Estructura Productiva

The first author recently visited a prison in which the wife of a famous football player was talking with female inmates about her highly publicized spouse- abuse case. When her husband returned home from a road-trip, he confronted her about the large credit card bill. She started yelling at him about how she hated him being away for so long, and he responded by saying that he would not talk to her if she was going to carry on in such an abusive manner. After sev- eral minutes of silence, the wife started hurling insults at her husband to get a response, but the husband acted as though he had not heard her. Finally, enraged, she threw a marble ashtray at his head, taking a chunk out of his skull, which then led to the much-publicized physical fight. Clearly, in this case, the wife reacted aggressively to the source of the ostracism.

A variety of studies suggest a link between ostracism, ignoring, and/or rejec- tion and antisocial responses. For example, Gottman’s (1979, 1980) research with married couples suggests that silence can trigger violence. Geller, Goodstein, Silver, and Sternberg (1974) found that ignored females were less likely to reward the ignoring confederates. Craighead, Kimball, and Rehak

(1979) found that individuals who imagined being ignored indicated that they would be more likely to feel frustration and anger, passivity and disengagement. Thompson and Richardson (1983) used a paradigm in which a dyad would reject an individual. They found that rejected individuals retaliated against the rejectors, especially against dyads composed of a male who initiated the rejec- tion and a female who followed suit. Several studies found that ignored or rejected individuals were less likely to want to work with the rejecting group, although in most cases this preference was qualified by either individual differ- ences (i.e., those low in self-esteem, Dittes, 1959; those high in public self- consciousness, Fenigstein, 1979) or situational factors (i.e., those who were ignored for impersonal reasons, Snoek, 1962). Insko and Wilson (1977) instructed groups of three participants to engage in a series of two-person conversations, that is, during each of these conversations, the third member of the group was left out. The experimenter imposed an ostensible time constraint, such that one member conversed once with the other two, but the other two had not con- versed with each other. Even though the exclusion was clearly not the “fault” of the participants, participants rated the group member they had not conversed with as less likeable and less interpersonally attractive on a variety of dimensions. In research pertinent to organizations, Faulkner (1998) found that individ- uals who were ostracized for whistle blowing were more likely to retaliate against the ostracizers, and Cheung (1999) found that customers who did not receive a reply from the company to their email enquiries were less likely to patronize the company. All of these studies involved self-reported or behavioral responses that were not prosocial, but were also not necessarily aggressive.

More recently, in a series of clever laboratory studies, Twenge et al. (2001) found that participants who were given “forecasts” of a life without meaningful friendships were more likely to be aggressive. Participants completed a person- ality test and were given bogus feedback. Some were told that their personality profile suggested that their future would be full of meaningful relationships (Future Belonging). Others were told that their profile suggested that they would be accident-prone (Misfortune). The Misfortune group’s forecast served as a control group for an unpleasant, but nonexclusionary future. A final group were told that they would be alone, that their life would lack any meaningful relationships after they were past their mid-twenties (Future Alone).

In this series of five studies, Twenge et al. found consistent support for the antisocial responses to exclusion. This response was even found towards a neu- tral participant—someone who had not excluded or insulted the participant. Whether the exclusion was due to a forecast of a lonely life, or being told that no one wanted to work with them, excluded participants seemed to respond in antisocial, possibly aggressive ways. Apart from being antisocial, such responses would also be unlikely to be attractive to other individuals or groups. Thus, these responses would appear to be inconsistent with Baumeister and Leary’s (1995) premise that sensing rejection and exclusion will direct individuals to

behave in ways that improves their inclusionary status. (For a more detailed description of the studies, see Twenge & Baumeister, this volume).

In a series of Internet studies, Williams et al. (2002) also found some sup- port for an antisocial response to ostracism. In one study (Study 2) participants were either included or ostracized in a chat-room discussion about thoughts and experiences of their first year at university. Confederates played the parts of the two other members of the chat room. All participants were included for the first 4 minutes of the conversation. Following this introductory period participants were either ignored for the remaining 5 minutes of conversation (ostracism condition), or they continued to be included (inclusion condition). The postexperimental questionnaire included evaluative ratings of the two other participants in the chat room and a rating of how much the participant would like to be friends with the other two participants. Ostracized participants rated the confederates less positively than included participants, and also reported less desire to be friends with them.

In Study 3, again, participants were either included or ostracized in a chat- room discussion, but they were also either agreed with or disagreed with, regarding their opinion of the Sydney Olympics. In this study, the introductory period (where all participants were included) lasted for 2 min, and inclusion/ostracism period of the chat-room lasted for 10 minutes. Regardless of whether participants were agreed with or not, ostracized participants reported that they liked the two confederates less than included participants.

What was interesting about both Studies 2 and 3 was that some ostracized participants were showing evidence of what we termed “virtual bravado.” That is, they were confronting the other two participants in the chat-room and demanding an explanation, or were behaving provocatively by intruding in the two-way conversation with a monologue. This kind of reaction has never hap- pened in the face-to-face conversation paradigm. Face-to-face ostracized par- ticipants typically withdraw without seeking clarification, without trying to interrupt, and without getting visibly angry. However, we noticed our chat-room ostracized participants seeking clarification (e.g., “Hey, are you there?” “Why aren’t you answering my questions?” “Are you ignoring me?”), leaning forward toward their screen, interrupting (e.g., “so, as I was saying”), or getting angry (e.g., “Jeez, you guys are rude!”), or even starting a conversation with themselves. Take this participant’s response as an example:

u 2 can keep talking btw yourselves and ignore me I don’t mind!!! . . . maybe I should start a conversation with myself . . . hi, how are yah . . . I’m fine how are you . . . I’m fine too . . . come on talk to me! I feel like a nigel . . . oh okay now you gonna answer her I bet . . . I asked that question only 2000 years ago.

Clearly, the passive despondency observed in the face-to-face ostracism sessions does not generalize to chat rooms. Perhaps hostile responses are more

likely to occur in chat rooms because individuals feel more anonymous, or because they do not have to endure the painful nonverbal signs of rejection that they are forced to observe when face-to-face.

There has been speculation that the perpetrators of 15 school shootings in American high schools were victims of ostracism, rejection, and malicious teas- ing in their schools (Leary et al., 2003; Williams, 2001), and the perpetrator of the recent school shooting in Germany, although not an outcast, was upset about being expelled from his school (Andrews, 2002; Biehl, 2002; Lemonick, 2002). Their reaction to this treatment was obviously extremely antisocial and aggressive, but whether their behavior was due to, or partially instigated by ostracism, is difficult to determine. After all, it is not surprising that after shoot- ing one’s peers one attempts to provide a plausible explanation and justification. Also, there are probably thousands of students who are bullied and ostracized; yet violent outbreaks are thankfully rare. Additionally, other, perhaps more potent factors may contribute to such extreme violence, including feelings of depersonalization and deindividuation that might increase adherence to violent role models or in-group members (see Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995).