Social Psychology 2_Exclusion and Rejection

Aggression, Violence or Antisocial Behavior?
N.F.L. Player Hernandez Charged With Murder

Evolutionary Theory
Does Evolutionary Theory decree
that men marry younger women
who can procreate?
The Donald and Melania Knauss Trump

Social Psychology 2
Exclusion and Rejection
Higher National Diploma in Psychology
Department of Developmental and Cognitive Psychology
Kumari Karandawala
BA Psychology (Hons) (US)
MSc.(MSSW) In Social Enterprise Management
and International Social Work / Development

Learning Content
• Belongingness as a basic need
• Attraction and Causes
• Rejection
• Effects of Rejection
• Exclusion
• Loneliness
• Romantic Rejection

Belongingness as a Basic Need
Social animals, including non-human ones, survive and
reproduce mainly by way of relationships with others.
-In order to survive it is vital to form and maintain some
relationships
-Forming relationships involves securing acceptance
getting others to feel and think positively about you
-The need to belong  the desire to form and maintain close,
lasting relationships with other individuals

~In our evolutionary past, people and groups who had a strong need
to belong probably fared better than others, allowing us to surmise
that today’s humans are mainly descended from ancestors who had a
strong need to belong (Bowlby, 1969 & others…)~
-Human beings relate to their physical environment by relating to
other people first  we get even our basic food and shelter from
other people, rather than directly from nature
-People who didn’t care about being with other people, probably
didn’t live as well as those who formed strong social networks
-The need to belong helps make people want to form those networks
-To enjoy the benefits of culture, people have to have an inner drive to
connect with other people

~”In the two decades of studying loneliness, I have met many
people who say they have no friends. I have never met anyone
who didn’t want to have any friends.”~ Warren Jones, (1989) SP.
-Everybody needs somebody! Even religious hermits who live
alone in nature, typically rely heavily on one or two people who
visit them regularly and supply much-needed human contact.
-Full deprivation of interpersonal contact is extremely stressful to
everyone

Desperate Measures…
Prisoners in San Quentin who were sentenced to solitary confinement
and no communication with each other resorted to desperate measures
just to achieve some connection with other humans like for instance shouting
Down their toilets so the sound could pass through the pipes into other cells.

In our modern world it is more common for people to rely on the
Internet and social media cites for much of their social life and social
contact.
-The Internet allows people to interact with strangers and feel as
though they can form social connections without much risk for anxiety
-Internet chat rooms (and social media cites) satisfy the need to
belong for some people where they may have intimate conversations
with other people
-Those who suffer from social anxiety or have feelings that society
rejects or stigmatizes (where opening up with people face –to –face is
threatening or even dangerous) find that they can communicate with
strangers under the safe protection of anonymity of the Internet

The “herd instinct”:
-while social animals developed a kind of herd instinct long ago, the
human need to belong goes beyond that
-Human social life is more complicated  individuals may play distinct
roles and have all sorts of specific, individual relationships with other
members of the group
-Monkeys are the animal species most closely related to human beings
have more complex social lives in part because they can understand
relations among others  one monkey can recognize that two other
monkeys have a relationship or that they might form one or that they
are enemies who may be prone to fight against each other
--Human beings do the same 

-One theory proposed is that the driving force behind the evolution of
intelligence and the brain was social: Animals developed larger, smarter
brains in order to keep track of more relationships and more complicated
social networks (Dunbar, 1998).
The need to belong:*
-without this motive, people might just live alone. They would certainly be
willing to abandon a partner as soon as he or she became annoying
-drives people to affiliate, commit, and remain together, and it makes them
reluctant to live alone  people usually form relationships with neighbors
and colleagues
-people are reluctant to let relationships end, even if they do not see any
clear purpose in continuing the relationship

Eg. 1) Workers at a corporation go through a training exercise in which
they meet regularly for a set period of time, the group typically resists
its impending breakup, such as by planning to remain in touch and
even reunions. The group’s purpose will be over and in fact most of
these planned reunions never take place but nobody wants to admit
that the interpersonal connections are coming to an end
2) When people break off a romantic relationship, they usually say
they want to preserve some parts of their intimate connection. “Let’s
be friends” is the common breakup line though in reality most ex-
lovers do not sustain close friendships with each other (Baumeister &
Wotman 1992)  Promising to remain friends is usually just a way to
avoid the reality that a social bond is about to be broken.

Breaking off relationships goes against the basic tendencies of
human nature. We are designed to connect, not to separate,
and even if the relationship is bad, there is a deeply rooted
impulse not to terminate it
-People remain in relationships even with violent, abusive
partners
-variety of theories as to why “women” will stay with men who
humiliate or beat them.
The simplest and broadest explanation is the above theory.

Two Ingredients to Belongingness (What do people want?):
The need to belong has two parts; 1) First people want some kind of regular
social contacts.  not all interactions are equally satisfying (aversive social
contacts such as fighting and arguing)and do not satisfy the need to belong.
Positive, neutral social contacts are better!  like watching TV together, or
meeting up for breakfast
2) People want the stable framework of some ongoing relationship in which
the two people share a mutual concern for each other
-Having only one of these two produces partial satisfaction  though people
who have many encounters with other people but without the relationship
framework are better off than people who are fully isolated. Eg. Toll booth
operators, telemarketers, prostitutes

-Conversely people who have the stable context without the
frequent interactions also suffer from the lack of face-to-face
contact with outside interactions, even while they may treasure
the relationship
Eg. Long-distance relationships or commuter marriages reveal
this pattern partners place great value on the bond they have
with their far-off partner but yearn to spend more time together

People may want to belong but most do not seek out new friends endlessly.
-Most people seem to think that having about 4 -6 close relationships is
enough
-If you have about 5 people who care about you, whose company you enjoy
and with whom you can spend time on a regular basis you probably feel fairly
satisfied with your social life
-If you have fewer than that you may be on the lookout for more but few
people seem eager to have more than 5-6 close friends
-In a survey conducted by Reis (1990), the majority of college students rated
“having a few college friends” as extremely important whereas “having lots of
casual friends” was relatively important.*

Not Belonging is bad for you:
-Death rates from all kinds of diseases are higher among people
without social connections than among those with social connections
-the need to belong is called a need, rather than merely a want  if
people don’t feel they belong, people suffer more than just being
unhappy
-Failure to satisfy the need to belong leads to significant health
problems, up to and including a higher risk of death
-Even short of death, people who are alone in the world have more
physical and mental health problems than people who belong to a
good social network
-Loneliness is hard on the body, impairing its natural powers including
the immune system and its ability to recover from sickness or injury
Belonging to a Group or Organization.*

Attraction and Causes
Ingratiation:
What people actively do to make people like them (Edward E.
Jones, 1964)
-People seem to have an intuitive knowledge of what fosters
attraction and they use that knowledge to get other people to
like them
-People like good-looking, friendly people who are similar to
themselves in important ways, or they like people who are nice
to them

Similarity, Complementarity, Oppositeness
-Unlike the cliché, opposites do not attract very often  birds of a
feather rather end up flocking together and staying together
-Similarity is a common and significant case of attraction people
who want to influence are well aware of this principle and sometimes
they get us to like them by claiming that they are similar to us
-eg of mother who met son on the beach (Green, 2005)
Self-Monitoring:
The ability to change one’s behavior for different situations
-People who are high in self-monitoring seek to maximize each social
situation whereas those low in that trait pay more attention to
permanent connections and feelings rather than fluctuating ones*

Marriage:
-some striking similarities found between marriage partners,
though also a sphere where opposite traits promote attraction
-most spouses similar in many basic respects; husband and wife
tend to have similar intelligence levels. Married partners are
also similar on other dimensions, including physical
attractiveness, education, and socioeconomic status
Matching Hypothesis
-people tend to pair up with others who are equally attractive;
this is especially true among lovers but also true among friends
and occurs in same-sex and in opposite-sex relationships

Why does similarity promote attraction?
-If human beings were naturally selected “for” culture, and we evolved
under conditions of competing cultures, there would be an advantage
to those people who attached themselves strongly to similar others
-People who are drawn more to the different, the exotic, the foreign,
might detach from their group and join another, but this would be
risky as newcomers aren’t trusted as much as long-familiar mates
- Hence people who preferred to form bonds with people very
different from themselves might tend to leave behind fewer
offspring than people who attached themselves to others like
themselves
- The attraction to similar others is probably social rather than
cultural; it is not something that originates with human beings living
in culture, but rather something that originated among animals that
formed into groups to help each other live better

Social Rewards: You make me feel Good
Why do rewards promote liking? Rewards mean getting what you want. Any
organism should learn to like people, places, animals, or things that provide it
with what it wants and needs!
Reinforcement Theory (dominated for two decades) :
People and animals will perform behaviors that have been rewarded more
than other behaviors.
-when applied to the issue of interpersonal attraction, this theory predicted
that people would mainly like others who are rewarding to them- those who
benefit them or make them look good
Two themes of ingratiation research confirms the importance of interpersonal
rewards:
1) A first broad strategy for getting someone to like you is to do favors for
that person favors bring benefits to the recipient and favors will make
the person feel positively toward the person who did the favor
Eg. A man who wants a woman to live him will often do a broad variety of
favors for her; sending her flowers, buying her dinner and gifts
In general favors are good way to promote liking
Limitation: If people feel that the favor is manipulative*

2) Second broad strategy involves praise  most people feel good
when they receive a compliment
-Telling people what you like about them and what you see as their
best traits is a good way to go through life because it reinforces the
traits you approve off and makes people like you
Limitation: if people see the praise as manipulative or insincere they
may discount it
Eg. Guinness Book of Records “Greatest Car Salesman” Joe Girard,
Detroit, MI. earned more than $200K per year selling cars. He would
sell 6 cars on average a day. The secret of his success? = “Finding the
salesman you like, plus the price”
But guess what? Each month Joe sends each of his 13, 000 customers
a postcard in the mail. And the inscription? “I Like you” Joe Girard.*

Tit for Tat: Reciprocity and Liking:
Reciprocity is also important in liking. Having someone like you is
powerful at a deep, gut level. It is hard to resist liking that person in
return  Liking begets liking!
-The power of reciprocal liking seems to be universal. Research across
the world come across the common principle  if someone likes you,
it is hard to resist liking that person in return
Reciprocation can take other forms and imply similarity:
-In non-verbal behavior reciprocity can take the form of mimicking
-in a study by Chartrand & Bargh (1999),participants interacted with a
confederate whom they wanted to like them. Without realizing their
behavior, participants mimicked the confederate’s behavior such as
touching the face and wiggling his/her foot.

-A follow-up study showed that mimicry is
often successful as a means of increasing
Liking.
-Participants talked with a confederate who had been trained to
mimic the participant’s non-verbal behavior. Result: when the
confederate performed the same non-verbal gestures as the
participant, the participant ended up liking the confederate
more.
-Reciprocation of liking may have a hugely powerful effect in
everyday friendships. It’s impact is more of a problem in
romance as the truth is that you can have many friends but only
one relationship (in most cultures!).

Research on one-sided unrequired love has
Confirmed that people are positively attracted
When they learn that someone else likes them
But if they do not want to reciprocate those
Feelings, they soon start to find the other
Person’s attraction to them a burden or
Problem.
-If you found out that someone has a crush
on you, your first reaction would almost
certainly be positive – it is good to be loved.
-But if did not want that person as a partner
Eventually, you would feel uncomfortable
Around him or her.
-Your later reaction is a struggle with guilt
and a search for ways to let the person down
easily.

Theme of humans as cultural animals:
-If people liked those who liked them, this reciprocity would
make people better suited to culture and a network of
relationships
-You are safer and better off among people who like you than
among people who don’t care about one way or the other,
-Putting people first seems to work best when it involves people
who like us and are similar to us.

People seem to develop positive feelings toward someone even if the shared
experiences are bad.
Eg. People who are strangers but who have shared laboratory experiences
and received shock treatment together or people who have shared combat
experiences* together end up liking each other more.
-The effect of familiarity and shared experience goes beyond simple
explanations in terms of conditioning (positive associations)  most likely
that it is rooted in the psyche (evolutionary history)
-A tendency to to grow fond of the familiar would help stamp in the
preference for a stable environment promoting stable social bonds
Last word: imagine the opposite side of the coin. If you always preferred a
stranger to someone you knew, social life would be in constant turmoil? In
contrast, if you automatically grew to like the people you saw regularly, you
would instinctively prefer them to strangers and groups would form and
stabilize easily.

You Again: Mere Exposure
People sometimes likes others based on nothing more than familiarity
 They grow to like people whom they encounter on a regular basis.
Called:
-The Propinquity Effect – being near someone on a regular basis
-Mere Exposure Effect - People come to hold more positive attitudes
than toward novel, unfamiliar ones and thus merely seeing or
encountering something on a regular basis increases liking
-an extension of the MEE is shared experiences. You may meet a
stranger when traveling far away and discover during the conversation
that the two of you attended the same college, came from the same
town or had the same kind of pet. Odds are that you both will be
friendly for the rest of the journey based on the shared experiences.

Seeing people regularly also can have the opposite effect 
The Social Allergy Effect:
-Some people are a pain in the neck and seeing them everyday will not make them
seem like adorable sweethearts. In fact, there is an interesting research pattern
suggesting that a partner’s annoying habits grow more annoying with repeated
exposure
-for example, if you have a slight allergy to cats and you move in with a romantic
partner who owns a cat, your cat allergy is likely to grow more severe as you are
exposed to the cat more frequently.
-Similarly, in the beginning you may be only slightly bothered by how your partner
chews with her mouth open, or picks his toenails while watching TV, or keeps
repeating some stupid phrase such as “like, wow” – but this slight irritation will most
likely grow more bothersome over time. In short familiarity and repeated exposure
can sometimes make bad things worse
In general though, we like those who live near us because we see them frequently.

Looking Good:
~What is beautiful is good~ effect. People assume that physically attractive
people will be superior to others on many other traits such as happiness, sexual
warmth, popularity, intelligence and success.
-Not all good traits are assumed linked to attractiveness  beautiful women and
handsome men are not assumed to be more honest than others
-Good looks can outweigh other factors in attraction. In a research study where
researchers set up a campus dating service to test their various theories about
interpersonal liking, they collected all sorts of information about the students in
the pool and matched them at random and sent them out on dates.
-The researchers favored similarity and reciprocity; they thought people who
were most similar to each other on various attributes would enjoy their dates the
most.

-This was not what happened. The main conclusion was that the
dating partner’s attractiveness was the strongest predictor of how
much people enjoyed the date. The more attractive your partners
was, the better you liked him or her.
-Good looks are valued in many other nonromantic settings as well 
attractive children are more popular among other children than their
less attractive peers, and teachers like them more too. 3-mo old
babies prefer to look at more attractive faces, good looking people do
better in job interviews including for jobs that are not based on looks.
-Modern clothing, Body shape and weight are also components of
attractiveness and sex appeal.

Rejection
Ostracism*:
Defined as being excluded, rejected and ignored by others.
-Modern days practices of Ostracism refer to practices of ignoring,
such as a person who refuses to speak to his or her spouse for a period
of time.**
-However when one is ostracized by people about whom one cares
deeply, or over a long period of time, the impact is almost certainly
considerably worse (Williams, 2001).
- The fact that most people feel bad even after a few minutes of
ostracism attests to the power and importance that the human psyche
attaches to being socially accepted. For eg. To be ostracized for
months at a time by a spouse or parent can be devastating.

Effects of Rejection: Inner Reactions
The inner states that a rise in response to rejection are almost
uniformly negative.
-People who are repeatedly or continually ostracized by others over a
long period of time report a broad variety of problems: pain, illness,
depression, suicidal thought, eating disorders, helplessness,
promiscuity (Williams, 2001)  their self-esteem suffers and they feel
worthless to the point where some say life seems meaningless and
pointless.
Rejection Sensitivity
-defined as a tendency to expect rejection from others and to become
hypersensitive to possible rejection being rejected repeatedly can
cause people to develop expectations that other people will reject
them too.*
-”You hurt my feelings” => usually tied in to the implicit message that
“you don’t care about our relationship” (Leary, Springer et al, 1998).
Rejection almost always involves the sense that the rejecter doesn’t
care about the relationship, so hurt feelings are common.**

The initial reaction to rejection is often closer to numbness as opposed
to a wave of emotional distress.
-Cause possibly rooted in biology: The body reacts to the pain of social
rejection with the same response it uses to physical pain, and severe
pain often deadens the body to all feeling*
The numb or stunned feeling that comes from a strong (and especially
an unexpected) rejection can interfere with normal psychological
functioning.
-Rejection interferes with cognitive processing: simply, rejection makes
people temporarily stupid. They are less effective at processing
complex information such as reasoning (Baumeister et al., 2002).
-Rejection also undermines self-regulation  in the aftermath of
rejection people become more impulsive, more inclined to something
that they will reject later (but that may seem appealing now), For eg.
Rejected people may blow their diets by eating a large cake or a large
serving of ice cream or they may waste a large amount of money.**

The Conflict between social conscience and selfish impulse is an
important theme of social psychology 
- if people enjoy and anticipate social acceptance, then they
mainly resolve the above conflict in favor of doing the proper,
generous, unselfish acts that society approves
-However rejection appears to change how people approach that
conflict making them more prone to favor the selfish impulse.
For eg. Acting in a socially conscientious manner (such as waiting
in line, paying taxes, or refraining from littering) often requires
some degree of effort and sacrifice and those sacrifices are
compensated by the rewards of social acceptance. If people
reject you, you may feel less inclined to make those efforts and
sacrifices.

Rejection makes people start to look for new potential friends, albeit
cautiously  this is a constructive response to rejection which allows
the rejected people to become more attuned to social cues and
information about other people.
-In a study “rejected” participants paid far more close attention to
interpersonal details of dairies that they had been given to read 
Rejected people think they might have a chance to form a bond with
someone or even get back together with the person who rejected
them, they focus their attention on this possibility and think at length
about their possible relationship partners.
-Being able to think about people who love you may shelter you from
the pain of being rejected by someone else --> Participants in another
study who brought along a photograph of someone who loved them
fared better and felt better after being rejected in the lab than did
people who had no photos or had photos of a favorite celebrity *

Effects of Rejection: Behavioral
Exemplary responses to rejection: forming new social bonds
(typically with another person who also has been rejected),
improving intellectual work, and engaging in prosocial behavior.
As per SPs, the reality however is the foll:
-Rejected study participants show decreased intelligence
/cognition and performance on IQ tests tank ,– often drop
substantially.
-Rejected people often treat new interaction partners with
skepticism, aloofness, avoidance or even outright hostility
-Rejected people are typically less generous, less cooperative,
less helpful than others, and they are more willing to cheat or
break rules of good behavior
-They act in shortsighted, impulsive, even self-destructive ways
(Twenge et al., 2002).

Effects of Rejection: School Violence
Repeated experiences of rejection or social exclusion (being left out of
social groups) can create aggressive tendencies
-A study by Gaertner & Iuzzuni (2005) that surveyed high school
students about various groups in their school, such as “jocks”
“potheads” and popular kids. Students reported that they frequently
imagined attacking, beating, shooting and otherwise harming people
in groups that had rejected or humiliated them.
-1990s USA had a breakout of school violence  students took guns
or other weapons to school and killed other students. Some of these
events had specific targets and some seemed more random, such as a
student opening fire in an open cafeteria where some 400 students
were dining where several students died and others were severely
wounded.
A careful investigation of 15 of school violence events revealed:
-a common theme of the students who perpetrated such acts as
feeling socially excluded  at least 13 of the above cases involved
young men going through long and painful experiences of being
rejected by others.

Effects of Rejection
Aggression and rejection are linked in multiple ways
-Aggression can lead to rejection. Eg. Young children tend to
exclude other young children who start fights or engage in
bullying (this exclusion disappears when youngsters reach
adolescence and aggressive adolescents are sometimes accepted
by others),
-In lab studies, students who receive an experience of being
rejected by others tend to show high levels of aggression toward
someone who offends or provokes them – and they are also
more aggressive than average toward neutral people who
haven’t done anything bad to them

Effects of Rejection: Positives
-If the rejected person has some prospect of being accepted
back in the group that rejected him or by a new group then the
rejected person’s behavior is more positive and prosocial.
-If someone comes along and is kind to the rejected person such
as by praising the person or being nice in other ways, the
rejected person may respond favorably, as by refraining from
aggression, cooperating or conforming.
-Rejected people who have a chance to form a new relationship
may engage in positive nonverbal behaviors such as mimicking
the nonverbal behavior or the new person (we know nonverbal
mimicry is a positive behavior that helps people to come to like
each other).

Exclusion = Social Rejection
What is it and what causes it?
-Being rejected or socially excluded is generally painful and harmful. Why do
people inflict such rejection on each other?
Several lines of research:
-Children rejected by their peers for 3 main reasons:
1) Aggressive children are rejected possibly because children do not like
violence and will avoid bullies and others whom they regard as dangerous
2) Some children withdraw from contact with others and they in turn are
rejected by others (the avoidance of withdrawn, isolated children escalates
into adolescence, thereby creating a particular problem for people who move
toward adulthood becoming more and more disconnected from social
groups)
3) Deviance leads to rejection  children who are different in any obvious
fashion are more likely to be rejected. (Children reject others who look
different, act differently, or otherwise seem different. Being handicapped,
belonging to a racial minority,* can cause a child to be rejected by others.
Children do not make a conscious decision to not approve of someone’s
personality or lifestyle. In terms of the duplex mind the reaction against those
who are different is probably automatic, and the rejection process is possibly
rooted in automatic processes.

With adults, rejection is typically as a result of deviance.
-Groups reject others who are different in important or meaningful ways from
the rest of the group  Groups seem to find deviants threatening and they
are more bothered by a nonconformist or a poor performer within the group
than someone outside of the group.  This is evidence of Group Solidarity:
- Someone who is different from your group but is not part of
your group does not threaten the unity of the group.
- In contrast someone who is different to the same degree but
still belongs to your group undermines group unity.
Groups reject insiders more than outsiders for the same degree of deviance.
-Bad performance by a member of your own group is rated more negatively
than an identically bad performance by someone who is not in the ingroup.
-Conversely good performance by a member of the ingroup is rated more
positively than identically good performance b someone outside the ingroup.

Deviance involves breaking the rules. Deviants don’t do what they are expected or
supposed to do.  Groups can only operate successfully if most people follow most of the
rules, most of the time.
Each act of deviance presents some problem or threat to the rest of the group  therefore
they undermine the quality of life for the rest of the group.
Bad Apple Effect:
Defined as the idea that one person who breaks the rules can inspire other people to break
the rules also.  a further reason that groups may reject a deviant.
-Applied to social behavior the implication is that one person who breaks the rules can
inspire other people to follow his or her example. Eg. Stealing.
-Bad apples seem to inspire more copycats than good apples.  People are more easily
swayed to follow the example of deviant behavior than of virtuous, exemplary, or heroic
action.
-If you break the groups’ rules, the group may believe it is best to reject you or expel you,
lest others follow your bad example  the threat of being expelled or rejected does seem
to be an important force in producing good behavior
eg,. When study participants were expelled from a group after they had followed the
example of a bad apple, and then were reinstated, they subsequently behaved much better
and more prosocially than others.
-Even the threat of being expelled is sometimes enough to discourage people from
following bad apples.  an important reason why rejection is so powerful and important in
life. Human groups need people to follow rules and conform to shared values and the
threat of rejection is a strong force encouraging them to do so

Link between rejection and deviance in families:
-A per a large survey the most commonly cited bad behaviors
were seen as justifying expelling someone from the family.
-Most of the behaviors involved violating the basic rules or
expectations that govern how family members are supposed to
treat each other. These included rejection, abandonment,
disloyalty, sexual abuse, becoming (or marrying) a loser or
criminal, and betrayal.

Loneliness
Defined as the painful feeling of wanting more human contact or
connection than you have.
-Stereotype is of a socially inept loser who doesn’t know how to
get along with others, who perhaps has little to offer people and
who has few or no friends and who spends much of the time
alone, perhaps envying other people who have friends or lovers
Research however has shown that there are very few differences
between lonely and nonlonely people. They do not differ in
intelligence or attractiveness. In fact they spend about the same
amount of time interacting with other people. Lonely does not
mean alone. Loneliness is essentially independent of the
quantity of relationships or social interaction.

Loneliness
There are variations in the loneliness that people experience:
Temporary loneliness: when people move to a new place and
are separated from their friends and family. These feelings go
away as soon as people start making friends.
Chronic loneliness: may last for months and years. Lonely
people according to researchers are people who suffer chronic
loneliness that has lasted for a substantial period of time and not
showing signs of letting up.
-Lonely people do not lack social skills but they do fail to use
them as much as others,
-Mainly however, lonely people are poorer at figuring out other
people’s emotional states  this lack of emotional sensitivity
could be either a cause of loneliness (because it makes it harder
to attract and keep friends) or possibly a result or both.

Loneliness
Loneliness is complex. Not simply a matter of finding other people to be
with. Loneliness vs. social acceptance
-Married people on average are less likely to be lonely.
-Being close to home, and closer to familial ties and other forms of social
acceptance is less likely to be lonely
Quantity  LONELINESS Quality
Loneliness originates in a gap between the amount or quality of social
relationships that you have and the amount or quality that you want.
-one might be lonely because one does not have enough contact with others
OR
-because the time one spends with others does not satisfy one’s needs
-in practice, the data suggests that most loneliness stems from a lack of close,
satisfying relationships. Lonely people may spend a length of time chatting
with a large number of friends but still feel lonely. loneliness is rooted in
the quality rather than the quantity of social interaction. (people can be very
lonely in large urban populaces like New York city).

Loneliness: Prevention
-Men have reported less or no loneliness if attached to large groups or
organizations even if they have fewer friends. Women however still
report feeling lonely even if attached to a large organization.
-Other people fight off loneliness by forming quasi-relationships with
animals, like a special bond with a cat or a dog (Some people even
name their cars) and treat them like family members. Eg. The movie -
Castaway where Tom Hanks he created a special friend “Wilson” and
painted a face on the volleyball and spoke to it like a close human
friend. Doing so kept him sane and staved off loneliness.
Finally, if loneliness is not prevented, it takes a toll on one’s body;
lonely people sleep as much as others but the sleep is less refreshing
and they may feel chronically tired. This lack of refreshing sleep
prevents the body from getting the rest it needs and may lower the
immune system.

Romantic Rejection
Usually happens as a result of unrequited lovebasically one person wants someone
for a romantic partners but that person does not share the same feelings and declined
a relationship.
-Failed romances can, occasionally, develop into serious problems such as suicidal
despair or violent stalking.
Attribution Theory to understand the reasons women gave for refusing an offer of
a date
-Attributions sorted along 3 dimensions; internal/external, stable/unstable,
global/specific
-Reasons women privately held for refusing dates tended to be internal to the man,
stable, and global:  there was something seriously wrong with him as she saw it –
internal,
His deficit was viewed as relatively permanent *– stable,
And was viewed as extending to many areas of his life – global.
However, the reasons that women gave men were external (it has nothing to do with
him), unstable (it pertains only to that particular night), and highly specific such as she
couldn’t go out that night because her parents were coming to visit.

Romantic Rejection
-In contrast if she simply said “ I can’t go out with you because you are not very good
looking, you don’t have enough money, you are not smart enough for me, and you
smell bad,” he would probably get the message and be unlikely to ask her out again!
Unrequited love:
- is defined as a situation in which one person loves another but the other does not
return that love.
-Common experience among adolescents and young adults (most single people have
at least one experience a year in which they have a crush on someone who does not
have similar feelings toward them, or conversely, in which they do not reciprocate
someone else’s feelings of romantic attraction toward them
-The two roles are quite different and go with very different types of feelings  Most
men and women have experience in both roles, though men have more experience
being the rejected lovers and women are more often in the rejecting role.
-Rejected lovers experience a kind of emotional roller-coaster in which they alternate
between hopeful, exciting, passionate feelings and insecure despair.  they suffer
intensely and are drawn to the good parts and they tend to look back on failed love
with bittersweet affection.
-In contrast the rejecters tend to think that there was nothing good about the episode
and they are more likely to wish the whole thing had never happened

Romantic Rejection
-Rejection felt as a blow to one’s self-esteem  broken-hearted lovers often
wonder if something is wrong with them or if they did something wrong that
prevented the other person from falling in love with them
-They try to find some way to bolster their self-esteem, such as finding a new
lover.
Stalking:
Defined as persisting in romantic or courtship behavior (eg. Repeated phone calls)
or other behaviors that frighten and harass the rejecter in the relationship
-Women are more often the victims of stalkers even though unrequited love is
something that both genders experience  A National Violence Against Women
(NVAW) survey - showed that mostly women reported being stalked in the
context of current or former romantic partners (marriage, cohabitation or dating)
whereas men rarely reported being stalked in the context of a current or former
romantic relationship
-Male and female victims of stalking reported feeling that their safety was being
threatened and carried weapons to protect themselves far more than non-victims
(45% vs. 29%)
Finding: The sting of unrequired love may lead people rejected people to stalk
their rejecters and this tendency is particularly strong among rejected men.

Romantic Rejection
Rejecters’ perspective: problem is not one of self-esteem, but
guilt.
-Need to belong concept implies that people are designed to
form and maintain relationships, not to reject them  most
people find that refusing someone’s offer of love is difficult.
Hence they feel guilty for hurting the other person and to
minimize feelings of guilt they convince themselves that they
never led the other person on so that the other person’s love
and resultant suffering were not their fault.
-The message of rejection is difficult for both persons. The
rejecter feels guilty and wants to avoid hurting the other
person’s feelings. The person who is about to be rejected is
eager to grasp at straws and seize on any sign of possible
encouragement.

Social Psychology 2_Exclusion and Rejection

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