Collaborative Research: The spreading of perceived exclusion

孤独是一个公共卫生问题。那些在社交上感到与他人脱节的人表现出心理和身体健康的下降。他们的行为更反社会或更具攻击性，他们的认知能力和动力也会下降。考虑到被社会隔离的痛苦和伤害，不幸的是，人们经常错误地认为别人是社会排斥的原因，即使他们不是。这项研究旨在确定使人们容易受到或适应错误的排斥观念的因素。它将调查人们对这些社会误解的反应。长期目标是制定干预措施，帮助人们确定他们何时可能错误地认识到排斥，以及如何在导致有害后果之前解决这种误解。这项研究关注的是一种常见但模糊的社会动态：一人排斥。当一个人（排除者）包括另一个人（被排除者）而排除第三个人（被拒绝者）时，这种情况就会发生。这种动态在日常生活中很常见。例如，当一个人（排除者）邀请另一个人（被排除者）参加一个活动，而没有邀请另一个人（被拒绝者）时，可能会发生这种情况。过去的研究表明，尽管被纳入者并没有对被排斥做出贡献，但被拒绝者错误地认为被纳入者有排他性倾向，并可能在未来继续被排斥。这种现象被称为非自愿排除效应。这个项目考察了一个人的排斥，因为它随着时间的推移在自然主义的社会环境中展开。使用多种研究方法和测量（自我报告、行为、认知和神经生理学），实验解决了以下问题：是什么导致了对排斥的错误认知？被拒绝的人如何对待那些被排除在外的人？什么时候被纳入的个人会屈服于社会动态的压力而成为被排斥者？最终，该研究考虑的是，通过训练人们认识到他们的看法可能是错误的，或者通过鼓励那些陷入排他性动态（被包容者）的人采取积极主动的步骤来表明他们是包容的，是否能更好地纠正社会误解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Loneliness is a public health concern. People who feel socially disconnected from others show reductions in psychological and physical well-being. They behave in more antisocial or aggressive ways and they suffer declines in cognitive abilities and motivation. Given the pain and harm of being socially disconnected, it is unfortunate that people often incorrectly perceive others as being the cause of social exclusion even when they are not. This research seeks to identify the factors that make people vulnerable or resilient to false perceptions of exclusion. It will examine people's responses to these social misunderstandings. The long-term goal is to develop interventions that can help people identify when they may be falsely perceiving exclusion and how such misunderstandings can be addressed before they lead to harmful consequences.This research focuses on a common, but ambiguous, social dynamic: one-person exclusion. This unfolds when one person (the excluder) includes another (the included) while excluding a third (the rejected). Such dynamics are very common in everyday life. They may occur, for example, when one person (the excluder) invites another (the included) to an event while not inviting another person (the rejected). Past work shows that although the included has not contributed to the exclusion, the rejected incorrectly perceives the included as having exclusive inclinations and likely to perpetuate exclusion in the future. This phenomenon has been called the involuntary excluder effect. This project examines one-person exclusion as it unfolds in naturalistic social settings over time. Using a variety of research methods and measures (self-report, behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiological), the experiments address questions such as: What gives rise to false perceptions of exclusion? How do rejected persons behave toward those who are included by an excluder? When might included individuals succumb to pressures of the social dynamic and become excluders themselves? Ultimately, the research considers whether social misunderstandings are better corrected by training people to recognize when their perceptions might be faulty or by encouraging those caught in the middle of exclusionary dynamics (the included) to take proactive steps to signal that they are inclusive.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.