Cyberball Game Research Articles

Vicarious ostracism reduces observers’ sense of agency

Previous findings revealed that social ostracism reduces people’s implicit sense of agency. Based on theoretical claims that observed behavior of others may be cognitively represented similarly to one’s own behavior, we conducted two experiments to test whether people’s own sense of agency can also be impaired by observed social exclusion of others. In Experiment 1, participants recalled episodes referring to vicarious ostracism or inclusion before completing a temporal interval estimation task to assess intentional binding effects (an established implicit measure of the sense of agency). In Experiment 2, participants immersed into a newly designed virtual Cyberball game, in which they witnessed a vicarious ostracism or inclusion scenario, before completing a Libet-style temporal estimation task and an agency questionnaire (an explicit measure of the sense of agency). The findings show, for the first time, that vicarious ostracism reduces both implicit and explicit measures of agency in observers.

Influence of Social Exclusion on Cool and Hot Inhibitory Control in Chinese College Students.

Social exclusion can affect nearly every aspect of a person's mental health, both on an emotional and cognitive level. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether cool or hot inhibitory control capacity varied under social exclusion. More precisely, participants who had experienced and not experienced social exclusion were compared to explore the influence of social exclusion on cool and hot inhibitory controls. Social exclusion was induced through the use of a Cyberball game, and participants were divided into an exclusion group and an inclusion group. The number Stroop task and emotional face Stroop task were used to measure the cool and hot inhibitory control, respectively. In the cool Stroop task, participants had to refrain from reading printed digits to identify the number of items presented in the array. In the hot Stroop task, participants had to inhibit the meaning of the word to identify the emotion displayed on the face. Reaction time, accuracy, and Stroop interference were analyzed to compare the inhibitory control between the exclusion group and the inclusion group. The results showed an extension of the response time in the exclusion group compared to the inclusion group. We found a higher interference effect in the number of Stroop tasks in the exclusion group than that in the inclusion group, but it was not significant in the emotional face Stroop task. The results suggest that the cognitive and emotional basis of inhibitory control may differ during social exclusion. The present findings expand our understanding of how social exclusion affects cool and hot inhibitory controls and their internal psychological mechanism.

Social anxiety inhibits needs repair following exclusion in both relational and non-relational reward contexts: The mediating role of positive affect

The pain of social exclusion can motivate people to capitalize on opportunities to reconnect with others and repair their self-esteem and feelings of belongingness. This effect is often diminished for those with high social anxiety (HSA). Prior research suggests this may be due to their diminished capacity for recognizing and emotionally responding to relational reward cues. We investigated whether non-relational success experiences in the aftermath of exclusion may be an alternative means of repairing threatened self-esteem and belongingness in HSA individuals. In a preregistered, online study, we threatened belongingness and self-esteem in 422 participants by excluding them in a Cyberball game and then assigned them to one of three conditions: Relational Repair, Non-Relational Repair, or a No-Repair control condition. Results showed that both repair contexts facilitated needs repair relative to the no-repair control condition, and mediation analyses suggested this effect was driven by increased positive affect (PA). HSA individuals were less likely to restore needs regardless of condition and this effect appeared to be driven by low PA. Findings emphasize the critical role of PA for restoring threatened needs in the aftermath of exclusion and suggest that HSA inhibits needs repair processes across both relational and non-relational reward contexts.

When combining injunctive and descriptive norms strengthens the hypocrisy effect: A test in the field of discrimination.

The induced-hypocrisy is a paradigm in which people promote a normative behavior (normative salience step) and then recall their past transgressions (transgression salience step). It is an effective two-step procedure for encouraging prosocial behaviors. This study aims to explore whether discrimination can be reduced using the hypocrisy paradigm combining two kinds of social norms, namely injunctive and descriptive norms. We assigned 80 participants to descriptive norm-related hypocrisy, injunctive norm-related hypocrisy, combined-norm hypocrisy, and control conditions. Results showed that intention to adopt active normative behaviors was higher in the combined-norms than in the single norm hypocrisy conditions. We observed the same pattern in reducing discriminatory behaviors in the Cyberball game, which measures passive discrimination (exclusion). Our findings have both practical and theoretical implications. First, they provide a new and effective means for producing behavioral changes in the field of discrimination. Second, they contribute to further investigating the explanatory processes underlying the hypocrisy effect.

Autonomic changes as reaction to experimental social stress in an inpatient psychosomatic cohort.

ObjectivesPatients with psychosomatic disorders suffer from social isolation that might further lead to destabilization and exacerbation of bodily symptoms via autonomic pathways. We aimed to investigate the influence of controlled social stress (model of social ostracism) on the autonomic nerve system (ANS) in an inpatient cohort with psychosomatic disorders.MethodsWe examined heart rate variability (HRV), skin conductance (SC) and skin temperature (ST) as well as ECG-derived respiration rate (EDR) and subjective reports on stress during exposure to experimental social stress (cyberball game). Data were collected from 123 participants (f:m = 88:35, 42.01 ± 13.54 years) on admission and upon discharge from the university psychosomatic clinic. All data were recorded during baseline, inclusion and exclusion phases of the cyberball game as well as during the recovery phase.ResultsWe found significant changes between admission and discharge with a decline in parasympathetic-related HRV parameters (SDRR −3.20 ± 1.30 ms, p = 0.026; RMSSD: −3.77 ± 1.28 ms, p = 0.007) as well as a decrease in SC (−0.04 ± 0.17 μS, p = 0.019) and EDR (−0.01 ± 0.01 Hz, p = 0.007), suggesting a drop in sympathetic tonus, with no changes in ST (p = 0.089) and subjective stress levels (p = 0.322). HRV parameters decreased during the cyberball game (SDRR p = 0.026; RMSSD p = 0.002; lnHF p < 0.001). In contrast, both SC (p < 0.001) and EDR (p < 0.001) increased during the game with SC being slightly lower during the exclusion phase. This can point toward a stimulation of sympathetic nervous system during game participation, which was concordant with the rise in subjective stress values (p < 0.001). ST showed a continuous, unspecific rise over time (p < 0.001).ConclusionOur data demonstrate the decrease of ANS parameters during experimental social stress when data upon discharge were compared to those upon admission. These results are partially contradictory to previous studies that showed a rise in HRV in a psychiatric cohort over the course of (outpatient) treatment. Further research is required to help attributing these differences to effects of treatment or acute states relating to admission to or discharge from a psychosomatic department.

Far from the eyes, far from the heart: COVID-19 confinement dampened sensitivity to painful facial features.

In the last 2 years, governments of many countries imposed heavy social restrictions to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus, with consequent increase of bad mood, distress, or depression for the people involved. Few studies investigated the impact of these restrictive measures on individual social proficiency, and specifically the processing of emotional facial information, leading to mixed results. The present research aimed at investigating systematically whether, and to which extent, social isolation influences the processing of facial expressions. To this end, we manipulated the social exclusion experimentally through the well-known Cyberball game (within-subject factor), and we exploited the occurrence of the lockdown for the Swiss COVID-19 first wave by recruiting participants before and after being restricted at home (grouping factor). We then tested whether either form of social segregation influenced the processing of pain, disgust, or neutral expressions, across multiple tasks probing access to different components of affective facial responses (state-specific, shared across states). We found that the lockdown (but not game-induced exclusion) affected negatively the processing of pain-specific information, without influencing other components of the affective facial response related to disgust or broad unpleasantness. In addition, participants recruited after the confinement reported lower scores in empathy questionnaires. These results suggest that social isolation affected negatively individual sensitivity to other people's affect and, with specific reference to the processing of facial expressions, the processing of pain-diagnostic information.

Recovery From Ostracism Distress: The Role of Attribution.

Ostracism is known to cause psychological distress. Thus, defining the factors that can lead to recovery or diminish these negative effects is crucial. Three experiments examined whether suggesting the possible causes of ostracism to victims could decrease or eliminate their ostracism distress. They also examined whether death-anxiety mediated the association between the suggested possible cause for being ostracized and recovery. Participants (N = 656) were randomly assigned to six experimental and control groups and were either ostracized or included in a game of Cyberball. Two control conditions were used: participants who were ostracized but received no explanation and participants who were included. Immediately after the ostracism experience, participants in the experimental groups were presented with one of four causes for being ostracized, using locus of control (internal, external) and stability (stable, unstable), the two causal dimensions of Weiner’s attribution theory. After a short delay they were administered a mood or needs-satisfaction questionnaire. The results highlight the interaction between locus of control and stability, and underscore the relative importance of different attributions in alleviating self-reported ostracism distress. Specifically, both external and unstable attributions decreased distress, and an unstable attribution led to complete recovery in some participants. Thus, recovery from ostracism may be accelerated when the victim receives an explanation for ostracism that attributes the incident to unstable, external causes soon after the incident. Death-anxiety fully mediated the association between locus of control attribution and mood, but for on needs-satisfaction or the stability of the attribution.

Social exclusion modulates neural dynamics of monetary and social reward processing in young adult females

Evidence suggests that social exclusion increases one’s sensitivity to monetary and social rewards. However, whether and how social exclusion modulates the neural dynamics of reward processing remains unknown. The current study aimed to address this gap by systematically investigating the differential influences of social exclusion on various stages of monetary and social reward processing. Forty-five female participants were recruited, and the Cyberball game was used to manipulate social exclusion. To disentangle the anticipatory and consummatory stages of monetary and social reward processing, we recorded event-related potentials during two incentive delay tasks, one with a monetary reward and one with a social reward. The results showed that during the anticipatory stage, a larger contingent negative variation was observed for the exclusion group than for the inclusion group, regardless of reward type. During the consummatory stage, although the reward-related positivity was larger in the exclusion group than in the inclusion group, this difference was only observed for the social, and not monetary, reward feedback. These findings advance our understanding of the relationship between social exclusion and reward processing and suggest that while social exclusion might exert comparable enhancement effect for monetary and social reward processing during the anticipatory stage, it exerts a specific enhancement effect for social reward processing during the consummatory stage.

Afraid of Social Exclusion: Fear of Missing Out Predicts Cyberball-Induced Ostracism.

Although social exclusion violates the basic needs of sense of control, self-esteem, meaningful existence, and belongingness, it is unknown if fear of missing out (FoMO) or attachment anxiety contributes to one’s sense of ostracism and each of these basic needs. We aimed to identify if baseline scores in attachment anxiety and/or FoMO predict how excluded an individual feels after playing an online ball-tossing game designed to include or exclude them and if these constructs tap into basic needs that ostracism has shown to threaten. A sample of 193 young adults participated in this online study. After completing measures of demographics, FoMO, and attachment anxiety, each participant played Cyberball, a virtual ball-tossing game. Under the guise of playing with two other human participants, this paradigm consists of pre-programmed conditions of either inclusion, which entails receiving 10 of the total 30 ball tosses, or exclusion, which consists of receiving the ball only twice at the beginning of the game. Participants then completed post-measures of state ostracism, basic needs, and attention checks and were debriefed regarding the nature of the Cyberball game. We found that FoMO, but not attachment anxiety, predicted how ostracized one felt. Likewise, FoMO was inversely related to control, belongingness, and meaningful existence. Attachment anxiety did not predict any of the basic needs examined in the study. We conclude FoMO may be less about the experience one misses out on and more about the fear of being excluded. Future research is needed to evaluate if people experience increases in state FoMO while excluded and if baseline mood influences our findings.

The Association Between Dispositional Mindfulness and Need Threat Following Ostracism in Spanish Adolescents: The Moderating Role of Age.

Ostracism -being ignored and excluded- entails risks for adolescent mental health. Less is known about the factors that are negatively associated with the adverse consequences of ostracism. This study explored the association between dispositional mindfulness and need threat following social exclusion using the Cyberball paradigm. Sex and age were included as moderators of the relationship between dispositional mindfulness and need threat. Additionally, the factor structure of the Need Threat Scale (NTS) was analyzed in Spanish adolescents. Participants (N = 750, 52.4% female; mean age = 14.51) completed a mindfulness questionnaire, were ostracized in the Cyberball game, and reported their need threat during this game. Dispositional mindfulness was negatively associated with need threat only in older adolescents (>15 years old). Although girls reported higher levels of need threat than boys, sex did not moderate the association between mindfulness and need threat. This research suggests that dispositional mindfulness is only associated with NTS in older adolescents and girls are more vulnerable to the negative consequence of ostracism.

Avoidant individuals are more affected by ostracism attribution

Ostracism causes psychological distress. Two experiments examined whether cuing possible external or internal causes of ostracism immediately after the ostracism experience would mitigate ostracism distress, and whether attachment orientations would moderate the effects of attribution on distress immediately and after a short delay after cue. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four different attribution experimental groups - ostracized with no explanation, cuing internal/external attribution, included (not ostracized)-immediately after the Cyberball game. Distress was measured immediately and after the delay. External attribution led to less distress immediately after the ostracism episode and mitigated distress altogether after the delay. Attachment avoidance moderated these attribution effects. The findings suggest that faster recovery may be achieved by cuing an external explanation for ostracism.

The influence of social pain experience on empathic neural responses: the moderating role of gender.

Empathy for pain, the ability to share and understand the pain of others, plays an important role in the survival and development of individuals. Previous studies have found that social pain experience affects empathy for pain, but potential gender differences have not been considered. The stage of information processing during which gender is most likely to play a moderating role has yet to be clarified. In the current study, we set up two groups (social pain experience priming: social exclusion group; positive social interaction experience priming: social inclusion group) with a Cyberball game paradigm. We recorded the electrophysiological responses when participants were completing an empathy task. An early frontal P2 and N2 differentiation between painful stimuli and neutral stimuli was observed and females showed larger P2 amplitudes than males. At the P3 stage, in the social exclusion group, males showed similar parietal P3 amplitudes for painful and neutral stimuli, while females showed smaller P3 amplitudes for painful stimuli. At the central-parietal late positive potential (LPP) stage, females in the social inclusion group showed larger LPP amplitudes for painful stimuli than males. Our results suggest that gender plays a significant moderating role in how social pain experience affects empathy for pain during the late cognitive processing stage. Experiment 2 was designed to investigate the cognitive mechanism behind the results for the P3 component in females and the results partially confirmed our speculation. This study provides a neurophysiological basis for the dynamic gender differences in the effects of social pain experience on empathy for pain.

Neural signatures of bullying experience and social rejection in teenagers.

Relational bullying in schools is one of the most frequent forms of violence and can have severe negative health impact, e.g. depression. Social exclusion is the most prominent form of relational bullying that can be operationalized experimentally. The present study used MR-based perfusion imaging (pCASL) to investigate the neural signatures of social exclusion and its relationship with individually different extent of previous bullying experience. Twenty-four teenagers reporting bullying experience at different extent were scanned during a virtual ball-tossing (Cyberball game). Our findings showed that social exclusion (relative to social inclusion) activated frontal brain areas: sub- and perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (sg/pgACC), left inferior frontal cortex (IFG), and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Positive relationship between exclusion-specific signal increase and individually different extents of prior bullying experience was for the first time observed in left IFG and sgACC. This suggests that more frequent prior experience has conditioned greater mentalizing and/or rumination, in order to cope with the situation. While this interpretation remains speculative, the present data show that the experience of being bullied partly sensitizes the neural substrate relevant for the processing of social exclusion.

Almost Everyone Loses Meaning in Life From Social Exclusion, but Some More Than the Others: A Comparison Among Victims, Voluntary, and Forced Rejecters

Social exclusion has been a major societal concern because it hinders the attainment of needs for belonging and relationship. While we know much about the effects of social exclusion on victims and perpetrators, there is limited insight regarding how different types of rejecters (voluntary vs. forced) might affect important outcomes. The purpose of this study is to bridge this gap and to examine how different types of social exclusion (forced and voluntary) influence meaning in the life of participants. To this end, we conducted two experiments using two social exclusion paradigms: the recall paradigm and the Cyberball game. The results of the two experiments were consistent. Both experiments revealed that (1) the meaning in the life of the victim group and the forced rejecter group (i.e., those who were forced to exclude others) was significantly lower than this of the control group and the voluntary rejecter group (i.e., those choosing to exclude others). There were no significant differences between the victim group and the forced rejecter group, and there were no significant differences between the voluntary rejecter group and the control group. These results reveal that social exclusion not only negatively affects the victims of exclusion but also reduces the meaning in the life of forced rejecters. These findings are specific, and they show that the types of will in exclusion can create differences in the effects of social exclusion on the rejecters.

Testing a new indirect measure of general self-worth: The Self-esteem Questionnaire-based Implicit Association Test.

The self-esteem Questionnaire-based Implicit Association Test (SE-qIAT) provides an indirect assessment of general self-worth that is based on the items of the well-validated Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), and the structure of this variant of the IAT enables a clearer interpretation, compared with the conventional self-esteem IAT. Study 1 (N = 224) provided support for the internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and implicit-explicit convergent validity of the SE-qIAT. In Study 2 (N = 305), the correlation of the SE-qIAT with the explicit RSES was replicated, and it was larger than the correlations of the SE-qIAT with other self-reports. As to criterion validity, the SE-qIAT moderated the effect of a mild social threat (being excluded in the Cyberball game) on participants' performance in a subsequent anagram task, and this effect was incremental to the explicit self-esteem assessment. In Study 3 (N = 334), the SE-qIAT correlated positively with the self-esteem IAT and negatively with a measure of depression. The two implicit tasks correlated uniquely with each other, above and beyond the variance they each shared with the explicit RSES. Taken together, these findings provide initial support for the reliability and validity of the SE-qIAT.

Excluded but not alone. Does social exclusion prevent the occurrence of a Joint Simon Effect (JSE)?

The Joint Simon Effect (JSE) is known to reflect the natural and spontaneous tendency to integrate actions from another individual into our own action system during joint action. This tendency to co-represent others' actions positively correlates with the dispositional tendency to take others' perspective. However, a quick episode of social exclusion has been shown to erase the tendency to co-represent others' actions. From a theoretical viewpoint, excluded individuals should still show signs of co-representation as ostracism tends to increase attention paid to others and Perspective Taking. In this context, this study challenges the idea that social exclusion eliminates all forms of co-representation (or JSE) by using an in-person version of the Task. We also intend to replicate findings on a positive link between Perspective Taking and the size of the JSE. To this end, participants played either an inclusive or exclusive version of the Cyberball game, then performed a joint go-nogo Simon Task. Perspective Taking was measured by using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. By contrast to previous results, our results revealed that excluded individuals co-represented others' actions as much as included ones. However, a positive correlation between Perspective Taking and the JSE was limited to included participants. We discuss these findings in terms of methodological differences and in the light of the social exclusion literature.

Trolls Without Borders: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Victim Reactions to Verbal and Silent Aggression Online.

Trolling—the online exploitation of website, chat, or game mechanics at another user's expense—can and does take place all over cyberspace. It can take myriad forms, as well—some verbal, like trash-talking an opponent in a game, and some silent, like refusing to include a new player in a team effort during an in-game quest. However, despite this variety, there are few to no studies comparing the effects of these differing trolling types on victims. In addition, no study has yet taken into account users' offline cultural context and norms into the trolling victim experience. To fill this gap in the literature, the present study put participants from three culturally-distinct countries—Pakistan, Taiwan, and the Netherlands—in a simulated trolling interaction using the Cyberball game. Participants were either flamed (read: harshly insulted) or ostracized by a member of their own cultural group (ingroup) or a minority member (outgroup), and the participants' emotional responses, behavioral intentions toward the other players, and messages sent during the game were taken as indicators of their response to the trolling. Results showed that our Taiwanese sample used the most reactive aggression when trolled and our Dutch sample was the most passive. In addition, ostracism generally produced the desire to repair relationships, irrespective of cultural context, and perpetrator culture (ingroup or outgroup) only produced an effect in the behavioral intentions of our Pakistani sample. Overall, it would appear that online and offline culture interact to produce the variety of responses to trolling seen in extant literature. Additional implications for future research into computer-mediated communication and online aggression are also discussed.

Social exclusion increases the executive function of attention networks

Previous studies in humans have shown that brain regions activating social exclusion overlap with those related to attention. However, in the context of social exclusion, how does behavioral monitoring affect individual behavior? In this study, we used the Cyberball game to induce the social exclusion effect in a group of participants. To explore the influence of social exclusion on the attention network, we administered the Attention Network Test (ANT) and compared results for the three subsystems of the attention network (orienting, alerting, and executive control) between exclusion (N = 60) and inclusion (N = 60) groups. Compared with the inclusion group, the exclusion group showed shorter overall response time and better executive control performance, but no significant differences in orienting or alerting. The excluded individuals showed a stronger ability to detect and control conflicts. It appears that social exclusion does not always exert a negative influence on individuals. In future research, attention to network can be used as indicators of social exclusion. This may further reveal how social exclusion affects individuals' psychosomatic mechanisms.

Being an ethical or unethical consumer in response to social exclusion: The role of control, belongingness and self‐esteem

AbstractSocial exclusion threatens control, belongingness and self‐esteem, and such threats may produce distinct behavioural intentions. This study hypothesized that thwarted control would increase the intention towards unethical consumer behaviour. Additionally, it hypothesized that inhibiting belongingness and self‐esteem would decrease the intention to engage in unethical consumer behaviour for reconnection. To test the hypotheses, we conducted two online experiments, with 117 (63 females and 54 males) and 188 (91 females and 97 males) participants in the 18–64 age range, using the Cyberball game to manipulate social exclusion. The result of the first study indicated that social exclusion diminished the level of control and increased participants’ willingness to engage in unethical consumer behaviour. The result of the second study indicated that social exclusion decreased levels of belongingness and self‐esteem and this decreased belongingness reduced the intention to engage in unethical consumer behaviour for reconnection. These results show that sense of control and belongingness are two psychological mechanisms through which social exclusion influences unethical behavioural intentions. To our knowledge, this is the first empirical study to analyze the role of control, belongingness, and self‐esteem as the mechanism explaining why excluded individuals are more likely to engage in unethical consumer behaviour but less likely to do it for affiliation. Accordingly, the paper presents some important theoretical and practical implications in the consumer behaviour context.

Processing of increased frequency of social interaction in social anxiety disorder and borderline personality disorder

We investigated how patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) process an increase in the frequency of social interaction. We used an EEG-compatible version of the online ball-tossing game Cyberball to induce an increase in the frequency of social interaction. In the first condition, each player received the ball equally often (inclusion: 33% ball reception). In the following condition, the frequency of the ball reception was increased (overinclusion: 45% ball reception). The main outcome variable was the event-related potential P2, an indicator for social reward processing. Moreover, positive emotions were assessed. Twenty-eight patients with SAD, 29 patients with BPD and 28 healthy controls (HCs) participated. As expected, HCs and patients with BPD, but not patients with SAD, showed an increase in the P2 amplitude from the inclusion to the overinclusion condition. Contrary to our expectations, positive emotions did not change from the inclusion to the overinclusion condition. EEG results provide preliminary evidence that patients with BPD and HCs, but not patients with SAD, process an increase in the frequency of social interaction as rewarding.