Social exclusion impairs distractor suppression but not target enhancement in selective attention

Social exclusion weakens storage capacity and attentional filtering ability in visual working memory

“…The negative effects of being excluded are pervasive, covering mental and physical disorders ( Baumeister et al , 2002 ; Williams and Nida, 2011 ). Much research has explored the relationship between social exclusion and executive functions, and has reported that exclusion impairs response inhibition ( Otten and Jonas, 2013 ), conflict monitoring ( Themanson et al , 2014 ) and interference control ( Cacioppo et al , 2015 ; Xu et al , 2017 ). However, research about the impact of exclusion on working memory (WM), another key component of executive functions ( Diamond, 2013 ), is still lacking.…”

Social exclusion modulates dual mechanisms of cognitive control: Evidence from ERPs

“…Our results are relevant both from a theoretical and practical point of view. At the theoretical level, they extend our understanding of the relationship between social exclusion and cognitive control by partly resolving and reconciling previous controversies regarding social exclusion's influence on cognitive control (Otten & Jonas, ; Sacco et al, ; Xu et al, ), and then clarifying the nature of exclusion's impairment effect on cognitive control (Lurquin et al, ). At the practical level, our results indicate promising directions for designing effective interventions to alleviate the negative consequences of social exclusion, by highlighting the importance of both cognitive ability and motivation.…”

“…These coexisting promotion and hindrance effects (i.e., improved reactive control and impaired proactive control) of social exclusion were consistent with the findings of previous studies (Schmid, Kleiman, & Amodio, ; Xu et al, ; Xu et al, ), and could partly reconcile previous inconsistencies about social exclusion's influence on cognitive control by suggesting the possibility that different studies measured different modes of cognitive control. In support of this idea, studies observing exclusion‐mediated improvement of cognitive control might primarily focus on the reactive control (Bernstein et al, ; Sacco et al, ), whereas studies reporting exclusion‐mediated impairment of cognitive control might study proactive control (Liu et al, ; Xu et al, ). Moreover, these results could also explain the observation of a null group difference at behavioral levels in Experiment 2.…”

“…Thus, this evidence may suggest that exclusion enhances reactive control. On the other hand, Xu et al () reported that in a consistently distractor‐presented visual search task, excluded individuals exerted weaker top‐down distractor inhibition (i.e., smaller distractor‐positivity amplitude) compared to included individuals. Likewise, Liu et al () scaled workplace ostracism and employees' proactive behavior (self‐initiated and future‐oriented action) and found that they were negatively correlated.…”

Social exclusion lowers working memory capacity in gay‐men but not in heterosexual‐men

“…In line with neuroimaging research that showed increased activation of areas involved in executive functioning during social exclusion (Baird, Silver, & Veague, 2010; Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003), several studies have started to investigate the impact of social exclusion on executive functions, providing mixed results. On the one hand, research has provided evidence that social exclusion (vs. inclusion) increases eye‐gaze orientation (Böcklev, Hömke, & Sebanz, 2013; Wilkowski, Robinson, & Friesen, 2009), the ability to recall events (Gardner, Pickett, & Brewer, 2000) and experimental stimuli (Xu et al, 2017). It also increases the ability to categorical perception (Sacco, Wirth, Hugenberg, Chen, & Williams, 2011), the detection of conflict experimental stimuli (Otten & Jonas, 2013) and the capacity to recall social stimuli (Du et al, 2019).…”