The Development of a Shared Software Platform for the Scientific Study of Social Exclusion

被排斥的影响——被忽视和排斥，也被称为社会排斥——在过去的二十年里吸引了大量的研究兴趣。研究表明，被排斥是痛苦和痛苦的，并导致各种各样的后果。当一个人被排斥仅仅两分钟时，大脑中与身体疼痛相关的区域就会被激活。被排斥的人会失去归属感、自尊心降低、无助感和存在感被忽视。这些受挫的需求会导致决策失误、抑郁、自我调节能力下降、攻击性增强以及更容易受到社会影响。遭受排斥的幼儿在青春期面临风险；受到排斥的青少年更容易发生危险的性行为和吸毒。研究排斥最广泛使用的研究工具是吉卜林·威廉姆斯博士和他的学生在1998年创建的一个虚拟在线平台。这个免费的程序允许在游戏中对其他“玩家”的包容和排斥进行实验性操作。这些参与者实际上是由实验者设定的，包括参与者或不包括参与者。这个程序也可以用来观察和测试与歧视有关的假设，通过跟踪参与者参与的电脑玩家。这个平台已经被来自心理学几乎所有分支领域的研究人员用来测试假设，以及来自儿科、精神病学、医学和神经科学的研究人员，因为这个软件平台特别适合在fMRI研究中使用。全球有超过20,000名参与者使用该平台参与了研究。目前已有150多篇研究人员利用该平台发表的文章，而且需求还在不断增长。然而，目前的平台在范围和应用上都是有限的，迫切需要升级。目前的计算机程序并不是所有的研究人员都能轻易地使用，也不能在所有的操作系统和网络浏览器上工作，而且可供研究人员选择的变化和操作也是有限的。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，威廉姆斯博士和他的同事将对平台进行实质性升级，以开发该项目的功能。因此，除了其先前的用途之外，新程序将被扩展为一个有用的工具，用于检查社会排斥的群体水平影响，以及其他实验室研究人员要求的许多其他变体。拟议的升级将使计算机程序更容易在多个计算机平台和设备上访问，并更容易创建研究人员感兴趣的变化。目前的需求表明，一个改进的版本将有助于研究人员理解排斥的影响，发现下游的负面后果，并设计有效的干预措施，将有助于功能性应对。总而言之，这一建议为所有对研究排斥感兴趣的学者提供了一套更大的选择，无论是技术上的还是心理上的。

The effect of ostracism -- being ignored and excluded, also known as social exclusion -- has attracted substantial research interest in the last twenty years. Research has shown that being ostracized is painful and distressing, and leads to a variety of consequences. Regions of the brain that are associated with physical pain are activated when an individual is ostracized for as little as two minutes. Ostracized individuals suffer a loss of belonging, lowered self-esteem, a sense of helplessness, and existential invisibility. These thwarted needs lead to poor decision-making, depression, diminished self-regulation, heightened aggression, and greater susceptibility to social influence. Young children who have endured ostracism are at risk in their adolescence; adolescents exposed to ostracism show greater vulnerability to risky sex and drug usage. The most widely used research tool to study ostracism is a virtual online platform created by Dr. Kipling Williams and his students in 1998. This freely available program allows for the experimental manipulation of inclusion and ostracism by the other "players" in the game. These players are actually programmed by the experimenter to include the participant or not. This program can also be used to observe and test hypotheses related to discrimination, by tracking which computerized player the participant engages. This platform has been used test hypotheses by researchers from nearly all subfields of psychology, as well as from pediatrics, psychiatry, medicine, and neuroscience as this software platform is particularly well suited for use in fMRI studies. Well over 20,000 participants have participated in research using the platform worldwide. There are now over 150 published articles by researchers using the platform, and the demand is growing. The current platform, however, is limited in its scope and application, and is in dire need of upgrading. The current computer program is not easily accessible to all researchers, does not work on all operating systems and web browsers, and the options for variations and manipulations available to researchers is limited. With NSF support, Dr. Williams and his colleagues will substantial upgrade the platform to develop the program's functionality. As a result, in addition to its prior uses, the new program will be expanded to become a useful tool for examining group-level effects of social exclusion, as well many other requested variations for use by researchers in other labs. The proposed upgrade will make the computer program easier to access on multiple computer platforms and devices, and easier to create variations of interest to researchers. Current demand suggests that an improved version will aid researchers in understanding the impact of ostracism, discover downstream negative consequences, and devise effective interventions that will aid in functional coping. In sum, this proposal provide all scholars interested in studying ostracism with a larger set of options, both technical and psychological, for doing so.