Close‐knit ties through thick and thin: Sharing social exclusion and acceptance enhances social bond

Three experiments investigated whether and why sharing experiences of social exclusion or social acceptance with others strengthens social bonds. Participants experienced either social exclusion or social acceptance alongside another co‐participant who either also experienced the same outcome, or experienced a different outcome, as them. Multilevel modeling results showed that participant dyads who shared the experience of social exclusion or social acceptance felt closer to each other than those who experienced different outcomes, and that perceived similarity mediated the effect of shared experiences on social bonds. Interestingly, participants felt closer to one another after having shared social acceptance, more so than when they have shared social exclusion. Implications of the present findings are interpreted in light of theories of social exclusion, shared experiences, and social bonding.     

If you can't join them, beat them: effects of social exclusion on aggressive behavior.

Social exclusion was manipulated by telling people that they would end up alone later in life or that other participants had rejected them. These manipulations caused participants to behave more aggressively. Excluded people issued a more negative job evaluation against someone who insulted them (Experiments 1 and 2). Excluded people also blasted a target with higher levels of aversive noise both when the target had insulted them (Experiment 4) and when the target was a neutral person and no interaction had occurred (Experiment 5). However, excluded people were not more aggressive toward someone who issued praise (Experiment 3). These responseswere specific to social exclusion (as opposed to other misfortunes) and were not mediated by emotion     

Social exclusion and donation behaviour: What conditions motivate the socially excluded to donate?

Previous research has indicated that social exclusion can result in people becoming more focused on themselves than on others, and this may reduce their likelihood of engaging in prosocial behaviour. However, the question of how to promote prosocial behaviour in people who have experienced social exclusion remains. This study comprised two experiments that address this question in the context of donation advertising. Experiment 1 examined participants’ donation intentions after experiencing social exclusion in a ball‐passing game. Experiment 2 followed the same design as Experiment 1, except that real‐life donation behaviour was measured. Consistent with prior findings, our results indicated that those who experienced social exclusion displayed lower donation intentions (Experiment 1) and donated less (Experiment 2) than did those who did not experience social exclusion. However, when those who experienced social exclusion watched advertisements that only portrayed alienated people, they showed as much donation intent as those who did not experience social exclusion (Experiment 1) and ultimately donated more (Experiment 2). These findings indicate that social exclusion may increase an individual's tendency to help others who also are alienated.     

When you don't quite get what you want: psychological and interpersonal consequences of claiming inclusion

People's success or failure to gain inclusion in groups may result from their own actions or the actions of others. Two studies compared the personal and interpersonal consequences of inclusion and exclusion when they resulted from these two processes. People's own failure to "claim" inclusion in a computerized ballgame was equally detrimental for fundamental needs and made people equally unlikely to behave prosocially to group members, as being denied inclusion by others. In contrast, the beneficial effects of inclusion depended on the process with which it was obtained, and meta-perceptions of warmth mediated these differences; people who succeeded to claim inclusion thought their interaction partners liked them less than people who were granted inclusion, and as a result, their fundamental needs were satisfied less, and they behaved less prosocially.     

What do I Think of Others in Relation to Myself? Moral Identity and Moral Inclusion in Explaining Prejudice

The aim of this article is to analyze the effect of moral identity on prejudice in conjunction with moral inclusion/exclusion attitudes. In particular, the hypothesis is that even if high moral identity people tend to be less prejudicial than low moral identity people, this result can be explained with reference to moral inclusion/exclusion attitudes. A questionnaire was distributed to 192 Italian subjects. According to the hypothesis, results show that moral identity is negatively correlated with blatant prejudice, but that this effect is completely mediated by the perception of moral inclusion/exclusion with the other groups. These results suggest that it is not how morally you behave (symbolization), or the relevance you give to moral traits for your identity (internalization), that have an effect on prejudice, but rather it is who you include within the moral community within which moral values apply. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

社会排斥类型对求助行为意愿的影响

从心理需求威胁的视角切入,探讨不同类型的社会排斥对求助行为意愿的影响及其作用机理。两个实验研究的结果表明,相较于被忽略,被拒绝会促使人们在后续困境中产生更高的求助行为意愿。该效应产生的心理机制在于被拒绝会威胁归属需求,被忽略会威胁控制需求,而求助行为本身能够满足人们的归属需求,但同时会降低控制感,因此归属需求和控制需求在社会排斥类型对求助行为意愿的影响中均起着显著的中介作用。     

不同博弈情境下社会排斥对社会决策的影响作用

本研究借助经典的最后通牒博弈范式(UG)和独裁者博弈范式(DG),将回应者/接受者作为研究对象,考察了不同公平条件、平等条件下社会排斥对社会决策的影响作用。实验结果发现:(1)在面对高不公平性的分配方案时,被排斥组比被接纳组更倾向于拒绝接受该分配方案;(2)被排斥组对高不公平性分配方案的满意度要显著低于被接纳组;(3)被排斥组在不平等的博弈(DG)条件下对分配方案的满意度显著低于平等博弈(UG)条件下对分配方案的满意度。本研究结果说明,社会排斥情境下的被试对公平与平等因素更加敏感:在高不公平条件下,被排斥的个体表现出更少的合作互惠行为,甚至不惜放弃自身经济利益,也要惩罚博弈对方的不公平行为;此外,在不平等的博弈条件下,被排斥的个体产生了更多的消极情绪体验。本文的研究结果提高了社会决策研究的生态效度和传统决策模型的预测效度,有利于更加完整透彻地了解社会决策的影响因素。     

Stigma,staring, and discomfort: A novel-stimulus hypothesis

Three experiments were conducted in order to assess the validity of the novel-stimulus hypothesis as an explanation for why people who are physically different (i.e., novel) are avoided. The hypothesis states that avoidance is mediated by conflict over a desire to stare at novel stimuli and a desire to adhere to a norm against staring when the novel stimulus is another person. In the first two field experiments, subjects viewed photographs of novel (handicapped or pregnant) and familiar (physically normal) people under conditions where staring was sanctioned or not. It was found that staring increased with novelty when staring was unobserved (sanctioned); however, the reverse obtained when an observer was present. In the third experiment, subjects interacted with a crippled, pregnant, or physically normal partner. Half of the subjects were first given the opportunity to observe their partner through a one-way mirror. The reduction in stimulus novelty for this group resulted in reduced avoidance. The question of whether such avoidance of the disabled results from feelings of dislike or disgust as previously suggested, or from discomfort created by novelty, is discussed.     

Social reconnection revisited: The effects of social exclusion risk on reciprocity,trust, and general risk-taking

We hypothesize that people at risk of exclusion from groups will engage in actions that can socially reconnect them with others and test the hypothesis in four studies. We show that participants at risk of exclusion reciprocated the behavior of an unknown person (Study 1a) and a potential excluder (Study 1b) more compared to two control groups (people who received a non-social negative feedback and people who were actually excluded). Study 2 replicated the results of Study 1a with trust as the dependent variable. Study 3 showed that people who were at risk of exclusion took less general risk compared with both control groups. These results demonstrate socially adaptive responses of people who are at risk of social exclusion.     

The excluded player in coalition formation

Coalition research generally assumes that people strive to maximize their share of the coalition payoff and that they exclude others from joining a coalition if these others are not needed to obtain the coalition payoff. In two experiments, the authors show that this view is too narrow and that willingness to include such others is dependent on the extent to which people feel that exclusion affects the payoff of the excluded player. This finding was moderated by social value orientations. Proselfs were not affected by the consequences for the excluded players. Prosocials were less willing to exclude others the more harmful were the consequences of exclusion. Results are related to research on social exclusion, the do-no-harm principle, and social value orientations.     

Politeness and memory for the wording of remarks

Three experiments were conducted to examine whether people spontaneously remember the wording used to convey politeness. In all experiments, subjects heard statements varying in politeness that had been made by either a high-status (e.g., a professor) or equal-status (e.g., another student) speaker. Subjects’ incidental memory for these statements was then tested with either a recognition (Experiments 1 and 3) or a recall (Experiment 2) procedure. As expected, there was evidence of significant memory for wording that conveyed politeness, and subjects were more likely to remember forms that were incongruous with the speaker’s status. There was also some evidence that subjects encoded the politeness of a remark even when they were unable to recall the specific remark. The results demonstrate the role of the interpersonal dimension in the processing of language in context.     

Social Exclusion and the Desire to Reconnect

People have a fundamental need to belong that, when satisfied, is linked to a variety of indicators of well‐being. The current article discusses what happens when social relationships go awry, namely through social exclusion. It seeks to resolve discrepancies in the literature by proposing that responses to social exclusion depend primarily on the prospect of social acceptance. When people feel socially excluded, they want to regain acceptance and thus may respond in ways that can help them do so. When the possibility of acceptance is not forthcoming, however, socially excluded people become selfish and antisocial. Evidence for this pattern was found at behavioral, cognitive, and biological levels. The motivation to gain acceptance may drive people to engage in negative health behaviors, such as smoking. Thus, excluded people demonstrate sensitivity to possible social acceptance, but they can exude an air of selfishness and hostility when there is no possibility of satisfying their need to belong.     

Reasoning with uncertain categories

Five experiments investigated how people use categories to make inductions about objects whose categorisation is uncertain. Normatively, they should consider all the categories the object might be in and use a weighted combination of information from all the categories: bet-hedging. The experiments presented people with simple, artificial categories and asked them to make an induction about a new object that was most likely in one category but possibly in another. The results showed that the majority of people focused on the most likely category in making inductions, although there was a group of consistently normative responders who used information from both categories (about 25% of our college population). Across experiments the overall pattern of results suggests that performance in the task is improved not by understanding the underlying principles of bet-hedging but by increasing the likelihood that multiple categories are in working memory at the time of the induction. We discuss implications for improving everyday inductions.     

I need you closer to me: Effects of affiliation goals on perceptions of interpersonal distance

People's perceptions are often distorted in a way that aligns with their desires and goals. We argue that having a goal to affiliate changes the perception of interpersonal distance in a way that may help to fulfil this affiliation goal. As other people are goal‐relevant when having an affiliation goal, we expected that people with affiliation goals would estimate the distance between themselves and another person as smaller than people with no affiliation goals. In two studies, we manipulated affiliation goals by priming participants with affiliation or control words. Our main dependent variable was the estimated interpersonal distance between themselves and the experimenter. Results showed that participants primed with affiliation estimated the interpersonal distance as smaller compared with participants primed with control words. We did not obtain reliable differences between the affiliation and control conditions on other distance and height estimations. Our results suggest that having or not having affiliation goals influences people's perception of the distance between them and other people.     

Deindividualization,Interpersonal Affect and Productivity in Laboratory Task Groups1

In pursuit of efficiency, formal organizations often create deindividualized, uniqueness-depriving environments. The laboratory experiment reported here tests the effects of another's failure to acknowledge one's individuality on interpersonal affect and willingness to help that person. Undergraduate business students were shown a set of bogus ratings representing their task group leader's perceptions of them on 30 personality traits and 10 occupational interests. The ratings indicated that the group leader believed the subject was extremely similar (non-unique) or somewhat similar (unique) to the typical college student. In a highly individualistic culture another's failure to recognize one's uniqueness should be experienced as unwarranted harm and evoke responses mediated by the negative norm of reciprocity. As expected, subjects receiving non-unique feedback volunteered fewer hours to help the group leader perform his or her duties and were less productive when the group leader was believed to benefit from their effort. In spite of these behavioral effects, attitudes toward the leader were not influenced by the uniqueness feedback. After recognizing limits to generalizability, implications for behavior in deindividualized organizations are discussed.     

Financial deprivation selectively shifts moral standards and compromises moral decisions

Previous research suggests people firmly value moral standards. However, research has also shown that various factors can compromise moral behavior. Inspired by the recent financial turmoil, we investigate whether financial deprivation might shift people’s moral standards and consequently compromise their moral decisions. Across one pilot survey and five experiments, we find that people believe financial deprivation should not excuse immoral conduct; yet when people actually experience deprivation they seem to apply their moral standards more leniently. Thus, people who feel deprived tend to cheat more for financial gains and judge deprived moral offenders who cheat for financial gains less harshly. These effects are mediated by shifts in people’s moral standards: beliefs in whether deprivation is an acceptable reason for immorality. The effect of deprivation on immoral conduct diminishes when it is explicit that immoral conduct cannot help alleviate imbalances in deprived actors’ financial states, when financial deprivation seems fair or deserved, and when acting immorally seems unfair.     

The Empathy‐Prospect Model and the Choice to Help1

This paper presents a model of the cognitive processes that precede decisions to help another person. The empathy‐prospect model predicts that potential helpers make decisions in much the same way as decision makers in other contexts do (i.e., they evaluate prospects) and that perceptions of need and the empathic reactions and intentions to help that they generate will be stronger for people observing losses rather than gains. The model also predicts that intentions to help should increase when (a) the predicament is serious, (b) money is not involved, or (c) help entails few costs for the potential altruist. The results from 2 experiments provide clear support for these predictions. The findings suggest that (a) the gains or losses of another person contribute to perceptions of that person's needs and feelings of empathy, (b) empathy is the primary proximal determinant of prosocial motivations, and (c) potential losses that are serious accentuate altruistic reactions.     

Blind justice: Fairness to groups and the do-no-harm principle

People are reluctant to harm some people in order to help others, even when the harm is less than the forgone help (the harm resulting from not acting). The present studies use hypothetical scenarios to argue that these judgments go against what the subjects themselves would take to be the best overall outcome. When the outcomes in question are income gains and losses for two groups of farmers, subjects judge the harm they would not impose through their action to be smaller than the harm they would impose through inaction. Some subjects refuse to reduce cure rates for one group of AIDS patients in order to increase cure rates more for another group, even when group membership was unknowable to anyone, so that, from each patient's point of view, the change would increase the probability of cure. Likewise, they resisted a vaccine that reduced overall mortality in one group but increased deaths from side effects in another group, even when, again, group membership was unknowable. Some people apply a do-no-harm principle to groups without apparent understanding of how such a principle might be justified in terms of its consequences. The capacity for such judgments makes them vulnerable to learning principles that have no justification at all.     

社会排斥情境下自我关注变化的性别差异

本研究关注社会排斥和性别在自我关注程度上的交互作用。结合社会排斥框架下的需求-威胁模型以及性别研究文献, 本研究提出社会排斥会威胁男性的效能需求和女性的关系需求, 并反映在自我关注程度的变化上。本研究进行了4个实验, 前两个实验证实遭遇社会排斥后男性自我关注程度上升, 而女性自我关注程度下降, 后两个实验检验了权力感操控和自我建构操控对于社会排斥影响的干扰作用, 实验结果对相关假设提供了支持。     

Do economic equality and generalized trust inhibit academic dishonesty? Evidence from state-level search-engine queries

What effect does economic inequality have on academic integrity? Using data from search-engine queries made between 2003 and 2011 on Google and state-level measures of income inequality and generalized trust, I found that academically dishonest searches (queries seeking term-paper mills and help with cheating) were more likely to come from states with higher income inequality and lower levels of generalized trust. These relations persisted even when controlling for contextual variables, such as average income and the number of colleges per capita. The relation between income inequality and academic dishonesty was fully mediated by generalized trust. When there is higher economic inequality, people are less likely to view one another as trustworthy. This lower generalized trust, in turn, is associated with a greater prevalence of academic dishonesty. These results might explain previous findings on the effectiveness of honor codes.