Abstract and Introduction
Abstract
Ostracism is ubiquitous across the lifespan. From social exclusion on the playground, to romantic rejection, to workplace expulsion, to social disregard for the aged, ostracism threatens a fundamental human need to belong that reflexively elicits social pain and sadness. Older adults may be particularly vulnerable to ostracism because of loss of network members and meaningful societal roles. On the other hand, socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that older adults may be less impacted by ostracism because of an age-related positivity bias. We examined these hypotheses in two independent studies, and tested mechanisms that may account for age differences in the affective experience of ostracism. A study of 18- to 86-year-old participants in the Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences program showed an age-related decrease in the impact of ostracism on needs satisfaction and negative affectivity. A study of 53- to 71-year-old participants in the Chicago Health, Aging, and Social Relations Study (CHASRS) showed that ostracism diminished positive affectivity in younger (<60 years) but not older adults. Age group differences in response to ostracism were consistent with the positivity bias hypothesis, were partly explained by age differences in the impact of physical pain, but were not explained by autonomic nervous system activity, computer experience, or intimate social loss or stressful life experiences.
Introduction
Physical pain can be cutaneous, somatic, or visceral, but regardless of type, a common central pain network is activated (Strigo et al., 2003; Dunckley et al., 2005). Interestingly, the same central pain network that is activated during physical pain has also been implicated in the processing of social pain. Social exclusion (i.e. ostracism), bereavement, negative social comparison, and unfair treatment have each been shown to involve changes in the activity of the periaqueductal gray, thalamus, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (Eisenberger et al., 2004; Lieberman and Eisenberger, 2009; Takahashi et al., 2009. Moreover, the overlapping neural network underlying physical pain and social pain may also share evolutionary origins and survival functions, namely to detect threat to survival from imminent physical dangers or from absence of protective social others, respectively (Eisenberger and Lieberman, 2005).
Social pain can be defined as 'the distressing experience arising from the perception of actual or potential psychological distance from close others or a social group' (Eisenberger and Lieberman, 2005, p. 112). Ostracism, a word that means to ignore and exclude (Williams, 2007), is ubiquitous. Prior research has shown this to be true during the socially sensitive adolescent period (Eisenberger, 2006), but also in adulthood (Williams, 2007). The 'silent treatment' between close social others, workplace expulsion, teasing, being excluded or ignored in social circumstances, and countless other passive or active rejection behaviors, whether enacted for virtuous or malicious reasons, are potent elicitors of social pain (Williams, 2009). A subset of the elderly may be at special risk of exclusion as members of their cohort dwindle and family members grow distant. Moreover, the aged tend to occupy a role-less position in our society, rendering them particularly vulnerable to the pain of exclusion.
With increasing age, however, rejection experiences such as social exclusion and ostracism may have a smaller emotional impact. For instance, relative to young adults, older adults have been shown to express less negative emotionality in response to socially hurtful encounters, and to offer fewer negative appraisals and an increased likelihood of positive appraisals of the source of the hurtful comments (Charles and Carstensen, 2008). More generally, socioemotional selectivity theory posits that aging is associated with a relative advantage of positive over negative information in attention and memory (Mather and Carstensen, 2005).
Experimental approaches to studying ostracism, social exclusion, and rejection have been used since the 1960s, and have proliferated since the mid-1990s. They have largely used behavioral manipulations that involve some element of exclusion and ignoring, and manipulation checks are used to affirm that participants view the situation as such. Although a variety of behavioral manipulations have been employed (with similar patterns of results; see Williams, 2009), one of the most frequent methods employed is Cyberball (Williams et al., 2000; Williams and Jarvis, 2006), a virtual ball toss game that participants play on a computer. Participants believe they are taking part in a mental visualization exercise in which they toss a ball over the Internet with two other players. They see animated characters as proxies for themselves and the other players, and they are instructed that when they have the ball, to click one of the other players to whom they wish to throw the ball. The animated game shows the ball going from one player to another. As a cover story, participants are instructed to mentally visualize the other players, where they are playing, the weather and geography, and so on. They are even told that who gets the ball is unimportant, that all the experimenters are concerned with is that they exercise their mental visualizations. The purpose of this cover story is to makes it clear that not receiving the ball is not a sign of failing the task, so that any detrimental effects of ostracism are simply from not receiving the ball. In fact, the other two players are computer-programmed confederates, and participants are randomly assignment to one of two conditions: an inclusion condition (in which participants are thrown the ball one-third of the time) and an ostracism condition (in which the participant receives the ball only once at the beginning. These manipulations result in strong effect sizes and reported reduction in belongingness, self-esteem, control and meaningful existence. Additionally, they result in reports of pain, anger and sadness (Williams, 2009). The present paper reports the results of two studies that examine the extent to which age moderates affective responses to the social pain of ostracism as experienced in the playing of Cyberball. The second study builds on the first by also examining several candidate explanations for age differences in the affective experience of ostracism.