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The Effect of Social Closeness on Reactions to Social Rejection

Burke, Kathleen D
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1405948299

Abstract Details

2014, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Psychology.
There has been a debate in the rejection literature about whether social exclusion causes hurt feelings or instead a numbing of emotion. Paralleling this dispute, there have also been mixed findings on whether social exclusion affects self-esteem. This study attempted to discern whether the severity of social rejection causes emotional numbing. Severity was manipulated by having participants interact for 0 or 15 minutes with a group before being rejected by them. It was predicted that social exclusion after a longer period of interaction would be more severe than social exclusion after a shorter interaction. This greater severity of reaction to exclusion was hypothesized to lead to emotional numbing. It was also hypothesized that the rejection feedback would elicit self-presentational concerns, such that explicit self-esteem would be affected by the rejection, but implicit self-esteem would. The present study tests these two hypotheses. The results did not provide support for either the numbing hypothesis or the self-presentation hypothesis. Instead, participants showed increased hurt feelings after rejection compared to those who were not rejected, irrespective of the duration of the interaction that took place prior to the rejection manipulation. There was no effect of the manipulation on explicit self-esteem as expected, but there was also no effect on implicit self-esteem. Implications for social exclusion’s effects on hurt feelings and self-esteem are discussed.
Baldwin Way (Advisor)
Jennifer Crocker (Committee Member)
Lisa Libby (Committee Member)
36 p.
Social Psychology
Closeness, Rejection

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Burke, K. D. (2014). The Effect of Social Closeness on Reactions to Social Rejection [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1405948299

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Burke, Kathleen. The Effect of Social Closeness on Reactions to Social Rejection. 2014. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1405948299.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Burke, Kathleen. "The Effect of Social Closeness on Reactions to Social Rejection." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1405948299

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1405948299
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.