On the Verge of Exclusion: The Unique Psychological Profile of the Threat of Social Exclusion

ABSTRACT Past research, often using Cyberball—an online ball‐tossing game with two or more preprogrammed players—showed that being socially excluded produces various negative emotions and lower need satisfaction. However, in everyday life, people may experience the threat of social exclusion more frequently than actual exclusion. Across two experiments (total N = 783), contrasting a newly developed threat of exclusion condition with the standard exclusion and standard inclusion condition using Cyberball, results showed that the threat of exclusion (relative to inclusion and exclusion) is characterized by elevated fear and hope, intermediate need satisfaction and specific ball toss behaviour promoting both inclusive (reciprocity) and exclusive bonds (bias), possibly to avoid that the threat of exclusion becomes a reality. These findings demonstrate that the threat of social exclusion is associated with a unique psychological and behavioural profile that may have evolved to cope with and ward off actual exclusion.