The impact of gender-exclusive language on women's anticipated ostracism: A preregistered replication of Stout and Dasgupta (2011).

In a 2011 study, Stout and Dasgupta exposed men and women to what they termed gender-inclusive language, which used both male and female referents, or to what they termed gender-exclusive language, which used male referents only. They found that, in comparison to gender-inclusive language, a job description that used gender-exclusive language negatively impacted women; they reported higher anticipated job-based ostracism and perceived sexism and lower job-based motivation and identification. This work reports a high-powered, preregistered study with women that fully replicated Stout and Dasgupta's findings. Moreover, in an exploratory analysis, we found that, for women, gender-exclusive language is perceived as sexist, which in turn predicted feelings of greater anticipated ostracism, which in turn predicted lower job-based motivation and identification. Therefore, our findings support past research that subtle linguistic cues can be interpreted as exclusionary, that this interpretation can trigger negative outcomes, and that people can experience group-level ostracism based on their social identity.

Putting Belonging in Context: Communal Affordances Signal Belonging in STEM.

A sense of belonging in a particular context is cued not only by the people in the role but by the affordances of the role-that is, the opportunities for goal pursuit. We investigate this role-based belonging in four studies documenting that the perceived affordances of social roles inform sense of belonging and convey known benefits of belonging. Perceiving more communal opportunities in naturalistic science, technology, engineering, and mathematic (STEM) settings was associated with heightened belonging in those roles (Studies 1-2). Experimentally manipulating collaborative activities in a science lab increased anticipated belonging in the lab and fostered interest, particularly among women (Study 3). Finally, mentally simulating communal affordances in a role promoted recovery from belonging threat: Considering communal opportunities in STEM facilitated recovery of STEM-specific belonging after recalling exclusion in STEM (Study 4). Investigations of role-based belonging offer the potential for both theoretical and practical advances.

Assessing Longitudinal Relationships among Thwarted Belongingness, Perceived Burdensomeness, and Eating Disorder Symptoms.

OBJECTIVE: Past work has documented a cross-sectional relationship between eating disorders (ED) and suicidality, but few studies have examined the directionality of this relationship. Informed by the interpersonal-psychological theory of suicide (IPTS), this study examines the bidirectional, longitudinal relationship between ED symptoms and two determinants of suicide ideation-thwarted belongingness (TB) and perceived burdensomeness (PB). METHOD: Ninety-two treatment-seeking individuals with ED (94.5% White, 95.6% female) completed baseline (T1) measures of ED symptoms along with TB and PB. Of those, 75 (81.5%) completed a follow-up assessment eight weeks later (T2). RESULTS: Separate linear regression models revealed that T1 ED symptoms did not predict T2 TB (b = .03, p = .42) or T2 PB (b = -.01, p = .68). Similarly, T1 TB did not predict T2 ED symptoms (b = .25, p = .37). T1 PB did significantly predict T2 ED symptoms (b = 0.52, p = .04). Further, among participants with AN/sub-AN, T1 TB and PB predicted T2 ED symptoms (p's ≤ .03). CONCLUSION: Our results reveal the need for a nuanced understanding of the relationship between ED and suicidality. This study found that PB predicts greater ED symptoms and, among the AN/sub-AN sample, TB does as well.

Validating the state motivation to foster social connections scale.

Motivations to foster social connections drive much of human behavior. While these motivations vary across both situations and time, no scale exists assessing them at the state level. In the current work, we develop such a state measure, yielding a two-factor solution: motivation to foster social connections with existing and with new social targets. Across nine studies with almost 2000 participants, the scale shows good factor structure and reliability, as well as convergent and divergent validity. In two experimental studies, it also showed sensitivity to manipulations of regulatory focus and hunger. Implications for future research on social interactions and other uses of the scale are discussed.

Stimulus Threat and Exposure Context Modulate the Effect of Mere Exposure on Approach Behaviors.

Mere-exposure (ME) research has found that initially neutral objects made familiar are preferred relative to novel objects. Recent work extends these preference judgments into the behavioral domain by illustrating that mere exposure prompts approach-oriented behavior toward familiar stimuli. However, no investigations have examined the effect of mere exposure on approach-oriented behavior toward threatening stimuli. The current work examines this issue and also explores how exposure context interacts with stimulus threat to influence behavioral tendencies. In two experiments participants were presented with both mere-exposed and novel stimuli and approach speed was assessed. In the first experiment, when stimulus threat was presented in a homogeneous format (i.e., participants viewed exclusively neutral or threatening stimuli), ME potentiated approach behaviors for both neutral and threatening stimuli. However, in the second experiment, in which stimulus threat was presented in a heterogeneous fashion (i.e., participants viewed both neutral and threatening stimuli), mere exposure facilitated approach only for initially neutral stimuli. These results suggest that ME effects on approach behaviors are highly context sensitive and depend on both stimulus valence and exposure context. Further implications of these findings for the ME literature are discussed.

Social exclusion and stereotyping: why and when exclusion fosters individuation of others.

Exclusion triggers a desire to re-capture connections with others. To facilitate this goal, excluded individuals typically process social information especially carefully. One implication of this is that exclusion may foster judgments of others that are reliant on a careful consideration of their idiosyncratic behaviors rather than on more superficial features. We predicted, therefore, that excluded individuals should individuate more and stereotype less than non-excluded individuals and that such effects should be in service of identifying appropriate re-affiliation candidates. In 3 replications of Experiment 1, excluded (compared to non-excluded) individuals rendered less stereotypic judgments of occupational and racial group members described with mildly or ambiguously counter-stereotypic information. Confirming such processes aid with re-affiliation, Experiments 2 and 3 showed that these effects occurred for social targets that represented reasonable sources of re-affiliation, but not for offensive social targets (i.e., Skinheads) or non-social agents. Experiment 4 underscored that excluded participants process presented social information more carefully (individuate), showing greater differentiation in judgments of highly stereotype-consistent and stereotype-inconsistent targets. Implications for the social exclusion literature are discussed.

Never let them see you cry: self-presentation as a moderator of the relationship between exclusion and self-esteem.

A debate exists concerning whether exclusion harms self-esteem. We hypothesized that social exclusion does harm self-esteem, but that this effect is evident only when self-presentational concerns to "appear fine" are minimal or people are unable to alter their report of self-esteem. In the first three studies, participants' explicit and implicit self-esteem were measured following an exclusion or comparison condition where self-presentational pressures were likely high. Because respondents can easily control their reports on explicit measures, but not on implicit ones, we hypothesized that exclusion would result in lower self-esteem only when implicit measures were used. Results confirmed this hypothesis. In the final study, self-presentational concerns were directly manipulated. When self-presentational concerns were high, only implicit self-esteem was lowered by exclusion. But, when such concerns were low, this impact on self-esteem was seen on implicit and explicit measures. Implications for the sociometer hypothesis and the recent self-esteem debate are discussed.

Social exclusion and pain sensitivity: why exclusion sometimes hurts and sometimes numbs.

Some research indicates that social exclusion leads to increased emotional- and physical-pain sensitivity, whereas other work indicates that exclusion causes emotional- and physical-pain numbing. This research sought to examine what causes these opposing outcomes. In Study 1, the paradigm used to instantiate social exclusion was found to moderate the social exclusion-physical pain relation: Future-life exclusion led to a numbing of physical pain whereas Cyberball exclusion led to hypersensitivity. Study 2 examined the underlying mechanism, which was hypothesized to be the severity of the "social injury." Participants were subjected to either the standard future-life exclusion manipulation (purported to be a highly severe social injury) or a newly created, less-severe version. Supporting our hypothesis, the standard (highly severe) future-life exclusion led to physical-pain numbing, whereas the less-severe future-life exclusion resulted in hypersensitivity. Implications of these results for understanding the exclusion-pain relation and other exclusion effects are discussed.

Arousal, processing, and risk taking: consequences of intergroup anger.

Intergroup emotions theory (IET) posits that when social categorization is salient, individuals feel the same emotions as others who share their group membership. Extensive research supporting this proposition has relied heavily on self-reports of group-based emotions. In three experiments, the authors provide converging evidence that group-based anger has subtle and less explicitly controlled consequences for information processing, using measures that do not rely on self-reported emotional experience. Specifically, the authors show that intergroup anger involves arousal (Experiment 1), reduces systematic processing of persuasive messages (Experiment 2), is moderated by group identification (Experiment 2, posttest), and compared to intergroup fear, increases risk taking (Experiment 3). These findings provide converging evidence that consistent with IET, emotions triggered by social categorization have psychologically consequential effects and are not evident solely in self-reports.

A meta-analysis of priming effects on impression formation supporting a general model of informational biases.

Priming researchers have long investigated how providing information about traits in one context can influence the impressions people form of social targets in another. The literature has demonstrated that this can have 3 different effects: Sometimes primes become incorporated in the impression of the target (assimilation), sometimes they are used as standards of comparison (anchoring), and sometimes they cause people to consciously alter their judgments (correction). In this article, we present meta-analyses of these 3 effects. The mean effect size was significant in each case, such that assimilation resulted in impressions biased toward the primes, whereas anchoring and correction resulted in impressions biased away from the primes. Additionally, moderator analyses uncovered a number of variables that influence the strength of these effects, such as applicability, processing capacity, and the type of response measure. Based on these results, we propose a general model of how irrelevant information can bias judgments, detailing when and why assimilation and contrast effects result from default and corrective processes.

Positivity can cue familiarity.

Given that familiarity is closely associated with positivity, the authors sought evidence for the idea that positivity would increase perceived familiarity. In Experiment 1, smiling and thus positively perceived novel faces were significantly more likely to be incorrectly judged as familiar than novel faces with neutral expressions. In Experiment 2, subliminal association with positive affect (a positively valenced prime) led to false recognition of novel words as familiar. In Experiment 3, validity judgments, known to be influenced by familiarity, were more likely to occur if participants were in happy mood states than neutral mood states. Despite their different paradigms and approaches, the results of these three studies converge on the idea that, at least under certain circumstances, the experience of positivity itself can signal familiarity, perhaps because the experience of familiarity is typically positive.