Collaborative Research: Lessening the Blow of Social Rejection

社会排斥是情绪和身体痛苦的主要原因，它往往导致侵略性报复。例如，对校园暴力负有责任的个人往往有被社会排斥的历史。该项目旨在了解如何最好地减少社会排斥的有害后果。过去的研究把相当大的注意力集中在那些被社会排斥的目标或受害者身上。 对那些参与社会排斥的人的关注要少得多。 已经完成的研究集中在那些为了造成伤害而在社会上拒绝他人的人身上。 然而，大多数日常社会排斥发生的人并不打算伤害他人。 这方面的例子从拒绝社会邀请到拒绝求职者。 在这种情况下，人们往往会纠结于如何最好地减轻被拒绝的打击。 该项目建立在现有研究的基础上，通过调查人们可以使用的特定语言来减少他们对他人的拒绝伤害，以及他们能够在当下使用这种有益语言的条件。具体来说，社会心理学理论和研究已经确定，人们在拒绝他人时会体验到权力提升的感觉，担心自己的声誉，或者两者兼而有之。这个项目研究了这些中心经验如何支持或阻碍人们学习和实施语言原则的能力，这些原则使拒绝在情感上不那么具有破坏性。如果人们能学会以一种最小化伤害感情的方式拒绝，它可能会提供一种防止随后的侵略性报复的途径。该项目借鉴了社会心理学以及通信，游戏设计和计算建模的理论和方法。 主要目的是揭示训练人们在社交拒绝他人时使用伤害最小的语言所需的机制和条件。该项目围绕一组六个行为实验进行组织，这些实验研究了社交拒绝者的经历以及这种经历如何塑造他们拒绝的语言和情感影响。这些研究将语言作为一个干预点，因为研究表明，人们表达了不伤害他人的愿望，但却不知道该说些什么来实现这一目标。该项目考虑了社会拒绝者的两种核心体验，权力和对自己声誉的担忧，是否会阻碍或支持语言的使用，从而减轻拒绝的情感打击。一个预期的效果是，在社交拒绝的时刻专注于自己的社交权力的人，在那一刻不太可能使用有益的语言，并且会努力学习适当的语言。另一个预期的效果是，专注于自己声誉可能受到的影响的人将显示出更强的学习语言的能力，这种语言可以减轻打击，并且在实施这种语言时取得更大的成功。这项研究还旨在揭示社交拒绝者的情感优先权是否会让被拒绝者付出代价。也就是说，社交拒绝者是否会发现，利用有益的语言原则做出回应是一件令人情绪低落的事情，尽管他们知道拒绝会对被拒绝者造成更大的伤害，但他们还是决定不付出努力？该研究计划为本科和研究生阶段的不同学生群体提供培训。结果和干预材料被广泛分发给致力于促进社区发展的组织。许多接触点与科学探究的其他领域，包括通信，游戏设计和计算建模。该项目开发了一个可访问的、由专家支持的培训计划，帮助人们知道该说些什么来减轻他们被社会排斥的打击，以及发展可用作进一步干预点的基本知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Social rejection is a major cause of emotional and physical distress, and it often leads to aggressive retaliation. As one example, individuals who are responsible for school violence often have a history of being socially excluded. This project seeks to understand how best to reduce the harmful consequences of social rejection. Past research has focused considerable attention on those who have been the target or victim of social rejection. Much less attention has been paid to those who engage in social rejection. The research that has been done focuses on those who socially reject others for the purpose of causing harm. Yet, most everyday social rejection occurs by people who do not intend to hurt others. Examples range from those who turn down social invitations to those who reject job candidates for employment. In such cases, people often struggle with how best to soften the blow of their rejection. This project builds on existing research by investigating the specific language that people can use to make their rejection of others hurt less and the conditions under which they are able to use that beneficial language in the moment. Specifically, social psychology theory and research has identified that people experience feelings of elevated power, concern about their reputation, or both in the moment when they are rejecting others. This project examines how those central experiences bolster or hinder people’s ability to learn and implement language principles that make the rejection less emotionally devastating. If people can learn to reject in a way that minimizes hurt feelings, it may offer an avenue to prevent subsequent aggressive retaliation. The project draws on social psychology as well as theories and methods from communications, game design, and computational modeling. The primary aim is to reveal the mechanisms and conditions needed to train people to use the least hurtful language when socially rejecting others.This project is organized around a set of six behavioral experiments that examine the experience of the social rejector and how that experience shapes the language and emotional impact of their rejection. The studies focus on language as a point of intervention because research has shown that people express a desire to not hurt others but feel at a loss about what to say to accomplish that goal. The project considers whether two central experiences of social rejectors, power and concerns about one’s reputation, hinder or bolster the use of language that softens the emotional blow of the rejection. One expected effect is that people who focus on their social power in the moment of social rejection will be less likely to use beneficial language in the moment and will struggle to learn the appropriate language. Another expected effect is that people who focus on how their own reputations may suffer will show enhanced ability to learn the language that softens the blow and greater success at implementing that language in the moment. The research also aims to uncover whether the emotional priorities of the social rejector may come at a cost to the rejected person. That is, do social rejectors find it emotionally draining to craft responses that draw on the beneficial language principles and decide not to put in the effort despite knowing it means the rejection will end up hurting the rejected person more? This research program provides training to a diverse group of students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The results and intervention materials are broadly disseminated to organizations focused on promoting community. Many points of contact are made with other areas of scientific inquiry, including communications, game design, and computational modeling. The project develops an accessible, empirically-supported training program that helps people know what to say to soften the blow of their social rejection as well as develop basic knowledge that could be used as further points of intervention.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.