Collaborative Research: The spreading of perceived exclusion

孤独症是一个公共卫生问题。 那些感到与他人社会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，认知能力和动机也会下降。 鉴于与社会脱节的痛苦和伤害，不幸的是，人们经常错误地认为他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排斥的错误观念的影响或具有弹性的因素。 它将研究人们对这些社会误解的反应。 长期目标是制定干预措施，帮助人们识别他们何时可能错误地感知排斥，以及如何在导致有害后果之前解决这些误解。这项研究关注一个常见但模糊的社会动态：一个人排斥。当一个人（排斥者）包含另一个人（被包含者）而排除第三个人（被拒绝者）时，这种情况就会出现。 这种动态在日常生活中非常常见。例如，当一个人（排斥者）邀请另一个人（被包含者）参加一个活动，而不邀请另一个人（被拒绝者）时，可能会发生这种情况。 过去的研究表明，尽管被包容者并没有促成排斥，但被排斥者错误地认为被包容者具有排他性倾向，并可能在未来使排斥永久化。 这种现象被称为非自愿排斥效应。 这个项目研究一个人的排斥，因为它随着时间的推移在自然主义的社会环境中展开。 使用各种研究方法和措施（自我报告，行为，认知和神经生理学），实验解决的问题，如：是什么引起了排斥的错误观念？ 被排斥的人如何对待被排斥者包括在内的人？ 什么时候被包容的人会屈服于社会动态的压力，自己成为排斥者？ 最后，该研究考虑了是否通过训练人们认识到他们的感知可能是错误的，或者通过鼓励那些陷入排斥动态的人，（包括）该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响进行评估来支持审查标准。

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.