- Title
- All alone with sweaty palms — physiological arousal and ostracism
- Creator
- Kelly, Michelle; McDonald, Skye; Rushby, Jacqueline
- Relation
- International Journal of Psychophysiology Vol. 83, Issue 3, p. 309-314
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2011.11.008
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2012
- Description
- Social exclusion, or ostracism, is universally perceived as a negative emotional experience and often leads to poor social outcomes for individuals and society. Although the experience of distress associated with being ostracized is innate, there has been very little investigation of the effects on the autonomic nervous system. This study provides objective evidence for the effects of ostracism on arousal (examined with skin conductance levels) while participants played an internet ball-tossing game (Cyberball). Forty-two healthy undergraduate students participated in both inclusion and ostracism conditions. When participants were included, there was a marked decrement in arousal over the course of the task, whereas there was no evidence of habituation when participants were ostracized. The implications of these results are discussed in terms of the potential of differential autonomic activity to predict the coping strategies that people engage in following ostracism.
- Subject
- cyberball; ostracism; social exclusion; skin conductance; autonomic arousal; physiological indices
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1389698
- Identifier
- uon:32916
- Identifier
- ISSN:0167-8760
- Rights
- © 2012. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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