually related topics exist that tap into the experience of being a social outcast: ostracism, social exclusion, rejection, and bullying. Not only are we not certain about the extent to which these phenomena overlap (see Leary, this volume, for an integrative attempt), but precise definitions for each are lacking. Generally speaking, ostracism refers to being ignored and excluded (Williams, 1997; 2001). Social exclusion refers to not being included within a given social network (but not necessarily ignored). Rejection is usually an explicit verbal or physical action that declares that the individual is not wanted as a member within a relationship or group. Bullying usually involves others’ aversive focus on an individual, and often is accompanied by physical, verbal and nonverbal abuse of an individual.

THE BACKGROUND

Throughout the centuries, poets, writers, philosophers, and social commentators have often debated the nature of rejection and social exclusion, particularly when manifested through tactics such as the “silent treatment.” Silence, when communication is expected, is inextricably tied to the act of ostracism. But it is clear from literature and science that silence, by itself, can mean many things. To some, silence is a noble act (e.g., “speech is silvern, silence is golden,” [Swiss Inscription]; “nothing is more useful than silence,” [Menander]; “well-timed silence has more eloquence than speech” [Martin Farquhar Tupper]), whereas others view silence as petty or malicious (e.g., “silence is the virtue of fools”[Sir Francis Bacon]; “in the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends,” [Martin Luther King Jr.]). Silence has been conceived as an act of kindness toward others (e.g., “if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all,” [Anonymous]; “a good word is an easy obligation; but to not speak ill requires only our silence which costs nothing,” [John Tillston]), or as a deliberate and effective act of cruelty (e.g., “silence is the most perfect expression of scorn,” [George Bernard Shaw]; “the cruelest lies are often told in silence,” [Robert Louis Stevenson]). Thus, silence is ambiguous, and perhaps contributes to the difficulty people have coping with ostracism. On the one hand, targets of silence can pretend it is not happening, and can bask in the ambiguity by denying that they are being excluded. On the other hand, if individuals are “cast out” through silence, they may lack vital information they could use to correct their behavior, or to cope with their exclusion.

Of course, not all acts of rejection and social exclusion involve silence. Some forms of rejection involve hurtful words and explicit derogation; and at other times involve physical abuse. When being socially outcast is more explicit (and hence, less ambiguous) as is often the case in rejection and bullying, targets can at least know for certain that they are indeed being outcast. Whereas this prevents the ability to deny the experience, they may be better able to cope with it. They also know that they are not invisible and unworthy of attention, but instead, are important enough to be the objects of inattention and abuse.

Whether presented as an act of good or evil, virtue or sin, social exclusion is a complex phenomenon that, in its many guises, has transcended time, and has a place in our day-to-day lives from our first breath to our last gasp. Our experiences with social exclusion begin early in life. For most of us, we have some experience with being teased, bullied, silenced, excluded, and rejected by our peers from infancy (e.g., Barner-Barry, 1986; Sheldon, 1996) to adolescence (Cairns, Cairns, Neckerman, & Ferguson, 1989). As we grow older, the prevalence of ostracism is such that all individuals will be both a victim (i.e., a target) and a perpetrator (i.e., a source) of some form of social exclusion and rejection within almost all of their relationships, whether with loved ones, colleagues, or strangers. In our day-to-day lives, apparently innocuous episodes of ostracism in which we ignore and are ignored by strangers on the street or fellow passengers on elevators, buses, and trains are interwoven with more emotionally grueling episodes in which we choose to ignore or are ignored by those we love. In fact, 67% of a representative U.S. sample admitted using the silent treatment (deliberately not speaking to a person in their presence) on a loved one, and 75% indicated that they had been a target of the silent treatment by a loved one (Faulkner, Williams, Sherman, & Williams, 1997).

Even it our experience with ostracism in our personal life is minimal, we are bound to encounter other forms of ostracism in societal institutions, such as schools (e.g., time-outs, expulsion), the workplace (e.g., in the ostracism of “whistleblowers” by co-workers; Faulkner, 1998), the legal system (e.g., placing those guilty of a crime in prison; Lynn & Armstrong, 1996), and the church, where almost all religions punish non-compliance to ecclesiastical law with some form of excommunication (Zippelius, 1986).

The prevalence of ostracism throughout all aspects of our day-to-day life has led to a body of research that explores ostracism from various perspectives. Anthropologists, sociologists, biologists, physiologists, ethnologists, zoologists, and legal experts among others (see Gruter & Masters, 1986), have all examined the phenomenon across different cultures and species. Yet, it is surprising that there has been little psychological investigation into the nature, causes, or consequences of ostracism. Indeed, until the last decade, there were only a handful of studies that explicitly examined the consequences of being ignored, excluded or rejected, and most of these were stand-alone studies that were generally arheorerical, and varied in their conceptual and operational definitions of ostracism.

Many of the early studies typically focused on physical isolation to understand the psychological effects of exclusion. For instance, in what is probably the most radical of the studies examining the potential consequences of social exclusion, Schachter (1959) isolated five volunteers in a windowless room for as long as they could possibly endure being separated from others and found considerable individual differences in the amount of time participants tolerated the isolation.

Subsequent studies tended to study psychological rather than physical isolation. The underlying notion in these studies was that individuals could feel isolated even when in the presence of other people. These studies achieved psychological isolation through rejection, exclusion, or being ignored by others. In general, researchers tended to manipulate these forms of ostracism using a group social interaction, consisting of one participant (the target of social exclusion) and two or more confederates (the sources of exclusion).

These studies of psychological isolation varied in the way in which social exclusion was conceptualized. Some of these studies focused on examining the effects of being explicitly rejected from participation in a group activity (e.g., Dittes, 1959), whereas others conceptualized psychological isolation as being ignored (Geller, Goodstein, Silver, & Sternberg, 1974). Other researchers combined forms of social exclusion with other types of interpersonal rejection (e.g., argument or abuse). For instance, Mettee, Taylor, and Fisher (1971) examined “being shunned” in terms of physical avoidance and verbal abuse. Regardless of the nature of the paradigm used to induce ostracism, these studies have typically found that being rejected, excluded, and ignored had detrimental effects on the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of targets (see also, the more general feeling of being lonely, as discussed by Cacioppo and Hawkley, this volume).

In addition to examining the psychological effects of ostracism on targets several of the early studies also investigated targets’ thoughts and feeling toward their ostracizers. In some studies, participants who had been rejected rated the sources as less likeable (Pepitone & Wilpizeski, 1960), or less favorably (Geller et al., 1974) than those who were not ignored. Social exclusion was also found to affect the desire of targets to affiliate with their ostracizers. However, the findings on this point are somewhat contradictory. In some studies, targets preferred to avoid, or not work with, the ostracizers in the future (e.g., Mettee et al., 1971; Pepitone & Wilpizeski, 1960) whereas in other studies, targets expressed a desire to be with, or work with, those who had ostracized them (Snoek, 1962). These contradictory reactions are reflected in the various chapters in this book (see for instance, Williams & Zadro; Baumeister & DeWall; Twenge; Sommer, & Rubin, and Gaertner & Iuzzini; this volume).

Overall, these studies provide invaluable information about the nature of social exclusion. However, because many of these early studies were preliminary in nature, they present several limitations. The primary limitation is that the majority of these studies did not adequately acknowledge the complexity of ostracism. Hence, many of the early studies employed forms of social exclusion that may be phenomenologically different, yet treated them as equivalent (e.g., physically moving away versus ignoring the target) and thus did not ascertain whether different types of exclusion have different effects on the target. Second, these studies typically focused on the effects of social exclusion on targets, and thereby failed to explore the potential effects (beneficial or detrimental) of being a source of exclusion. Without an understanding as to why people use forms of ostracism, social exclusion, rejection, and bullying, there is little chance that we will be able to determine strategies that can be used to help individuals cope with these aversive experiences or for individuals who habitually use these aversive techniques to consider the benefits of using alternative constructive techniques. Finally, the early studies centered on examining the self-reported psychological effects of being excluded and ignored. Although this is an important first step, further research was clearly necessary to examine the effects of social exclusion on emotional, cognitive, and physiological processes in order to ascertain the range of potential consequences of social exclusion. These goals are now being realized in the work represented in this book. Physiological and social cognitive neuroscience paradigms are prevalent in the work of Eisenberger and Lieberman and MacDonald, Kingsbury, and Shaw. Emotional impact forms the substantial focus of Baumeister and DeWall, Twenge, Sommer and Rubin, and of Fitness.

Despite the limitations, the early studies provided a solid foundation for future social exclusion research. Yet amazingly, research in this area ground to a halt as social psychologists failed to acknowledge the importance of this complex phenomenon. It is only during the last decade that social exclusion research has experienced a renaissance of sorts, resulting in a surge of new theories on the nature of social exclusion, new models on which to base experimental research, and new paradigms that provide ingenious ways to explore the effects of being a target and/or source of social exclusion. Unlike the single-study approach of early research, current exclusion researchers often used a multi-method approach to conduct systematic programs of research into the nature, causes, and consequences of social exclusion. Moreover, these studies have aimed to broaden our understanding of the consequences of this phenomenon by examining not only the self-reported effects of exclusion, but also the behavioral, cognitive, and physiological effects of being excluded, rejected, and ignored.

This brings us to the organization of this book. Although the field of social exclusion is still in its infancy, the main objective of this book is to explore our current understanding of the powerful consequences of social exclusion, at the neurophysiological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral levels. Part I will put forward grand integrative models and theories that try to encapsulate the experience of rejection and exclusion. As sweeping as these conceptualizations are, we also recognize that some individuals are more susceptible to acts of exclusion than are others, hence Part II will explore and explain these individual differences. Part III will examine how, once excluded, individuals perceive and respond to their social environments differently, leading them to interpret and attend to particular information that may help them cope, or often, that may perpetuate their state of exclusion. Part IV will discuss the nature and antecedents of adaptive and maladaptive reactions to social exclusion. Finally, Part V will report several research programs aimed at extricating the links between social exclusion and pro-social or anti-social behavior.

PART I: THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

In Chapter 2, Kip Williams and Lisa Zadro put forth a revised model of ostracism (originally developed by Williams, 1997), and summarize a program of research in their labs that seeks to describe the temporally changing reactions to ostracism. They begin by asserting that a considerable number of studies have now been conducted that appear to demonstrate that ostracism—being ignored and excluded—is immediately experienced as painful. They also argue that factors that ought to moderate this painful experience are inconsequential. For example, individuals report lower moods, threatened needs, and register physiological r...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the Editors
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1 The Social Outcast An Overview
• I Theoretical Foundations
• II Deep Roots of Exclusion: Neuropsychological Substrates of Isolation and Exclusion
• III Individual and Population Differences and the Impact of Social Exclusion and Bullying
• IV Influences of Rejection on Emotion, Perception, and Cognition
• V Effects of Social Exclusion on Pro- and Anti-Social Behavior
• Author Index
• Subject Index