Ostracism and Solitude

Social identity threat in interpersonal relationships: Activating negative stereotypes decreases social approach motivation.

“…On the other hand, people are often highly motivated to reconnect with others when their belongingness is threatened (e.g., because of social exclusion; Wesselmann, Ren, & Williams, 2015;Williams & Nida, 2011). We propose that participants in our studies were not motivated to reconnect with others within the stereotyped domain because first, people who experience repeated threats to their sense of belonging tend to disengage from social relationships to avoid future unpleasant social interactions (Wesselmann, Williams, Ren, & Hales, 2014). As it is likely that young women are repeatedly confronted with negative stereotypes about their math abilities (such as in math classes; Keller, 2007;Keller & Dauenheimer, 2003), social identity threat might reduce, not enhance, their social approach motivation.…”

Person-specific priorities in solitude

“…Following recent work as a guideline (Martinez et al, 2020), we expanded the stimulus set beyond the six functions of solitude experiences in the pilot study. Building on the solitude functions that were documented in the past studies (Long et al, 2003;Nguyen et al, 2017;Ost Mor et al, 2021;Wesselmann et al, 2021), we compiled an initial list of solitude functions including the functions we used in the pilot data (a total of 23 functions were identified. See here for the initial list: https://osf.io/qn5zf/?view_only=117380e83993452f9fb22ee89b9448bd).…”

“…Some studies focused on a particular function of solitude, such as coping with social exclusion (Ren, Wesselmann, & van Beest, 2021;Ren, Wesselmann, & Williams, 2016) or emotion regulation (Nguyen, Ryan, & Deci, 2017). Other studies have attempted to develop a taxonomy for solitude experiences (Long et al, 2003;Ost Mor et al, 2021;Wesselmann et al, 2021) or simply document different types of solitary activities (Hipson, Coplan, Dufour, Wood, & Bowker, 2021). These studies revealed a variety of solitude functions.…”

“…For example, emotion regulation, despite being referred to using different terms (e.g., a way to control stress, Ost Mor et al, 2021;meditation, Hipson et al, 2021) appeared to be an important function of being alone (Nguyen et al, 2018;Wesselmann et al, 2021). Concentration on cognitively demanding tasks (e.g., problem solving) is another commonly documented function of solitude experience (Hipson et al, 2021;Long et al, 2003;Ost Mor et al, 2021;Wesselmann et al, 2021). In addition, a number of other solitude functions were reported by participants such as relaxation, self-reflection and discovery, and autonomy.…”

“…Some perspectives (Burger, 1995; suggest that it varies by the person, such that the key differences in solitude perceptions are due to differences between people. Other perspectives (Long et al, 2003;Ost Mor, Palgi, & Segel-Karpas, 2021;Wesselmann, Williams, Ren, & Hales, 2021) highlight the varieties of functions solitude provides (e.g., relaxation, emotion regulation), such that the key differences in solitude perceptions are due to differences between the specific solitude functions. An open question is what are the relative contributions of these two sources of variance?…”