Social rejection occurs when an individual is deliberately excluded from a social relationship or social interaction.
Social rejection includes interpersonal rejection by peers, romantic rejection, and familial estrangement.
A person can be rejected or shunned by individuals or by groups of people.
Rejection can be either active by bullying, teasing, ridiculing, or passive by ignoring a person, or giving the silent treatment.
Ostracism is also commonly used to denote a process of social exclusion
Some level of social rejection is an inevitable part of life.
Rejection can become a problem when it is prolonged or consistent.
Social rejection is problematic when the relationship is important, or when the individual is highly sensitive to rejection.
Rejection by an entire group of people can have especially negative effects, particularly when it results in social isolation.
Social rejection can lead to adverse psychological consequences such as loneliness, low self-esteem, aggression, depression, feelings of insecurity and a heightened sensitivity to future rejection.
Social rejection may be emotionally painful, because of the social nature of human beings, as well as the essential need for social interaction between other humans.
All humans need to be able to give and receive affection to be psychologically healthy.
People have a strong motivational drive to form and maintain caring interpersonal relationships.
People need both stable relationships and satisfying interactions with the people in those relationships: If either of these two ingredients is missing, people will begin to feel lonely and unhappy.
Rejection is a significant threat, with the majority of human anxieties appear to reflect concerns over social exclusion.
Being a member of a group is also important for social identity, which is a key component of the self-concept.
It is suggested that the main purpose of self-esteem is to monitor social relations and detect social rejection.
Fear of rejection leads to conformity to peer pressure, and compliance to the demands of others.
The need for affiliation and social interaction appears to be particularly strong under stress.
Most children who are rejected by their peers display one or more of the following behavior patterns:
Low rates of prosocial behavior, such as taking turns, sharing High rates of aggressive or disruptive behavior High rates of inattentive, immature, or impulsive behavior High rates of social anxiety
Well-liked children show social understanding and know when and how to join play groups.
Children who are at risk for rejection are more likely to act disruptively, or not joining others.
Aggressive children who are athletic or have good social skills are likely to be accepted by peers.
Such individuals may become leaders in the harassment of less skilled children.
Minority children, children with disabilities, or children who behave oddly may face greater risks of rejection.
Even minor differences among children may lead to rejection or neglect.
Children who are socially inhibited and show signs of insecurity or anxiety are more likely to be rejected.
Rejected children are more likely to be bullied at school and playgrounds.
Peer rejection is usually stable over time, and difficult for children to overcome.
Rejection is more stable, more harmful, and likely to persist after a child transfers to another school, than simple neglect.
Peer groups establish reputational biases that act as stereotypes and influence subsequent social interaction.
Rejected children are likely to have lower self-esteem, and to be at greater risk for internalizing problems like depression.
Some rejected children show aggression rather than depression.
Children with problems are more likely to be rejected, and this rejection then leads to even greater problems for them.
Chronic peer rejection may lead to a negative developmental cycle that worsens with time.
Rejected children are more likely to be bullied and to have fewer friends than popular children.
However some popular children do not have close friends, whereas some rejected children do.
Peer rejection is believed to be less damaging for children with at least one close friend.
An analysis of school shootings find that peer rejection is present in about 87%.of cases: The documented rejection experiences included both acute and chronic rejection and frequently took the form of ostracism, bullying, and romantic rejection.
It is likely that the rejection experiences contributed to the school shootings, other factors were also present, such as depression, poor impulse control, and other psychopathology.
There are programs available for helping children who suffer from social rejection.
Even short-term rejection from strangers can have powerful effects on an individual.
People chosen at random to receive messages of social exclusion became more aggressive, more willing to cheat, less willing to help others, and more likely to pursue short-term over long-term goals.
Rejection appears to lead very rapidly to self-defeating and antisocial behavior.
The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex is active when people are experiencing both physical pain and social pain, in response to social rejection.
fMRI neuroimaging, found that three regions become active when people are exposed to images depicting rejection themes: the posterior cingulate cortex, the parahippocampal gyrus, and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex.
Patients who are high in rejection sensitivity show less activity in the left prefrontal cortex and the right dorsal superior frontal gyrus, which may indicate less ability to regulate emotional responses to rejection.
People who feel bad about themselves are especially vulnerable to social rejection.
Individuals who experience social rejection are better than both accepted and control participants in their ability to discriminate between genuine and fake smiles.
Periods of ostracism has been found to produce significant increases to self-reported levels of anger and sadness, as well as lowering levels of the four needs.
Rejection impairs willpower or self-regulation.
The reflexive stage is the first stage of social rejection and refers to the period immediately after social exclusion has occurred.
Ostracism poses a threat to four fundamental human needs; the need to belong, the need for control in social situations, the need to maintain high levels of self-esteem, and the need to have a sense of a meaningful existence.
When social rejection is related to the individual’s social relationships, the individual’s need for belonging and self-esteem is threatened; when it is not associated with it, it is primarily a threat to a sense of control and meaningful existence.
Social exclusion, whether intentional or unintentional, evokes pain in individuals.
Neurobiological evidence suggests that social exclusion increases the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activation, which is also associated with physiological pain in individuals.
The right ventral prefrontal cortex (RVPFC) is also further activated when individuals find that social rejection is intentional.
The right ventral prefrontal cortex (RVPFC) brain region is associated with the regulation of pain perception, implying that pain perception decreases when individuals understand the source of this social rejection.
People are motivated to remove this rejection pain with behaviors aimed at reducing the likelihood of others ostracising them any further and increasing their inclusionary status.
In the reflective stage of rejection individuals think about and try to cope with social rejection.
When individuals’ self-esteem and sense of belonging are threatened, they will try to integrate more into the group.
Rejected individuals develop more pro-social behaviors, such as helping others and giving gifts.
In contrast, when one’s sense of control and meaning is threatened, they show more antisocial behavior, such as verbal abuse, fighting, etc., to prove they are essential.
Individuals who have been in social rejection for a long time and cannot improve their situation through effective coping move to the third stage, resignation, in which they do not try to change the problem they are facing but choose to accept it.
People in a state of chronic rejection are depressed, self-deprecating and helpless.
Chronic social rejection can significantly impact the physical and psychological health of an individual.
Individuals who were once popular and subsequently experienced a transient ostracization are often able to employ the same skills that led to their initial popularity to bring about a popularity resurgence.
Romantic rejection occurs when a person refuses the romantic advances of another, ignores/avoids or is repulsed by someone who is romantically interested in them, or unilaterally ends an existing relationship.
The state of unrequited love is a common experience in youth, but mutual love becomes more typical as people get older.
Romantic rejection is a painful, emotional experience that appears to trigger a response in the caudate nucleus of the brain, and associated dopamine and cortisol activity.
Romantic rejected individuals experience a range of negative emotions, including frustration, intense anger, jealousy, hate, and eventually, despair and possible long-term major depressive disorder.
Rejection sensitivity is a component of the neurotic personality, with a tendency to feel deep anxiety and humiliation at the slightest rebuff: Simply being made to wait, for example, could be viewed as a rejection and met with extreme anger and hostility.
Individuals sensitive to rejection individuals are reluctant to express opinions, tend to avoid arguments or controversial discussions, are reluctant to make requests or impose on others, are easily hurt by negative feedback from others, and tend to rely too much on familiar others and situations so as to avoid rejection.
Rejection sensitivity is the tendency to overreact to social rejection.
There is an association between rejection sensitivity and neuroticism, there is a likely genetic predisposition.
Rejection sensitive dysphoria is also a common symptom of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, estimated to affect a majority of people with ADHD.
Rejection sensitivity stems from early attachment relationships and parental rejection, and peer rejection is also thought to play a role.
Social rejection has a large effect on a person’s health.
Being socially rejected leads to an increase in levels of anxiety.
The level of depression a person feels as well as the amount they care about their social relationships is directly proportional to the level of rejection they perceive.
Individuals who have been rejected will suffer from more negative emotions and have fewer positive emotions than those who have been accepted or those who were in neutral or control conditions.
The emotional response to rejection has a large effect on physical health: as poor relationships and being more frequently rejected is predictive of mortality.
Also, as long as a decade after a marriage ends, divorced women have higher rates of illness than their non-married or currently married counterparts.
The emotional state and societal stigma from a child’s estrangement may harm the psychological and physical health of the parent for the rest of their life.
The immune system tends to be harmed when a person experiences social rejection.
Both systolic and diastolic blood pressure increase upon imagining a rejection scenario.
Those who are socially rejected have an increased likelihood of suffering from suicide.
Rejection and isolation were found to affect levels of pain following an operation as well as other physical forms of pain.