Ostracism

First Stage: Reflexive Pain

The impact of ostracism on the target follows three stages. During the initial ostracism episode itself, the target feels pain and distress. This pain has been documented by self-reports, pain estimates, and activation of the dorsal anterior cingu-late cortex (dACC), the same region of the brain that is activated when individuals experience physical pain. The ostracized individual then experiences a threat to four fundamental human needs: the need to belong, to maintain a reasonably high self-esteem, to perceive control over his or her environment, and to feel worthy of attention and recognition, also known as meaningful existence. Mood shifts, such as increased anger and sadness, also occur.

Diary research shows that individuals are ostracized about once a day, but many of these instances are relatively minor, such as being ignored by strangers in elevators, and lead to swift recovery. However, when ostracized by important others or by a loved one, recovery is slower and is more distressing for the individual. Nevertheless, the initial pain experienced by any episode of ostracism, regardless of how minor or irrelevant it may seem, appears to be experienced similarly by everyone. Studies have shown that individuals experience the same levels of need threat and distress when ostracized by ingroup members, outgroup members, despised others, even when they know it is being done by a computer. Further, ostracism is similarly painful when one benefits financially from exclusion and when inclusion is costly. Even when one expects to be ostracized in a virtual ball toss game with strangers because the individual's computer is not yet communicating with the other players' computer, distress is experienced. All these findings suggest that detecting ostracism is quick and crude, seemingly bypassing interpretations that would logically lead to easy dismissal. That is, logically, it should be easy to dismiss ostracism by a computer, or by a despised outgroup, but the immediate or reflexive response is still to feel pain.

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