Rejection In Social Psychology

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When social media first started to become a widespread trend across the world, new ideas of what it meant to be socially involved were created. This lead to dozens of new outlets for the general public to become engaged in, leading to new and flashy trends that further diversified how social media played a part in our everyday lives. The humble beginnings of social media can be traced to sites like Friendster or Myspace which then evolved into Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, et cetera. From here, the terms “posting”, “tweeting”, “snapping” and such became common vernacular around the United States and even the world. With the ever-looming social media now becoming a social norm in our society people now look towards it as a …show more content…

Numerous amounts of research have been done on the subject, showing that rejection can cause many different internal and external reactions from an individual. First and foremost, there needs to be a distinction made between being rejected and being ignored. Individuals who are rejected primarily focus on what they should not have done during the time that they were rejected. Individuals who are ignored think more about actions that they should have done during that time (Molden et al., 2009). This is important in understanding the thought processes of some individuals when these actions occur and to note the difference between rejection and ignorance. But how does exclusion itself affect the individual? First, Social rejection is associated with a pain response in the somatosensory cortex area of brain (Kross et al., 2011). This makes it share the same response that a human would have for physical pain. Rejection is also correlated with dehumanization of an individual, meaning that when someone gets rejected by another than that individual is more likely to rate not only the rejecter, but himself/herself, in a more dehumanizing light (Bastian & Haslam, 2010). Aggression levels increase when an individual is socially rejected too; even towards people who were neutrally involved with the rejection act itself (Twenge, Baumeister, & Stucke, 2001). Rejection doesn’t entirely stimulate negative behaviors or feelings. Rejection has been shown to motivate an individual to interpersonally reconnect with another individual. Where being rejected by an individual causes the rejected to seek out others that have not rejected him/her and makes him/her nicer/friendlier towards these people (Maner, DeWall, Baumeister, Schaller, 2007). Also, rejection emotions are based off the social normative of the situation. Individuals are less likely to experience rejected feelings if the rejecters’ social norm does not match

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