Social rejection
Furthermore, rejection can be either active by bullying, teasing, or ridiculing, or passive by ignoring a person, or giving the "silent treatment".
[3] The experience of rejection can lead to a number of adverse psychological consequences such as loneliness, low self-esteem, aggression, and depression.
Specifically, fear of rejection leads to conformity to peer pressure (sometimes called normative influence, cf.
[12] Researchers have found that active rejection is more stable, more harmful, and more likely to persist after a child transfers to another school, than simple neglect.
[11] One reason for this is that peer groups establish reputational biases that act as stereotypes and influence subsequent social interaction.
The authors stated that although it is likely that the rejection experiences contributed to the school shootings, other factors were also present, such as depression, poor impulse control, and other psychopathology.
[19] A subsequent experiment, also using fMRI neuroimaging, found that three regions become active when people are exposed to images depicting rejection themes.
A study at Miami University indicated that individuals who recently experienced social rejection were better than both accepted and control participants in their ability to discriminate between genuine and fake smiles.
A common experimental technique is the "ball toss" paradigm, which was developed by Kip Williams and his colleagues at Purdue University.
In the software, the researcher can adjust the order of throwing the balls, the user's avatar, the background, the availability of chat, the introductory message and much other information.
Specifically, people who are rejected are more likely to eat cookies and less likely to drink an unpleasant tasting beverage that they are told is good for them.
[33] Another mainstream research method is the "life alone paradigm", which was first developed by Twenge and other scholars[34] to evoke feelings of rejection by informing subjects of false test results.
Participants in the "rejected" group are told that their test results indicate that they will be alone in the future, regardless of their current state of life.
There he theorises that ostracism can potentially be so harmful that humans have evolved an efficient warning system to immediately detect and respond to it.
[37][38] In the animal kingdom as well as in primitive human societies, ostracism can lead to death due to the lack of protection benefits and access to sufficient food resources from the group.
Previous scholars have used neurobiological methods to find that social exclusion, whether intentional or unintentional, evokes pain in individuals.
[42] Specifically, neurobiological evidence suggests that social exclusion increases the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activation.
Notably, the right ventral prefrontal cortex (RVPFC) is also further activated when individuals find that social rejection is intentional;[43] this brain region is associated with the regulation of pain perception, implying that pain perception decreases when individuals understand the source of this social rejection.
[42] Thus, people are motivated to remove this pain with behaviors aimed at reducing the likelihood of others ostracising them any further and increasing their inclusionary status.
In contrast, when their sense of control and meaning is threatened, they show more antisocial behavior, such as verbal abuse, fighting, etc., to prove they are essential.
[42] When individuals have been in social rejection for a long time and cannot improve their situation through effective coping, they move to the third stage, resignation, in which they do not try to change the problem they are facing but choose to accept it.
[49] Romantic rejection is a painful, emotional experience that appears to trigger a response in the caudate nucleus of the brain, and associated dopamine and cortisol activity.
[50] Subjectively, rejected individuals experience a range of negative emotions, including frustration, intense anger, jealousy, hate, and eventually, despair and possible long-term major depressive disorder.
[51] She suggested that it is a component of the neurotic personality, and that it is a tendency to feel deep anxiety and humiliation at the slightest rebuff.
[55] Rejection sensitive dysphoria, while not a formal diagnosis, is also a common symptom of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, estimated to affect a majority of people with ADHD.
Baumeister and Leary originally suggested that an unsatisfied need to belong would inevitably lead to problems in behavior as well as mental and physical health.
[66] Also, as long as a decade after a marriage ends, divorced women have higher rates of illness than their non-married or currently married counterparts.
[67] In the case of a family estrangement, a core part of the mother's identity may be betrayed by the rejection of an adult child.
[69] The resulting emotional state and societal stigma from the estrangement may harm the psychological and physical health of the parent for the rest of their life.
[74] The study, which took place over nine years, indicated significantly faster rates of low T helper cells, therefore leading to an earlier AIDS diagnosis.
