by Emillie Erum, General Contributor A 2017 study by Dr. Mark Fenske, Dr. Pat Barclay, and Rachel Driscoll at the University of Guelph shows that social rejection can cause individuals to change their behaviours appropriately. This is due to the specific brain pathways responsible for physical pain awareness are also activated during social pain caused by social rejection. Researchers sought to explore how individuals learn from negative social experiences and the behavioural changes that follow them. 161 undergraduate students at the University of Guelph participated in an online interactive ball-tossing game called Cyberball. This game included a social version where students choose to throw a ball between two other stimulated players, and a non-social version where students threw the ball into one of two pipes. The balls were either virtually returned or withheld in each version from the students to imitate fair-play or rejection. The social version gave the option for the student to throw the ball to either Jenny or Paul, who were assumed to be real players in a separate room. The non-social version gave the option to throw the ball into pipe 1 or 2. Additionally, students were motivated to participate with class credit or with $10 per hour. Within each eight-minute Cyberball game, out of 115 throws, the first 10 and last 10 were recorded. Researchers were interested in comparing game version and an increase or decrease in throwing behaviour relevant to time. "The unpleasant aspects of pain can therefore be understood as providing a motivational signal to respond to the source of pain in an adaptive way [...] stopping or altering the behaviour.” (Driscoll et al., 2017)
Results also suggest that students reported more negative feelings towards the rejecting player and more positive feelings towards the fair player in the social version. This decrease in throwing behaviour to the rejecting player represent that social pain from social rejection causes changes in behaviour. Future research should consider the presenting limitations. For instance, students may have changed their throwing behaviours in order to “fix” the uneven number of ball tosses that they were receiving from each of the different players/pipes. Researchers should also attempt to make social cues more obvious as it was not present in our non-social version of Cyberball. Acknowledging these limitations does not ignore that the results are ultimately consistent with the initial hypothesis of the study. Additionally, throwing behaviour in the social version changed overtime to avoid the rejecting player, whereas no change was observed in the non-social condition. Therefore, social pain should motivate people to stop the behaviours that lead to social exclusion. Emillie is an undergraduate student at the University of Guelph. Do you want to highlight a concept in psychology through a blogpost? Make sure you fill out our submission form and send it back to us by email so we can showcase your ideas! Reference
Driscoll, R.L., Barclay, P. & Fenske, M.J. (2017). To be spurned no more: The affective and behavioral consequences of social and nonsocial rejection. Psychon Bull Rev 24, 566–573. https://doi- org.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/10.3758/s13423-016-1114-6
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