Trait rejection sensitivity is associated with vigilance and defensive response rather than detection of social rejection cues.

Taishi Kawamoto,Mitsuhiro Ura,Hiroshi Nittono

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01516

Abstract

Prior studies suggest that psychological difficulties arise from higher trait Rejection Sensitivity (RS)—heightened vigilance and differential detection of social rejection cues and defensive response to. On the other hand, from an evolutionary perspective, rapid and efficient detection of social rejection cues can be considered beneficial. We conducted a survey and an electrophysiological experiment to reconcile this seeming contradiction. We compared the effects of RS and Rejection Detection Capability (RDC) on perceived interpersonal experiences (Study 1) and on neurocognitive processes in response to cues of social rejection (disgusted faces; Study 2). We found that RS and RDC were not significantly related, although RS was positively related to perceived social rejection experiences and RDC was positively related to perceived social inclusion experiences. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) revealed that higher RS was related to cognitive avoidance (i.e., P1) and heightened motivated attention (i.e., late positive potential: LPP), but not to facial expression encoding (i.e., N170) toward disgusted faces. On the other hand, higher RDC was related to heightened N170 amplitude, but not to P1 and LPP amplitudes. These findings imply that sensitivity to rejection is apparently distinct from the ability to detect social rejection cues and instead reflects intense vigilance and defensive response to those cues. We discussed an alternative explanation of the relationship between RS and RDC from a signal detection perspective.

Highlights

People are sensitive to social rejection, because social glue is critical for us (Baumeister and Leary, 1995)
We conceptually expected that the measure of Rejection Detection Capability (RDC) would have a one-factor structure, because people need to detect all kinds of social rejection cues (e.g., Williams, 2009)
Higher rejection sensitivity (RS) was related to more perceived social rejection experiences; higher RDC was related to more perceived social inclusion experiences. These findings provide initial evidence that RS is unrelated to the capability of detecting social rejection cues per se, and that RDC has some benefit in interpersonal functioning because it increases perception of social inclusion experiences

Summary

Introduction

People are sensitive to social rejection, because social glue is critical for us (Baumeister and Leary, 1995). Social connection with others is considered to have evolutionary benefit because it aids survival and reproduction (Williams, 2009; Wesselmann et al, 2013). People sensitively perceive and respond to social rejection. At least two lines of research have investigated sensitivity to social rejection, a trait perspective and an evolutionary perspective. As explicated in the stage of coping theory (Williams, 2009), sensitively detecting social rejection cues is considered to have benefits: avoiding further social rejection and better coping with social rejection allows the person to regain social connections (Wesselmann et al, 2013). There appear to be multiple aspects of sensitivity to social rejection

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