We investigated how participants with collectivistic and individualistic orientation cope with social exclusion on a behavioral level. In Studies 1 and 2, we found participants with more individualistic orientation to indicate more antisocial behavioral intentions in response to exclusion than participants with more collectivistic orientation. In a third and fourth study we replicated our findings across cultures: German and US participants indicated more antisocial and avoiding behavioral intentions when excluded compared to Turkish and Indian participants who did not differ in their behavioral intentions between inclusion and exclusion.In Studies 3 and 4, only German and US participants were significantly affected by exclusion, Imagine yourself walking through a park in your neighborhood. Around one of the benches you see a group of people you know from a professional course; you hear them laughing and talking about a social event. You decide to stop and greet them. As you arrive at the group, they stop talking; the conversation fades into an awkward silence. You realize that these people did not want to invite you to the event they were talking about. You are feeling excluded. How will you react in this situation? Angrily, shocked, or friendly?Research shows that a person's reaction to social exclusion may depend on their cultural self-construal: People with a more interdependent self-construal are less affected by negative psychological consequences of social exclusion than people with a more independent selfconstrual (Gardner, Knowles, & Jefferis, 2012;Ren, Wesselmann, & Williams, 2013).Therefore, there is reason to expect differences in how people experience social exclusion. Does this also hold true for behavioral intentions? The present article investigates how people with different self-construal respond to incidents of social exclusion on the level of behavioral intentions.
Immediate and downstream reactions to social exclusionThe need to belong is a fundamental motivation of human nature that has been compared to hunger or thirst (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). A threat to this need can have tremendously painful and stressful outcomes for the individual. The psychological consequence is a decrease in the feelings of belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence (Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000;Zadro, Williams, & Richardson, 2004). In the above example, the immediate reaction is characterized by an initial feeling of being rejected.This first reaction is associated with a physiological alarm system being mobilized in the body: Blood pressure increases (Zadro, 2004) and the anterior cingulated cortex-the neuronal alarm system that is associated with physical pain-is activated (Eisenberger, Liebermann, & Williams, 2003). The urgency of this initial reaction to social exclusion EXCLUSION, IND/COL, AND BEHAVIORAL INTENTIONS 4 indicates the existence of a pre-cognitive warning system . Williams (2007) refers to these reactions as reflexive reactions.In a second step, excluded people try to ...