Work, Design and Team process: Ostracism

Ostracism

Introduction

Belonging is a fundamental requirement for security, reproductive success, and mental health. The past decade has witnessed a proliferation of research interest on what happens when the person does not belong, through acts of ostracism, social exclusion, and rejection.

Ostracism = ignoring and excluding employee or groups by employees or groups.

Rejection = an explicit declaration that an employee or group is not wanted.

Social exclusion = being kept apart from other employees.

Aggression = intention to harm other employees.

School violence is on the consequences of being ostracized, either intentionally or unintentionally. But what would drive an individual, or a group, to violate all laws of instinctual human survival to carry out these most heinous and violent acts? Ostracism and other forms of social exclusion often leads to changes in behavior that are likely to garner social approval and increase the likelihood of social acceptance and inclusion. Furthermore, there is also a link between being a target for ostracism and targeting other for facts of violence. Ostracism can lead to such a strong desire to belong, to be liked by someone, perhaps anyone, that employees’ ability to discriminate good from bad may be impaired to the point that they become attracted to any group that will have them, even cult and extremist groups. It appears that ostracism is pervasive and powerful.

In the past decade research was on social psychology on ostracism, social exclusion, and rejection. At this moment there is a tradition in developmental psychology on peer rejection and includes the themes of bullying, relational, and indirect forms of aggression. However, most of the research in this article deals with the effect of being excluded or ostracized. Future research should focus on the motives and factors that predict when individuals and groups will choose to ostracize others.

Definitions

Ostracism - being ignored and excluded, and it often occurs without excessive explanation or explicit negative attention.

Ostracism is often operationalized as a process that is characterized as an unfolding sequence of responses endured while being ignored and excluded.

Social exclusion - being not included, lonely, or isolated, with or without explicit declarations of dislike.

Rejection - a declaration by an individual or group that they do not (or no longer) want to interact or be in the company of the individual. Rejection occurs after interaction and separation.

Those terms are used interchangeably in this research.

An evolutionary perspective?

Since ostracism has been observed in most social species and across time and cultures, it is proper to use an evolutionary perspective on its function and existence.

The research reviewed below supports such strong immediate reactions to even the most minimal forms of ostracism.

Paradigms and manipulations of ostracism, social exclusion, and rejection

Ball tossing

Participants (two confederates and one actual participant) are told to wait quietly for the experimenter’s return, at which point the experiment will begin. One of the confederates notices a ball and starts to toss it around. Once each person has had a chance to catch and throw a few times, participants randomly assigned to the ostracism condition are ignored from that moment. The two confederates continue playing enthusiastically for another four minutes. Those participants continue to receive the ball approximately one-third of the time.

Cyberball = via a virtual ball-tossing paradigm ostracism can be manipulated.

Researchers inform participants over the computer that the study involves the effects of mental visualization on a subsequent task, and that a game, Cyberball, has been found to work well in exercising their mental visualization skills. Participants are told they are playing with two (sometimes three) others who connected over the Internet (or Intranet) and that it does not matter who throws or catches, but rather that they use the animated ball-toss game to assist them in visualizing the other players, the setting, the temperature, and so on. This cover story, like the emergent game in the ball-tossing paradigm, is meant to assure participants that not getting the ball has no detrimental effects on their performance in the experiment.

As in ball tossing, ostracized participants receive the ball substantially less than did the included participants, usually getting only one or two tosses near the beginning of the game. Typically, the game proceeds 10 minutes or so.

Life alone

This is a personality test, in which participants respond to a personality questionnaire, receive accurate introversion/extraversion feedback, and are randomly assigned to one of three additional forms of feedback:

- the accepted/high-belonging condition: participants are told that they are the type who has rewarding relationships throughout life; that they will have a long and stable marriage, and have lifelong friendships with people who care about them.

- rejected/low-belonging condition: participants are told that they are the type who will end up alone later in life; that although they have friends and relationships now, by the time they are in their mid-20s most of these will disappear. They may have multiple marriages, but none of them will last, and they will end up being alone later in life.

- accident-prone condition participants are told they will endure a lifetime of accidents and injuries.

Get Acquainted

Participant are given examples of topics to discuss and take turn talking within the group setting. After this discussion, they are separated and asked to vote for the individual from the group with whom they would most likely to work. After that, some participant get feedback that either everyone wanted to work with them (inclusion) or that no one wanted to work with them (rejection).

Other paradigms

Several other ostracism, social exclusion and rejection paradigms have been used with less frequency. Ostracism, social exclusion and/or rejection have been manipulated within the context of a continuous public goods dilemma game, chat rooms, face-to-face conversations, cell phone text messaging, role playing, reliving or imagining rejection experiences, scenario descriptions of rejection and social exclusion, and a variety of virtual reality worlds.

Theories of ostracism, social exclusion, and rejection

There are currently three major theories that attempt to explain and predict the impact and consequences of ostracism, social exclusion, and rejection.

A temporal examination of responses to ostracism

There are automatic reflexive responses to ostracism that are followed by more deliberative reflective reactions. The following is the sequence in which it will occur:

-reflexive painful response to any form of ostracism, unmitigated by situational or individual difference factors

-threats to the need for belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence, and increases in sadness and anger

-a reflective stage that is responsive to cognitive appraisals of the situation, the sources of ostracism, the reasons for ostracism, and predisposing inclinations that reflect individual differences residing within the target of ostracism, all of which guide the individual to fortify the most threatened needs.

The social monitoring system and sociometer theory

This perspective focus primarily on how ostracism, social exclusion, and rejection thwart the need to belong, in particular, and how a psychological system – the social monitoring system – helps regulate optimal levels of belongingness. This approach is consistent with the sociometer theory, which assets that self-esteem is a gauge of relational valuation that, when low, signals the individual that changes must be made to improve inclusionary status.

Cognitive deconstruction and self-regulation impairment

The blow of social exclusion is much like the blow of a blunt instrument, and it causes a temporary state of cognitive deconstruction, much like the affectively flat stage that precedes suicide attempts. Consistent with this explanation of cognitive impairment is the premise that social exclusion impairs individuals’ ability to self-regulate, which inhibits their ability to utilize the cognitive/motivational resources that are necessary to avoid impulsive acts and to engage in hedonic sacrifice and delayed gratification.

Review of the empirical findings:

There are three stages of responses to ostracism.

1.Reflexive stage: immediate impact of ostracism

Reflexive pain/distress signal is quickly followed by appraisals and coping mechanisms that direct the individual toward thoughts and feelings that alleviate the pain.

Psychological responses and brain activation

-ostracism did not produce a systematic threat response ( a dysfunctional behavioral response that is accompanied by increased blood flow and arterial constriction), but there was evidence for increased blood pressure during ostracism.

-researchers found the rejected/excluded participants to have significant increases in blood pressures and cortisol levels.

-regardless of whether the ostracism was unintentional or intentional, it was associated with increased activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC).

Cortisol is a hormone that is secreted presumably to rally the organism’s efforts to survive and deal effectively with danger.

Self-reported distress levels

-self-esteem reduced, following temporary or remembered instances of rejection and ostracism.

- a sense of belonging, control, and meaningful existence diminishes, following ostracism.

-ostracism increases sadness and anger and lowers levels of belonging, self-esteem, control and meaningful existence.

-a distress pattern that was linearly associated with the amount of ostracism to which the participants were exposed, such that more ostracism was more distressing than less ostracism, which was more distressing than inclusion, which itself was less pleasant than overinclusion.

-ostracism increases reports of hurt feelings and pain. The pain levels are comparable with chronic back pain and even childbirth.

Ostracism-induced distress is resistent to moderation by situational factors or individual differences. In conclusion, the immediate reactions to ostracism are painful and/or distressing and are not moderated by individual differences or situational factors.

2.Reflective stage: responses to ostracism following appraisal

There are four general categories of response to the initial pain and threat of ostracism: fight, flight, freeze, and tend-and-befriend.

Moderation by individual differences on coping responses

Fight. Unless the fact that people have the same needs for acceptance and belonging, important individual differences are common in how people respond to imagined or actual rejection experiences. Individuals who score high on rejection sensitivity (RS) tend to chronically expect rejection, to see it when it may not be happening, and to respond to it hostilely. Men who score highly on RS and who are highly invested in a romantic relationship are more likely to have a propensity for violence in that relationship.

Jealousy is one response by a partner who is rejected in favor of another.

One type of fight response is to derogate those who reject and socially exclude. Although members of all cultures negatively experience exclusion, the reaction to exclusion should be culture-specific.

Trait self-esteem plays an important role on derogation responses to rejection.

Flight. Another response associated with scoring high in rejection sensitivity is to avoid interactions where rejection is possible. High scores on rejection sensitivity are correlated with high scores on social avoidance. By avoiding social situations, opportunities for acceptance are simultaneously diminished, as are chances to practice socially appropriate behaviors. Consequently, high-RS individuals who find themselves in social interactions are more likely to behave inappropriately, often hostilely.

Tend-and-befriend. Females were more likely to socially compensate after they had been ostracized, while men engaged in social loafing following ostracism. Furthermore, individuals who were high in need to belong or who were high in loneliness, were more likely to show improvements on memory for social information. And they performed less well on a task that measured accuracy in detecting nonverbal expressions.

Freeze. Once the initial shock and pain of ostracism is experienced, reflected upon, and appraised, it stands to reason that the individual’s personality will moderate the appraisal and subsequent impact of the experience and the amount of time necessary to recover from threat.

Moderation of situational influences on coping with ostracism

Tend-and-befriend. As a response to ostracism, people think, feel and act in ways that will improve their inclusionary status. Individuals will think or doing something that ought to help them to be accepted by others.

Fight. Ostracism reduces prosocial behaviors and increases the derogation of the who was ostracized and also antisocial behaviors to others who may or may not have been the source of ostracism.

Freeze. When fight or flight are dangerous responses one can respond by freeze.

Flight. Ostracized members prefer loneliness over social interaction.

3.Acceptance stage: responses to chronic ostracism

A psychological consequence of being ostracized is depression. Loneliness is accepted even as alienation and isolation.

Why does ostracism lead to aggression?

Ostracism threatens four fundamental needs: the need to belong, to maintain reasonably high self-esteem, to perceive personal control over one’s social environment, and to be recognized as existing in meaningful ways. Belonging and self-esteem are motivators to please others, while control and meaningfulness existence are motivators of aggressive and provocative responses. When control and meaningful existence are threatened, antisocial behavior is more likely to be expected, because antisocial acts achieve control and demand attention.

Summary points:

- ostracizing deviating members makes a group more cohesive and secure.

- for those who are ostracized it is painful and distressing.