It’s the thought that counts: The role of hostile cognition in shaping aggressive responses to social exclusion
Open accessAbstract
Prior research has confirmed a casual path between social rejection and aggression, but there has been no clear explanation of why social rejection causes aggression. A series of experiments tested the hypothesis that social exclusion increases the inclination to perceive neutral information as hostile, which has implications for aggression. Compared to accepted and control participants, socially excluded participants were more likely to rate aggressive and ambiguous words as similar (Experiment 1a), to complete word fragments with aggressive words (Experiment 1b), and to rate the ambiguous actions of another person as hostile (Experiments 2-4). This hostile cognitive bias among excluded people was related to their aggressive treatment of others who were not involved in the exclusion experience (Experiments 2 and 3) and others with whom participants had no previous contact (Experiment 4). These findings provide a first step in resolving the mystery of why social exclusion produces aggression.
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Adults make less favorable appraisals of others following negative feedback.
“Researchers have also found that adults make less favorable appraisals of others (5, 9, 10)”
From Development of self-protective biases in response to social evaluative feedback (2017) · cites this paper as [9]
Adults tend to rate accepting peers more favorably, respond to negative feedback by denigrating others, and engage in retaliatory impression updating, consistent with previous work.
“The tendency for adults to rate accepting peers more favorably (36), respond to negative feedback by denigrating others (5, 9, 10), and engage in retaliatory impression updating (11) aligns with previous work.”
From Development of self-protective biases in response to social evaluative feedback (2017) · cites this paper as [9]
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- Authors
- DeWall, C. N., Twenge, J. M., Gitter, S. A., & Baumeister, R. F.
- Affiliations
- University of Kentucky (US)
- San Diego State University (US)
- Florida State University (US)
- Venue
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- Published
- 2009-01
- Volume
- 96
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 45-59
- ISSN
- 0022-3514 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1315
- PMC
- PMC2775524
- OpenAlex
- W2169993812
- Cited by
- 358
- References
- 74
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 27 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 25 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 30 · 2016: 28 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 28 · 2013: 20 · 2012: 17
- FWCI
- 28.61
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (MH-65559)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Keywords
- social exclusion, aggression, social rejection, hostile attribution
- MeSH terms
- Affect, Aggression, Cognition, Emotions, Female, Hostility, Humans, Male, Social Environment, Social Isolation, Social Perception, Students, Thinking
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