Abstract
Social exclusion affects mental and physical health. The ability to regulate emotional responses to social exclusion is therefore essential for our well-being. As individual differences in detecting bodily signals (interoceptive sensitivity, IS) have been associated with the ability of emotion regulation, we aimed at exploring whether IS fosters coping with social exclusion and flexibility in emotion regulation. The first study investigated subjective feelings and behavioral affiliation tendencies in response to ostracism using a cyberball paradigm. Sixty-nine participants were assessed who differed with respect to IS. The second study examined habitual emotion regulation processes focusing on suppression and reappraisal as well as IS in 116 participants. Main results were that the effect of ostracism on distress and behavioral affiliation tendencies were qualified by IS—being ostracized had less impact on participants with stronger IS. Furthermore, Study 2 revealed that IS was associated with habitually stronger emotion regulation strategies. We conclude that having access to bodily signals helps (IS) reducing aversive states provoked by social exclusion, probably due to the fact that IS is associated with emotion regulation strategies.
Highlights
Social Exclusion and Health Social exclusion is associated with adverse effects for mental and physical health
Being socially rejected using the cyberball paradigm is typically associated with a threat to elementary needs such as belongingness, self-esteem or control, as well as an increase in negative affect as demonstrated in former studies (Eisenberger et al, 2003; Williams et al, 2006; Sebastian et al, 2010; Hawkley et al, 2011)
IS moderated this effect: Higher IS was found to be associated lower levels of (a) distress and (b) behavioral affiliation tendencies following social exclusion. In accordance with these results IS was correlated with higher scores on the emotion regulation questionnaire. These results are in accordance with Füstös et al (2013) who demonstrated that IS facilitates the downregulation of affect-related arousal and corresponding neural activation when applying reappraisal as emotion regulation strategy
Summary
Social Exclusion and Health Social exclusion is associated with adverse effects for mental and physical health (see e.g., Zöller et al, 2010). As cyberball causes social pain and negative affect, the measure of interpersonal distance can be used to monitor its effect on the level later social interactions.
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