Expectations of Social Exclusion and Self-regulation

Past work has indicated that social exclusion or rejection has negative behavioural consequences at the individual and societal level. Research has shown that, at the individual level, socially excluded people exhibit increased aggression, poorer intellectual performance, a loss of prosocial behaviour and a tendency to engage in self-defeating behaviour. At the societal level, groups of people who have felt excluded by the dominant culture have shown similar patterns, as reflected for example in high crime rates and withdrawal from positive contributions to the general societal good. Past research, however, has not illuminated the inner processes that mediate the behavioural effects of social exclusion. Importantly, the possible alternative hypothesis to that proposed by Baumeister et al. (below), that emotional distress mediates behavioural effects, has not been consistently supported. On the contrary, it has been more consistently disconfirmed by previous empirical social-psychological research.