Background & Aims
Social exclusion is a socially and emotionally painful experience, evoking an array of negative self-focused and other-focused emotions. Interestingly, this experience may increase susceptibility to social influence (Lakin et al., 2008; Watson-Jones et al., 2015). The present study investigated whether this applies to socially-induced nocebo effects, a psychobiological phenomenon in which a person experiencing symptoms from a stimulus can cause an observing individual to suffer similar pain-related symptoms upon their own exposure. The aim of this study was therefore to identify if socially-induced nocebo effects are stronger when an individual has just experienced social exclusion, and if so, what psychosocial factors drive this relationship.
Methods
Participants attended a 30-minute session via Zoom with an experimenter and two other participants (one of whom was a confederate). Participants played Cyberball, a virtual ball-tossing game used to elicit social exclusion (Williams et al., 2000). In this game, participants were randomised to either 1) be included by the other participants during the game or 2) be excluded (i.e., not thrown the ball). Participants then either 1) observed the confederate experience symptoms from a virtual reality rollercoaster they were also about to experience or 2) did not observe the confederate. The study had a sample of 120 participants (59 females, mean age = 33.51) with a 2 (social learning: observation vs none) x 2 (social relationship: inclusion vs exclusion) between-subjects design. The primary measure was severity of symptoms participants experienced from the virtual rollercoaster experience. State anxiety, expectancy, and emotions were also measured to identify potential modulating factors.
Results
Participants in the observation groups reported significantly more severe symptoms from their rollercoaster experience relative to the no observation groups, demonstrating the social transmission of symptoms from model to observer. This social learning effect was mediated by increased state anxiety and negative expectancy, but changes in negative and positive emotions did not alter outcomes. There was no significant difference in the severity of experienced symptoms between those who were socially included and those who were excluded, nor did social relationship influence the magnitude of the social learning effect. However, when examining outcomes in the younger subset of participants (who were closer in age to the model), a surprising interaction arose in which the symptoms of the social inclusion/observation group reduced to the level of the two no observation groups.
Conclusions
While social exclusion is an emotionally painful experience that can drive an individual to adopt the behaviours and attitudes of others, the present study examined whether this could occur for health experiences. Results demonstrated that an individual still susceptible to the social transmission of symptoms from a person who has just excluded them. Moreover, the act of being socially included may be a protective mechanism, though this could depend on other model-observation relationship factors, such as similarities in characteristics (e.g., age). To understand how to best reduce the negative outcomes associated with nocebo effects in social contexts, further work into the role of the model-observer relationship is needed.
References
Lakin, J. L., Chartrand, T. L., & Arkin, R. M. (2008). I am too just like you: Nonconscious mimicry as an automatic behavioral response to social exclusion. Psychological science, 19(8), 816-822.
Watson-Jones, R. E., Whitehouse, H., & Legare, C. H. (2016). In-group ostracism increases high-fidelity imitation in early childhood. Psychological Science, 27(1), 34-42.
Williams, K. D., Cheung, C. K., & Choi, W. (2000). Cyberostracism: effects of being ignored over the Internet. Journal of personality and social psychology, 79(5), 748.