If you decide to start blogging, you have to develop a thick
skin. Not everyone is going to like what
you have to say, and the internet comments people give you are not always
phrased in the nicest way. Still, the
negative comments can sting. And that
leads to an immediate sense of rejection.
Not all forms of rejection are the same, though. It is one thing to have someone attack the
ideas you have put forward. It is
another thing entirely to think that you are being rejected based on some
personal characteristic like race, gender, or religion. In that case, the rejection slips into a
feeling of discrimination.
Do people treat rejection and discrimination in the same
way?
This question was explored in a paper in the February, 2013
issue of Psychological Science
by Jeremy Jamieson, Katrina Koslov, Matthew Nock, and Wendy Berry Mendes.
In their study, participants were either black males or
white females. At the start of the
study, participants selected an avatar to represent themselves in a chat
room. The avatar was the same race and
gender as the participant. Next, they
were told that they were going to give a brief speech via webcam, and that the
other participants were going to judge that speech. They would be able to see the comments of the
other participants as they spoke.
In reality, the comments of the other participants were
typed by the experimenter from a list.
All of the comments were negative and were designed to be relevant to
what the participant said. For example,
if a participant made a comment about themselves, the comment might say, “Oh
someone is feeling good about themselves today.”
For all participants, the evaluators were shown by avatars
of the same gender. However, half the
participants were critiqued by avatars of the same race, while others were
critiqued by avatars of a different race.
The experimenters took physiological measurements during the
study. They measured things like blood pressure and cardiac output. They also took cortisol measures. Cortisol is a hormone that is released in
stress situations and can be measured through a saliva sample. The cortisol measures were taken before and
after the speech. The experimenters also
watched the video of the speeches later and looked for signs of anger and
shame.
In addition, there were three behavioral measures. The experimenters measured participants’
ability to recall a story told at the beginning of the study. They also used an emotional Stroop task. In this task, participants see words related
to positive and negative emotions printed in a font of a particular color. Participants have to identify the color of
the font as quickly as possible. The
longer it takes participants to identify the color, the more that they are
paying attention to the emotion described by the word.
Finally, the experimenters used a measure of risk taking
called the Columbia Card Task. In this
measure, participants see a set of cards face-down and are told that they can
turn over cards to try to gain as many points as possible. Some of the cards allow participants to gain
points, while others cause them to lose points.
Across trials, the decks vary in the number of negative cards that they
are told are present as well as the size of the gains for the positive cards
and the size of the losses for the negative cards. Some decks have high rewards, while others
have low rewards. Some decks have small
losses, while others have large losses.
This task is used to measure risk taking.
The results of this study demonstrate that people treat
rejection by a member of the same race differently from discrimination (defined
as rejection by a member of a different race).
Physiologically, when people are rejected by a member of the
same race, they show an increase in blood pressure. When people are rejected by a member of the
opposite race, they show an increase in cardiac output (which is a response to
a threat). Participants rejected by a
member of the same race show higher levels of cortisol than participants
rejected by a member of the opposite race.
Participants rejected by members of the opposite race exhibit more anger
than those rejected by members of the same race.
Rejection and discrimination also have different behavioral
effects. There is a tendency for
participants rejected by people of the same race to have worse memory for the
story than those rejected by members of the opposite race. This finding is consistent with research
showing that stress and cortisol levels influence memory.
Participants rejected by someone of the opposite race are
slower to identify the font color for negative emotion words in the Stroop task
than those rejected by someone of the same race. That is, discrimination makes people pay more
attention to negative emotions.
Finally, participants rejected by someone of the opposite
race are riskier in the card selection task than those rejected by someone of
the same race. That is, they select more
cards from the decks, particularly when there is the possibility of getting
large rewards. This result suggests that
discrimination increases people’s tendency to take risks more than rejection.
This study does not have a neutral control condition, so it
is hard to know whether the behavioral measures reflect increases in risk over
a baseline or just a difference between rejection and discrimination.
What I find most interesting about these studies, though, is
that the reaction to social rejection depends on whether it is interpreted as
rejection or as discrimination.
Rejection creates stress.
Discrimination creates vigilance, and perhaps a tendency to be willing
to take risks to get high rewards.