The Journal of Social Psychology, 2011, 151(5), 657–661 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
CURRENT PROBLEMS AND RESOLUTIONS Adolescents’ Prosocial Responses to Ostracism: An Experimental Study SARAH M. COYNE Brigham Young University NICOLA GUNDERSEN University of Central Lancashire DAVID A. NELSON LAURA STOCKDALE Brigham Young University
ABSTRACT. Ostracism can lead to strong behavioral responses, including diminished prosocial behavior. To date, experimental research examining this effect has only been conducted with adults. The current study consisted of 40 adolescents, half of whom were experimentally ostracized using the Cyberball paradigm. Participants’ subsequent levels of pronounced prosocial behavior were measured, and personality traits were examined as possible moderators in participant behavioral responses. Results revealed that, compared to controls, ostracized adolescents showed less prosocial behavior, and this was moderated by having an “open” personality. Keywords: ostracism, adolescents, personality, prosocial, social exclusion
OSTRACISM CAN BE AN EXTREMELY painful experience for adolescents and can lead to a number of behavioral responses (see Williams, 2007). One outcome of ostracism is decreased prosocial behavior. Research suggests that ostracized individuals experience a state of cognitive deconstruction or a feeling of “numbness” that may impair their ability to properly evaluate and respond to the
Address correspondence to Sarah M. Coyne, Brigham Young University, School of Family Life, JFSB 2087, Provo, UT 84602, USA;
[email protected] (e-mail). 657
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situation. Accordingly, improper negative responses, such as a decrease in prosocial behavior are likely to occur. (Twenge, Baumeister, Tice, & Stucke, 2001; Twenge, Baumeister, DeWall, Ciarocco, & Bartels, 2007). Responses depend in part on personality; for example, those high in rejection sensitivity (Downey, Lebolt, Rincon, & Freitas, 1998) show heightened levels of hostility to ostracism. Ostracism is particularly common during adolescence, as youth jockey for position and influence within the peer group. One problem with the current ostracism literature is that most studies involving adolescents are anecdotal (like in school shootings) or questionnaire-based. Indeed, though several experimental studies assess anxiety or mood after ostracism (e.g., Sebastian, Blackemore, & Charman, 2009), to our knowledge, no study has examined whether adolescents will respond with diminished levels of prosocial behavior in an experimental setting. Accordingly, the current study will examine adolescent behavioral reactions to experimentally induced ostracism and how personality influences responding. Given that we are measuring short term effects, we would predict that adolescents who are ostracized would immediately show signs of cognitive deconstruction by showing lower levels of prosocial behavior as compared to those who were not ostracized. Method Forty White high school students from a middle-class area in England took part in the study (22 females, 18 males; ages 16 to 17), 20 per condition. Participants were first told a cover story and completed three tasks as described below. Personality Participants completed the IPIP measure of Big 5 personality traits (see Goldberg, 1999). Participants rated items describing themselves on a scale ranging from 1 (very inaccurate) to 5 (very accurate). Reliability for subscales was acceptable (α = .67 to α = .82). Cyberball Half the participants experienced ostracism, and the other half experienced inclusion by using a virtual ball toss computer program called Cyberball (Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000). Participants were led to believe they were playing a game of virtual ball toss with other individuals online, though all tosses were predetermined. Participants in the ostracized group received a few tosses at the beginning, but then were ignored by the other players and did not receive any
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more tosses for the duration. Participants in the control group received one third of the tosses. Prosocial Behavior Participants then completed a competitive reaction time test (Bushman, 1995), a paradigm involving 25 trials that was used to measure prosocial behavior. In each trial, participants believe that they are competing against an opponent to be first to respond to a stimulus. The “winner” of each trial supposedly receives a hypothetical monetary reward, though all outcomes are pre-set by the computer. Before each trial, participants are required to set a monetary award (from 0 to $0.50) that their opponent will receive, should they win the trial. Because we were interested in pronounced levels of prosocial behavior, the outcome variable for subsequent analyses was the amount of times the participant chose the most generous reward ($0.45 or $0.50) for their partner across all 25 trials in the CRT paradigm. This type of measurement is consistent with several studies using the CRT (see Bushman, Ridge, Das, Key, & Busath, 2007). Results The data for prosocial behavior were positively skewed; accordingly, to achieve normality, a square root transformation was applied to the data. An independent samples t-test then revealed that ostracized participants were less prosocial (at the level of a trend), t (31.43) = 1.80, p = .08, d = 0.58; M = 1.11, SD = .93; M = 1.83, SD = 1.53, as measured by high levels of reward. It should be noted that although these results did not reach traditional levels of significance, the two-tailed test was conservative and the effect size is moderate. To assess how personality might have influenced responses after ostracism, we conducted a series of bivariate correlations separately by condition. No personality trait was correlated with prosocial behavior for the control group. However, for the ostracized group only, openness was positively associated with prosocial behavior (r = .56, p < .01). Discussion This study found that ostracized adolescents were less likely (at the level of a trend) to show prosocial behavior than non-ostracized adolescents. When asked to assign a monetary amount to their partner should their partner win the trial, participants who were ostracized were less likely to assign the most profitable amount than included participants. This confirms a growing body of literature involving adults, which shows that prosocial behavior is less likely after ostracism. For
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example, Twenge and colleagues (2007) found that ostracized adults were less likely to donate money to charity, volunteer for future research, and be helpful in a cooperative learning task. Ostracized individuals may temporarily experience a cognitive and emotional “numbness” that interferes with subsequent behavior. As a result, they are less likely to show concern for others and consequently show less prosocial behavior. Personality also appeared to moderate endorsement of particularly high levels of prosocial behavior after ostracism. Specifically, we found that having an “open” personality was related to pronounced levels of prosocial behavior within the group of ostracized individuals. Openness refers not only to having an open mind (Rokeach, 1960), but also to being open to other’s feelings (Rogers, 1961) and experiences (Tellgan, & Atkinson, 1974). Accordingly, it is possible that more “open” adolescents attempted to view things from their “partner’s” perspective, perhaps even speculating why the individual was ignoring them in the game. Being open to their partner’s view may have helped them surmise the motive behind the social exclusion, leading less to a cognitive numbness than those who felt they were being ostracized for no reason. Accordingly, it may be that being open to experience somewhat buffers the negative effects of ostracism, at least in terms of prosocial behavior. AUTHOR NOTES
Sarah M. Coyne is an Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University. Her research interests include media and aggression. Nicola Gundersen recently graduated with a psychology degree and is currently pursuing an educational psychologist doctorate at Tavistock and Portman NHS trust in London, England. David A. Nelson is an Associate Professor at Brigham Young University. His research interests include parenting and relational aggression. Laura Stockdale is currently pursuing a PhD in human development at Loyola University, studying media effects. REFERENCES Bushman, B. J. (1995). Moderating role of trait aggressiveness in the effects of violent media on aggression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 950–960. Bushman, B. J., Ridge, R. D., Das, E., Key, C. W., & Busath, G. M. (2007). When God sanctions killing: Effect of scriptural violence on aggression. Psychological Science, 18, 204–207. Downey, G., Lebolt, A., Rincon, C., & Freitas, A. L. (1998). Rejection sensitivity and children’s interpersonal difficulties. Child Development, 69, 1074–1091. Goldberg, L. R. (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models. In I. Mervielde, I. Deary, F. De Fruyt, & F. Ostendorf (Eds.), Personality psychology in Europe, 7 (pp. 7–28). Tilburg, The Netherlands: Tilburg University Press.
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Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist’s view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin: Boston, MA. Rokeach, M. (1960). The open and closed mind. New York, NY: Basic Books. Sebastian, C., Blakemore, S., & Charman, T. (2009). Reactions to ostracism in adolescents with autism spectrum conditions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 39, 1122–1130. Tellgan, A., & Atkinson, G. (1974). Openness to absorbing and self altering experiences: (Absorption), a trait related to hypnotic susceptibility. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 83, 268–277. Twenge, J. M., Baumeister, R. F., Tice, D. M., & Stucke, T. S. (2001). If you can’t join them, beat them: Effects of social exclusion on aggressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 1058–1069. Twenge, J. M., Baumeister, R. F., DeWall, C. N., Ciarocco, N. J., & Bartels, J. M. (2007). Social exclusion decreases prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 56–66. Williams, K. D. (2007). Ostracism. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 425–452. Williams, K. D., Cheung, C. K. T., & Choi, W. (2000). CyberOstracism: Effects of being ignored over the Internet. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 748–762.
Received February 4, 2010 Accepted June 29, 2010
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