Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Ostracism involves being ignored and rejected by an individual or group, typically without explanation. Being accepted and valued by others is a fundamental human motivation (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Consequently, ostracism is often a debilitating experience. This experiment was designed to test how a situational variable, namely being a newcomer to a group, can influence recovery from ostracism. Participants were included or ostracized during an online ball-tossing game. They were also led to believe that other participants playing the game were new as well, or that they were joining a group whose members had played before. I hypothesized that being a newcomer would decrease the effects of ostracism over time by providing an explanation for mistreatment. Participants that believed they were newcomers to an existing group were indeed quicker to recover from ostracism's harmful effects than were individuals that did not have this explanation for their ostracism.
Author: Jeffrey J. Flagg
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W658369708