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We conducted six studies to test our hypotheses that ostracism disrupts self-continuity and that self-affirmation counters ostracism's negative influence on self-continuity. Participants who experienced more ostracism in their daily lives (Study 1), imagined being ostracized (Studies 2 and 5), recalled a past ostracism experience (Studies 3 and 6), and were ostracized in a ball-tossing game (Study 4) reported lower levels of self-continuity than their counterparts. Moreover, neither violations of expectation nor negativity of the experience was sufficient in decreasing self-continuity (Study 5). Finally, self-affirmation weakened the negative effect of ostracism on self-continuity (Study 6). Taken together, our findings provide converging causal evidence for our hypotheses and provide novel insights for the literature on how daily interpersonal interactions influence individuals' sense of an enduring self. In addition, the moderation of self-affirmation reported in our research indicates an effective approach to diminishing the negative influence of ostracism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the temporal need–threat model, ostracism results in three stages of responses. Research on the responses to ostracism has predominantly focused on the first two stages, and the literature needs further empirical evidence on responses to long-term ostracism. We conducted two studies to better understand the association between long-term ostracism and depressive symptoms. Study 1 found a positive association between long-term ostracism and depressive symptoms. More importantly, Study 1 found the threatened sense of meaning in life partially mediates the relationship. Study 2 further found that self-compassion, a positive and healthy trait, weakens the relationship between long-term ostracism and depressive symptoms. More specifically, self-compassion moderates the relationship between the threatened sense of meaning in life and depressive symptoms. Our findings not only further our understanding about the negative consequences of long-term ostracism but also suggest a possible way to mitigate depressive symptoms associated with long-term ostracism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In five studies, we tested whether ostracism triggers feelings of relative deprivation and whether relative deprivation accounts for the impact of ostracism on aggression. Relative to participants who recalled either inclusive or neutral experiences, participants who recalled ostracism experiences reported higher levels of relative deprivation (Study 1). Furthermore, the feeling of relative deprivation mediated the effect of ostracism on aggression (Studies 2, 3a, and 3b). Framing ostracism as an experience of nondeprivation weakened the connection between ostracism and aggression (Study 4), which suggests an effective way of reducing aggression following an ostracism experience. Together, these findings highlight the significance of relative deprivation in shaping people's responses toward ostracism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social pain is ubiquitous and has deleterious effects on people's health. Thus, identifying how to promote social pain recovery is important. Across three studies (N = 989), we examined whether a self-administered online awe-intervening approach could help people recover from social pain. With participants from the United States and China, we found that the online awe-intervening approach helped people recover from social pain associated with both cyber-social exclusion (Study 1) and real-life social exclusion events (Studies 2 and 3). Moreover, we found a significant mediating effect of the global sense of connectedness (Studies 2 and 3). We further demonstrated that the awe-intervening approach's effect on social pain recovery and the mediating effect of the global sense of connectedness were distinct from general positive emotions, exposure to nature, self-diminishment, and distraction (Study 3). Taken together, our findings endorse the online awe-intervening approach as an effective social pain reliever. • Online awe-intervening approach promotes social pain recovery. • Extended awe's benefits from intrapersonal to interpersonal problems. • Global connectedness mediated this effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eleven studies (N = 2,254; 2 preregistered) examined whether ostracism would trigger suicidal thoughts and whether perceived meaning in life would account for this effect. The feeling of ostracism was induced via recalling a past experience (Studies 1a, 1c, 2c, and 3b), imagining a future experience (Studies 1d, 1e, and 2b), engaging in an online real-time interaction (Studies 1b and 2d), or receiving bogus personality feedback (Study 3a). Across all 11 studies, ostracism increased suicidal thoughts. Study 1a found that ostracism increased implicit associations of "death" and "me" relative to "life" and "me" on the Implicit Association Test of Suicide (Nock et al., 2010). In Study 1b, ostracized participants showed more suicidal thoughts in imagined stressful situations than did included participants. Studies 1c, 1d, and 1e further showed that ostracism increased explicit suicidal thoughts compared with both inclusion and neutral experiences. Furthermore, we found that perceived meaning in life accounted for ostracism's effect on suicidal thoughts (Studies 2a and 2b), even after controlling for depressive affect (Study 2c). In Study 2d, a preregistered study, we directly compared the contributions of perceived meaning in life and the 4 basic needs and mood proposed in William's (2007, 2009) ostracism framework, and we found that perceived meaning in life had a distinct mediating role in the ostracism-suicidal thinking link. Finally, Studies 3a and 3b found that self-affirmation exercises reduced suicidal thoughts following ostracism. Life lacks meaning without social connection, thereby activating suicidal thoughts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]