Abstract
Social exclusion refers to the phenomenon or process that a person is excluded or rejected by a group or other people. It is a kind of negative interpersonal experience. Numerous studies have demonstrated that social exclusion can lead to aggressive behavior. Considering the negative effects of aggressive behavior, it is important to explore how to mitigate the aggression caused by social exclusion. Previous studies have found that attribution bias has a negative effect between social exclusion and aggressive behavior. People were more aggressive when they attributed social exclusion to other people's intentional actions. However, attribution, as a cognitive factor, can be interfered and induced. Some studies have indicated that attribution inducement can affect individual's emotions and behaviors, and promote the positive behavior change of individuals in subsequent tasks. But the field of social exclusion has not paid attention to the positive effects of attribution. Therefore, this study will explore whether positive attribution inducement can alleviate the aggression caused by social exclusion.
In addition, there are many types of social exclusion, such as ostracism, rejection and neglect. Previous studies have shown that different types of social exclusion have different effects on individuals. So far, there are limited studies about the effect of different types of social exclusion on individual reaction. Past research has found that direct and indirect exclusion evoke different motivations, as well as threats to the different fundamental need of individuals. However, such studies have not explored whether different types of social exclusion cause different levels of aggression. It is still not clear whether the aggression caused by direct exclusion and indirect exclusion is different, and whether attribution inducement has the same effect on direct and indirect exclusion.
In this study, rejection and ostracism were selected to represent direct exclusion and indirect exclusion, using 2(exclusion situation: rejection/ostracism, acceptance) × 3(attribution inducement: internal, external, control) two-factor between-subjects design to explore the above issues. Two experiments used network task paradigm and cyberball paradigm to initiate rejection and ostracism respectively. After that, participants were induced by different attributions through different experimental instruction. The last, the research assistant scoring paradigm was used to measure participant's aggression. The results were as follows: (1) Both rejection and ostracism cause aggression, but ostracism cause more aggressiveness that rejection. (2) Attribution inducement had a significant impact on the aggression caused by rejection. After internal attribution inducement of rejected persons, its aggressiveness is significantly lower than the external attribution inducement group and non-attribution inducement group. (3) There was no significant effect of attribution inducement on aggression caused by ostracism.
In summary, the results of this study indicate that attributional inducement has different effects on aggression caused by direct and indirect exclusion. Attributional induction can alleviate the aggression caused by rejection-type direct exclusion, but it fails to alleviate the aggression caused by ostracism-type indirect exclusion. It may be related to the aggression caused by ostracism-type indirect exclusion is stronger than that caused by rejection-type direct exclusion. This study provides some evidences for different types of social exclusion need different alleviate ways.
Key words
social exclusion /
aggression /
attribution inducement /
rejection /
ostracism
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hai-yan zhu.
The effect of attribution inducements on aggression in different types of social exclusion[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2022, 45(4): 960-965
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