تنها با دست های عرق کرده - انگیختگی فیزیولوژیک و طردشدگی

Social exclusion, or ostracism, is universally perceived as a negative emotional experience and often leads to poor social outcomes for individuals and society. Although the experience of distress associated with being ostracized is innate, there has been very little investigation of the effects on the autonomic nervous system. This study provides objective evidence for the effects of ostracism on arousal (examined with skin conductance levels) while participants played an internet ball-tossing game (Cyberball). Forty-two healthy undergraduate students participated in both inclusion and ostracism conditions. When participants were included, there was a marked decrement in arousal over the course of the task, whereas there was no evidence of habituation when participants were ostracized. The implications of these results are discussed in terms of the potential of differential autonomic activity to predict the coping strategies that people engage in following ostracism.

Social exclusion, or ostracism, causes an immediate experience of self-doubt leading to emotional distress. It interferes with one's self-esteem, sense of belonging and even how meaningful existence is perceived to be. Furthermore, it can reduce one's sense of control over a situation and lead to negative mood states (Williams and Sommer, 1997). Ostracism is such a powerful social signal that is believed to be one of the motivations behind mass shootings in high-schools in the United States (Leary et al., 2003). No one is immune to the pain of social exclusion. This phenomenon can be observed in adults, in children, and in the animal kingdom. Ostracism can be experienced when rejected by individuals in one's existing in-group, or when attempting to establish a new social group (Kerr and Levine, 2008). Individuals are so fearful of being socially excluded that they will comply, conform, and even change their appearance in order to manage the impression they give others (Baumeister and Leary, 1995, Maner et al., 2007 and Williams et al., 2000), and ultimately protect their inclusionary status. While a variety of paradigms have been used to examine ostracism in social psychology (e.g. Nezlek et al., 1997 and Pickett et al., 2004) the most commonly used is an online ball throwing game called Cyberball (Williams et al., 2000; also see Williams and Jarvis, 2006). In this computerized task, the participant is invited to play ball with two other players who are also “on-line”. In reality, the other two players are not real, rather they are programmed by the experimenter to ignore the real participant after the initial few throws. Participants view a computer screen which presents either three or four players (one being themself), and they are told that the researcher is interested in ‘the effects of mental visualization on task performance’. The players are animated characters each with a name clearly labeled. When the participant receives the ball they can choose to throw it to any other player by using the mouse to select that player. To increase the reality of the computer generated players, each is programmed to throw the ball after varying intervals to imply different speeds of decision making. Despite the remote, artificial experience of social exclusion that occurs in this internet based computer task, the innate social signals are so powerful that after being ostracized for only a few minutes, participants reported lower scores on the four fundamental needs of belonging, self-esteem, control and meaningful existence ( Williams et al., 2000 and Zadro et al., 2004), as well as changes in mood ( Williams et al., 2000; although not always: see Zadro et al., 2004). In fact, it does not even appear to matter whether the participants believe they are playing with real people or just the computer, being ostracized by a computer hurts just as much as being ostracized by real (or ostensibly real) people ( Zadro et al., 2004). Using Cyberball as a measure of ostracism, the robust nature of this phenomenon has been repeatedly demonstrated. For example, ostracism is just as devastating to those with high self-esteem as it is to those with low (Williams et al., 2000). It is equally affected whether the social exclusion is by a desirable or an undesirable (e.g. Klu Klux Klan) group (Gonsalkorale and Williams, 2007), and is not affected by financial losses or gains associated with gaining the ball (van Beest and Williams, 2006). Evidence from a number of converging sources suggests that the effects of ostracism are grounded in theories of survival (Williams, 2009). In the animal kingdom, weaker members of the group are ostracized to promote the survival of the group, often to the detriment of the ostracized individual (Gruter and Masters, 1986b). In humans, the system for monitoring social exclusion (see Gardner et al., 2005, Leary et al., 1995, Leary et al., 1998 and Pickett et al., 2004) is so sensitive that it is more likely to over detect than under detect social exclusion, even in the presence of early, ambiguous cues (cf. Haselton and Buss, 2000, Haselton and Nettle, 2006 and Williams, 2009). Early detection allows the opportunity to adjust behaviors in an attempt to rejoin the group (Aspinwall and Taylor, 1997 and Williams, 2007). Changes in sympathetic galvanic skin conductance are a biologically and psychologically relevant index of autonomic arousal that is relevant to the exclusion response, although, it has not been used in this way to date. Skin conductance is gaged in terms of either a brief phasic response to a single stimulus [skin conductance response (SCR)] or a slow tonic modulation of sympathetic arousal [skin conductance level (SCL)]. SCL is commonly used as an index of slow adjustments in physiological arousal over time, and decreases are seen during rest or sleep (Malmo, 1959). During simple habituation paradigms, in which participants are presented with a series of repetitive stimuli, SCL shows an initial increase (sensitization) with new or novel stimuli, but rapidly habituates with stimulus repetition (Barry and Sokolov, 1993 and Rushby and Barry, 2007). However, when participants are actively engaged in a task, habituation slows, or does not occur (Barry, 2004 and McDonald et al., 2011). Previous research has examined the autonomic response evoked by an aversive stimulus such as physical pain and found that skin conductance increases (Tursky, 1974). Recent research with Cyberball in adolescent girls has also reported a relation between skin conductance changes in response to ostracism and aggression (Sijtsema et al., 2011) although a detailed examination of the unfolding changes associated with ostracism was not reported. Nor was there a control (non-ostracized condition) provided for comparison. No studies to date have examined these effects in an adult population. The current research aimed to determine the electrophysiological dynamics of social exclusion by measuring SCL1 while adult participants are engaged in the Cyberball task. It was expected that there would be less habituation of SCL when participants were being ostracized (exposed to a social stressor) compared to when they were included in the game. Secondly, the study aimed to establish whether there was an association between self-reported ostracism and physiological markers of social distress using SC. As an improvement on previous research designs that were either between subjects designs (van Beest and Williams, 2006, Williams et al., 2000 and Zadro et al., 2004), or, a within subjects fixed-order design in which participants were always included first (Eisenberger et al., 2003, Eisenberger et al., 2007a, Eisenberger et al., 2007b, Eisenberger et al., 2009 and Sebastian et al., 2010), this study used a within-subjects design with counter-balanced order across participants, with the aim of reducing subject variance and removing any possible order effects.