Decision‐makers are resilient in the face of social exclusion

Abstract

A growing body of evidence suggests that social exclusion impairs people's capacity for active deliberation and logical reasoning. Building on this finding and on the postulate from the dual-process theory that analytical thinking is essential in order to make good judgements and decisions, we hypothesized that social exclusion will alter judgement and choice behaviour. We tested this hypothesis in three experiments in which social exclusion was manipulated using the Cyberball paradigm, an online ball-tossing game in which participants either received the ball a fair number of times or were excluded by the other two players. We focused on a range of tasks designed to be sensitive to participants' ability to engage in analytical thinking and careful deliberation, including the cognitive reflection test (Experiment 1) and a set of anchoring, intertemporal preference, disjunction, and confidence tasks (experiments 2 and 3). Our results unanimously failed to support the hypothesis that social exclusion influences people's judgements and decision-making. We discuss the implications of our findings for social exclusion theory.

Seeking Solitude After Being Ostracized: A Replication and Beyond

“…This finding, although notably diverged from the literature, is consistent with those of the original paper (Ren et al, 2016) and a recent failed replication of Maner et al (2007; Sunami et al, 2019b). One possible explanation for the mixed evidence is that ostracized participants may be motivated to establish new social connections, but may also feel reluctant to engage in cognitively demanding tasks (Baumeister et al, 2002 but see Juanchich et al, 2018) such as navigating a social interaction with novel partners. Another possible explanation is that participants’ interest in reconnecting with someone else, which was usually measured as the only option in past research (e.g., Maner et al, 2007), was measured alongside with other options in the current research and in Sunami et al (2019b).…”

Adaptive cooperation in the face of social exclusion

“…We note that our recent results are inconsistent with the very notion that social exclusion leads to a detriment in "intelligent thought" in the context of judgment and decision-making tasks (cf. Juanchich et al, 2018). Excluded participants performed as well in the investment game as included participants, indicating that they were as capable as included participants of marshalling their cognitive resources to make their decisions.…”

“…The participants' mood was measured with the short Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS, 10 items; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) with a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1: Not at all to 5: Completely. Mood was computed by subtracting the average score for the five negative mood items from the average score for the five positive mood items (Juanchich, Walasek, & Sirota, 2018).…”

“…Note that all experiments ended with a debriefing, after which everyone completed a self-esteem boost where they listed their best qualities followed by an assessment of their current mood and self-esteem. This was shown to effectively remedy the negative effect of social exclusion (Juanchich et al, 2018;Walasek, Matthews, & Rakow, 2015). Finally, all participants reported whether they experienced any issues with the Cyberball game and if they had played Cyberball before.…”

Social exclusion influenced intertemporal decision-making and its mechanism

“…断和决策 (Juanchich et al, 2018)。多项研究发现社 会排斥可以影响风险决策, 导致被排斥的个体具 有更多的冒险行为 (Peake et al, 2013), 更高的风 险偏好 (徐四华, 王岑岑, 2019), 在风险决策任务 中表现出风险寻求 (Buelow & Wirth, 2017…”