A Competitor Smells Fishy but a Friend Smells Rosy: Social Identity Influences Psychological Well-Being During One-Person Social Exclusion

DOI

10.2991/978-2-494069-31-2_391How to use a DOI?

Keywords

ostracism; psychological well-being; social identity; culture; cyberball

Abstract

Ostracism is a painful experience due to exclusion and ignorance by others. Previous research had established that experiencing one-person exclusion had the same detrimental effect on individuals’ sense of belongingness as the two-person exclusion (Chernyak & Zayas, 2010). In other words, including one inclusive person in social interactions did not buffer the negative consequence of social rejection by another person. However, this effect might depend on the identity of the inclusive individual. In the current study, the social identity of the inclusive individual (a friend, a stranger, and a competitor) was manipulated, and the threatened needs were measured using a four-item inventory created by Williams et al. (2000). In addition, Chinese and American participants were recruited to examine the effect of cultural identity (as part of social identity) on people’s psychological well-being when an inclusive person was present. A total of 118 college students (62 Chinese and 56 Americans; M_age = 20.08, SD = .15) were recruited to complete a cyber ball game online and were randomly assigned to each of the three experimental groups (competitor, stranger, and friend). Results showed a Culture (2) * Identity (3) interaction. Specifically, when the inclusive individual was an ingroup member (a friend), the one-inclusive person buffered the negative consequence of social rejection by another person. However, if the inclusive individual was an outgroup member (a stranger and a competitor), the protecting effect diminished. In addition, compared to an inclusive stranger, an inclusive competitor was even worse for people regrading their feelings of belonging and overall well-being ratings. However, this main effect also depended on the participants’ cultural backgrounds. The buffering effect of an inclusive friend was stronger for the Chinese participants than for the American participants. These findings indicated that the social identity of the includer might be crucial in the one-person social exclusion situation.

Copyright

© 2022 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Weiyu Yang
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/12/29
TI  - A Competitor Smells Fishy but a Friend Smells Rosy: Social Identity Influences Psychological Well-Being During One-Person Social Exclusion
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 6th International Seminar on Education, Management and Social Sciences (ISEMSS 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 3321
EP  - 3328
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-494069-31-2_391
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-494069-31-2_391
ID  - Yang2022
ER  -