Social exclusion decreases prosocial behavior.

By Jean M. Twenge, Roy F. Baumeister. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2007

1,276 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In 7 experiments, the authors manipulated social exclusion by telling people that they would end up alone later in life or that other participants had rejected them. Social exclusion caused a substantial reduction in prosocial behavior. Socially excluded people donated less money to a student fund, were unwilling to volunteer for further lab experiments, were less helpful after a mishap, and cooperated less in a mixed-motive game with another student. The results did not vary by cost to the self or by recipient of the help, and results remained significant when the experimenter was unaware of condition. The effect was mediated by feelings of empathy for another person but was not mediated by mood, state self-esteem, belongingness, trust, control, or self-awareness. The implication is that rejection temporarily interferes with emotional responses, thereby impairing the capacity for empathic understanding of others, and as a result, any inclination to help or cooperate with them is undermined.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6f0fa239d654b6ea88f61ac0287e364f80583237

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Citations in the corpus

Reactions to Discrimination, Stigmatization, Ostracism, and Other Forms of Interpersonal Rejection (2009, positive): “Similarly, Twenge et al. (2007) found that the future-alone manipulation caused a reduction in prosocial behavior, as reflected in donating less money to a study fund, not helping a researcher pick up pencils that he or she dropped, and cooperating less during a prisoner’s dilemma game.”
Charities Can Increase the Effectiveness of Donation Appeals by Using a Morally Congruent Positive Emotion (2019, background): “Notably, the strength of social connection has been shown to influence prosocial preferences (Cavanaugh et al. 2015; Twenge et al. 2007).”
Being Left Out: Neurobiological Correlates of Social Rejection and their Developmental Trajectory (2011, neutral): “It is possible that social exclusion might have caused participants to adopt a strategy to selectively punish the excluders to avoid further exploitation or to protect the self from being hurt (Hillebrandt et al., 2010; Maner et al., 2007; Twenge et al., 2007), and might have given a justification f”
When Self-View Is at Stake: Responses to Ostracism Through the Lens of Self-Verification Theory (2017, background): “As such, the existing findings on ostracism mainly come from social psychology studies that use an experimental design approach (e.g., Twenge et al., 2007; Williams et al., 2000; Williams & Sommer, 1997), which fails to address what happens to ostracized employees in the workplace.”
Thwarting the Need to Belong: Understanding the Interpersonal and Inner Effects of Social Exclusion (2007, background): “Twenge et al. (2001) found that social exclusion led to an increase in aggression toward new interaction partners, including those who provoked or insulted the participant and even neutral and thus wholly innocent parties.”
A Review and Framework for Thinking about the Drivers of Prosocial Consumer Behavior (2020, background): “Finally, a sense of social belonging or exclusionmore generally can predict prosocial consumer behaviors (Twenge et al. 2007; Lee and Shrum 2012).”