Ostracism Disrupts Self-Continuity

Abstract

We conducted six studies to test our hypotheses that ostracism disrupts self-continuity and that self-affirmation counters ostracism’s negative influence on self-continuity. Participants who experienced more ostracism in their daily lives (Study 1), imagined being ostracized (Studies 2 and 5), recalled a past ostracism experience (Studies 3 and 6), and were ostracized in a ball-tossing game (Study 4) reported lower levels of self-continuity than their counterparts. Moreover, neither violations of expectation nor negativity of the experience was sufficient in decreasing self-continuity (Study 5). Finally, self-affirmation weakened the negative effect of ostracism on self-continuity (Study 6). Taken together, our findings provide converging causal evidence for our hypotheses and provide novel insights for the literature on how daily interpersonal interactions influence individuals’ sense of an enduring self. In addition, the moderation of self-affirmation reported in our research indicates an effective approach to diminishing the negative influence of ostracism.

Self-concept clarity lays the foundation for self-continuity: The restorative function of autobiographical memory.

“…Our findings suggest that low or threatened self-concept clarity undermines self-continuity, which in turn may account for the negative health outcomes and behavioral maladjustment. Consistent with this possibility, self-discontinuity is linked to psychological malaise (Chandler & Proulx, 2008; Milligan, 2003; Sadeh & Karniol, 2012; Sedikides, Wildschut, Gaertner, Routledge, & Arndt, 2008), and self-concept clarity and self-continuity are vulnerable to common external factors (Burris & Rempel, 2008; Jiang et al, 2019; Richman et al, 2016; Slotter et al, 2010).…”

“…They are related positively to meaning in life (Bigler, Neimeyer, & Brown, 2001; Landau, Greenberg, Sullivan, Routledge, & Arndt, 2009), good mood (Nezlek & Plesko, 2001; Troll & Skaff, 1997), and indices of psychological health (Ritchie, Sedikides, Wildschut, Arndt, & Gidron, 2011; Usborne & Taylor, 2010). They are also influenced similarly by ostracism (Ayduk, Gyurak, & Luerssen, 2009; Jiang, Chen, & Hou, 2019), relationship break-up (Burris & Rempel, 2008; Slotter, Gardner, & Finkel, 2010), and loneliness (Richman et al, 2016; Van Tilburg, Sedikides, Wildschut, & Vingerhoets, 2019). Finally, both self-concept clarity (Crocetti, Rubini, & Meeus, 2008; Schwartz et al, 2011) and self-continuity (Chandler & Lalonde, 1995; Neisser, 1988) have been considered foundations of identity (i.e., viewing the self as the same person in the midst of contextual or life changes; Gregg & Sedikides, 2018; Gregg, Sedikides, & Gebauer, 2011).…”

The causal role of the bilateral ventrolateral prefrontal cortices on emotion regulation of social feedback

“…These aberrant social memories would dampen people's willingness to engage in social interactions, and even trigger a range of psychiatric symptoms such as social withdrawal and social anhedonia (see Porcelli et al, 2019 and Weightman, Air, & Baune, 2014 for reviews). By demonstrating the mnemonic effect of reappraisal, we propose that reappraisal training is a promising way to lessen the detrimental effect of aberrant social memory on people's social cognition and behaviors (Chen, Poon, DeWall, & Jiang, 2020; Frank et al, 2014; Jiang, Chen, Wang, & Hou, 2021), especially for those who are hypersensitive to social loss (Hsu & Jarcho, 2021), or insensitive to social gain (Zhang et al, 2020).…”

Awe fosters global self-continuity: The mediating effect of global processing and narrative.

“…Some people are more prone to experience awe than others or they experience it more frequently. Compared with state, a trait is longer-lived, less continuous, and manifested in a more even way across time (Jiang et al, 2021; Sedikides et al, 2019). (Nezlek, 2007) suggested that a trait could be conceptualized as an accumulation of a series of identifiable state episodes (Fridhandler, 1986; Nezlek, 2007; Sedikides et al, 2019).…”