TY - JOUR
T1 - Social Exclusion and Early-Stage Interpersonal Perception
T2 - Selective Attention to Signs of Acceptance
AU - DeWall, C. Nathan
AU - Maner, Jon K.
AU - Rouby, D. Aaron
PY - 2009/4
Y1 - 2009/4
N2 - Social exclusion can thwart people's powerful need for social belonging. Whereas prior studies have focused primarily on how social exclusion influences complex and cognitively downstream social outcomes (e.g., memory, overt social judgments and behavior), the current research examined basic, early-in-the-cognitive-stream consequences of exclusion. Across 4 experiments, the threat of exclusion increased selective attention to smiling faces, reflecting an attunement to signs of social acceptance. Compared with nonexcluded participants, participants who experienced the threat of exclusion were faster to identify smiling faces within a "crowd" of discrepant faces (Experiment 1), fixated more of their attention on smiling faces in eye-tracking tasks (Experiments 2 and 3), and were slower to disengage their attention from smiling faces in a visual cueing experiment (Experiment 4). These attentional attunements were specific to positive, social targets. Excluded participants did not show heightened attention to faces conveying social disapproval or to positive nonsocial images. The threat of social exclusion motivates people to connect with sources of acceptance, which is manifested not only in "downstream" choices and behaviors but also at the level of basic, early-stage perceptual processing.
AB - Social exclusion can thwart people's powerful need for social belonging. Whereas prior studies have focused primarily on how social exclusion influences complex and cognitively downstream social outcomes (e.g., memory, overt social judgments and behavior), the current research examined basic, early-in-the-cognitive-stream consequences of exclusion. Across 4 experiments, the threat of exclusion increased selective attention to smiling faces, reflecting an attunement to signs of social acceptance. Compared with nonexcluded participants, participants who experienced the threat of exclusion were faster to identify smiling faces within a "crowd" of discrepant faces (Experiment 1), fixated more of their attention on smiling faces in eye-tracking tasks (Experiments 2 and 3), and were slower to disengage their attention from smiling faces in a visual cueing experiment (Experiment 4). These attentional attunements were specific to positive, social targets. Excluded participants did not show heightened attention to faces conveying social disapproval or to positive nonsocial images. The threat of social exclusion motivates people to connect with sources of acceptance, which is manifested not only in "downstream" choices and behaviors but also at the level of basic, early-stage perceptual processing.
KW - affiliation
KW - attention
KW - reconnection
KW - rejection
KW - social exclusion
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=65349169434&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=65349169434&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1037/a0014634
DO - 10.1037/a0014634
M3 - Article
C2 - 19309198
AN - SCOPUS:65349169434
SN - 0022-3514
VL - 96
SP - 729
EP - 741
JO - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
JF - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
IS - 4
ER -