Who gets ostracized? A personality perspective on risk and protective factors of ostracism.

Abstract

Ostracism, excluding and ignoring others, results from a variety of factors. Here, we investigate the effect of personality on the likelihood of becoming a target of ostracism. Theorizing that individuals low in conscientiousness or agreeableness are at risk of getting ostracized, we tested our hypotheses within five pre-registered studies: Four experiments investigating participants' willingness to ostracize targets characterized by different personality traits and a reverse correlation face modelling study where we determined and subsequently validated the stereotypical face of an ostracized person. A survey study within a representative German data panel further corroborated our findings. In line with our hypotheses, persons low in conscientiousness or agreeableness provoke more ostracism intentions (Studies 1, 2, and 4), are more likely to be actually ostracized by others (Study 3), represent the stereotype of an "ostracizable" person (Study 5), and report experiencing more ostracism (Study 6). Effects remained stable even after controlling for likeability of the target (Study 2 and 4). Moreover, being described as negative on one personality dimension could not be compensated by being described as positive on the other (Study 4). In exploratory analyses, we further investigated the effects of openness to experience, neuroticism and extraversion. In sum, we find evidence that personality affects the likelihood of becoming a target of ostracism, and that especially low agreeableness and conscientiousness represent risk factors.

Leaving the Loners Alone: Dispositional Preference for Solitude Evokes Ostracism

“…Notably, people are generally reluctant to ostracize others, indicated by the majority of the responses staying lower than the scale midpoint in both studies (see Figure 2). This reluctance has been observed in past studies that used similar designs (Hales et al, 2016;Rudert et al, 2020). One possible reason for this reluctance could be that inclusion is generally the norm in social interactions (Rudert & Greifeneder, 2016), and people do not deliberately use ostracism unless it is justified (Sommer & Yoon, 2013).…”

“…1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). The ostracism intention items are highly similar to the signals of exclusion (specifically, avoiding and disengaging) summarized in Kerr and Levine (2008) and the items used in past studies (e.g., Rudert et al, 2020;Wirth et al, 2020).…”

Low Self-Control: A Hidden Cause of Loneliness?

“…Hence, people might infer low trustworthiness from self-control failures because they see these failures as a cue that the target individual lacks the natural predisposition to behave prosocially (e.g., being coldhearted and uncaring) or the ability to do so. Both perceptions might elicit ostracism intentions (Rudert et al, 2020). Since low self-control has been associated with both, low prosocial disposition (e.g., agreeableness) and norm violations (DeBono et al, 2011;Stavrova & Kokkoris, 2017), we explored whether low self-control elicits ostracism due to perceptions of a lack of prosocial disposition or inability to follow cultural norms, including norms prohibiting otherharming (e.g., free-riding) behaviors.…”

“…To measure trait-perceived ostracism, we used the Ostracism Short Scale (Rudert et al, 2020). This scale measures the perceived frequency of being ostracized within the previous 2 months and consists of four items (e.g., "Others ignored me"; Cronbach's α = .92) answered on a 7-point scale anchored with "never" (1) to "always" (7).…”

Workplace ostracism, paranoid employees and service performance: a multilevel investigation

“…One can see how employees with high paranoid thoughts may become a burden on accepted social interaction norms, not necessarily because of their performance, but because of the distrust which manifests in suspicious behaviors they show towards others, e.g. monitoring others' activities to find signs of malevolence, or trying to view their personal information (Chan & McAllister, 2014;Rudert et al, 2019). As a result, the experience of interacting with such employees is disturbing enough to cause them to be excluded and ignored, as they represent bad exchange partners (Rudert et al, 2019).…”