Abstract

KARMIOLA, Solange; CUENYAA, Lucas  and  MUSTACA, Alba Elisabeth. I understand and feel your pain: emotional effects of vignettes on social exclusion in adults. Acta de investigación psicol [online]. 2019, vol.9, n.1, pp.108-118.  Epub Nov 25, 2019. ISSN 2007-4719.  https://doi.org/10.22201/fpsi.20074719e.2019.1.10.

Humans have a fundamental need to connect socially with others. Being ignored and excluded, Ostracism, rejection and other forms of social exclusion, threatens this need, triggers painful feelings, and elicits a wide range of negative effects. The episodes that individuals register as social exclusion (SE) immediately induce negative effects and decrease the four basic psychological needs (i.e., belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence), decrease the intelligent behavior, decrease self-regulation, change the consumption, increase riskier behaviors, decrease the pain threshold, greater dislike of slightly aversive stimuli, altered heart rhythm, increased blood pressure, increased blood cortisol, digestive disorders and respiratory system, increased temperature in the nasal and perioral area, and decrease in pupillary size and greater activation of brain areas related to sensory pain. Two studies are presented that evaluated whether the immediate emotional effects of social exclusion can be provoked by reading a vignette. Study 1: participants (n = 20) were divided into 4 groups; two read a narration where a child was excluded from a game; in the other one, it was included. Each kind of story varied according to its modality: merely descriptive or including emotional content. The readers answered how they thought the children felt in questionnaires about fundamentals needs (Williams, 2009), mood state and frustration. The narrations of exclusion, regardless of their modality, produced a significant decrease in fundamental needs, higher negative mood, lower positive mood and greater frustration with respect to inclusion. The Study 2 (n = 103), an intrasubject design, used a narration of inclusion and another of exclusion, and the same questionnaires of Study 1, adding the questionnaire of mood and another of emotional empathy to respond “how the readers felt”. Data were consistent with Study. 1. In addition, readers presented higher negative mood, lower positive mood and greater emotional empathy towards the exclusion story compared to inclusion narration. These results open a new field of experimentation on the topic.

Keywords : Social exclusion; Vignettes; Emotional effects; Adults.