“Recent structural and functional imaging studies have provided evidence for continued development of brain regions involved in social cognition during adolescence. in this paper, we review this rapidly expanding area of neuroscience and describe models of neurocognitive development that have emerged recently. one implication of these models is that neural development underlies commonly observed adolescent phenomena such as susceptibility to peer influence and sensitivity to peer rejection. experimental behavioural evidence of rejection sensitivity in adolescence is currently sparse. here, we describe a study that directly compared the affective consequences of an experimental ostracism manipulation (cyberball) in female adolescents and adults. the ostracism condition led to significantly greater affective consequences in the adolescents compared with adults. this suggests that the ability to regulate distress resulting from ostracism continues to develop between adolescence and adulthood. the results are discussed in the context of models of neurocognitive development. © 2009 elsevier inc. all rights reserved.”

“Humans are social animals, and therefore, we experience painful feelings when we are excluded from relationships that we desire. this negative feeling is known as social pain. evidence from numerous animal and neuroimaging literature suggest that physical and social pain overlap in their function, as well as in the underlying neural circuitry. we have reviewed evidence suggesting that the anterior cingulate cortex plays a key role in physical and social pain, and that opioids, which are related to the decreased perception of physical pain, also decreases the perception of social pain. furthermore, evolutionary and developmental changes in social pain, as well as individual difference in social pain sensitivity, are discussed. in the section on individual differences, both congenital (genetic) and acquired (social) factors are reviewed. we have also examined the effects of emotional support during ostracism. finally, we have suggested a new perspective for social pain studies. (psycinfo database record (c) 2016 apa, all rights reserved)”

“Adolescence is a period of major risk for depression, which is associated with negative personal, social, and educational outcomes. yet, in comparison to adult models of depression, very little is known about the specific psychosocial stressors that contribute to adolescent depression, and whether these can be targeted by interventions. in this review, we consider the role of peer rejection. first, we present a comprehensive review of studies using innovative experimental paradigms to understand the role of peer rejection in adolescent depression. we show how reciprocal relationships between peer rejection and depressive symptoms across adolescence powerfully shape and maintain maladaptive trajectories. second, we consider how cognitive biases and their neurobiological substrates may explain why some adolescents are more vulnerable to the effects of, and perhaps exposure to, peer rejection compared to others. finally, we draw attention to emerging cognitive and functional magnetic resonance imaging-based neurofeedback training, which by modifying aspects of information processing may promote more adaptive responses to peer rejection. a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying adolescent depression may not only alleviate symptoms during a period of substantial developmental challenges, but may also reduce the burden of the disorder across the lifespan. © 2013 wiley periodicals, inc.”

“By its 20th anniversary, social neuroscience has witnessed an incredible rise in the number of studies demonstrating the effects of perceived social isolation (e.g., loneliness, ostracism), and inversely, the beneficial effects of social bonding (e.g., love, desire, attachment) on social perception, cognition, and behavior and on mental and physical health. the current review underscores the importance of two factors in this literature: (1) where an individual falls along the continuum of isolation/bonding from feelings of rejection and neglect to feelings of strong, stable, trusted social bonds, and (2) whether gauging an individual’s general feeling of social isolation/bonding or the specific feeling of isolation/bonding toward the person with whom the individual is interacting. evidence shows that these factors are related to brain and cognition, including embodied social cognition-a system integrating past self-related actions from which simulation mechanisms can be used to access other people’s minds and anticipate their actions. the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying sensorimotor mapping between interacting individuals offers an empirical opportunity to investigate the interpersonal forces that operate on individuals at a distance. this multilevel integrative approach provides a valuable tool for investigating the brain networks responsible for understanding acute and chronic social disorders. © 2012 cacioppo and cacioppo.”

“Social and physical pain share common overlap at linguistic, behavioral, and neural levels. prior research has shown that acetaminophen-an analgesic medication that acts indirectly through cannabinoid 1 receptors-reduces the social pain associated with exclusion. yet, no work has examined if other drugs that act on similar receptors, such as marijuana, also reduce social pain. across four methodologically diverse samples, marijuana use consistently buffered people from the negative consequences associated with loneliness and social exclusion. these effects were replicated using cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental designs. these findings offer novel evidence supporting common overlap between social and physical pain processes. © the author(s) 2013.”

“When asked to name their most negative life events, people often cite an event of loss such as the dissolution of a valued relationship or the death of a loved one. curiously, such events are often experienced and described as painful. curiously, the overlap between physical pain and distressing social experiences does not end there. this chapter explores a growing body of social neuroscience and experimental laboratory research that demonstrates a fascinating, dynamic interplay between distressing social experiences such as exclusion and ostracism, and the experience of physical pain.”

“We examined the electrophysiological correlates of the processing of social exclusion and inclusion by using a modified version of the cyberball paradigm. exclusion was found to be associated with a significant increase in the p3 complex. the frontal-central p3a was primarily related to the affective processing of rejection, whereas the late parietal p3b was associated with its perceived intensity. the expression of p3a and negative mood did also depend on the earlier experience; earlier inclusion affected the processing of exclusion, and vice versa. in conclusion, our data indicate that the complex process of social rejection can be tracked by using event-related brain potentials. © 2011 wolters kluwer health | lippincott williams & wilkins.”

“Social exclusion has been defined broadly as the experience of being kept apart from others physically or emotionally. our basic premise regarding the psychological study of social exclusion is that the brain is the key organ for forming, monitoring, maintaining, repairing, and replacing the salutary connections with others that homo sapiens, as a social species, need to survive, reproduce, and leave a genetic legacy. therefore, we focus here on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri) studies of the neural correlates of perceptions of social isolation (i.e., loneliness), ostracism, and romantic rejection. although this research suggests that the neural correlates may vary for these three forms of social exclusion, we discuss methodological and statistical issues that need to be addressed to determine the unique and common neural substrates across various forms of social exclusion.”

“Ostracism, exclusion, and rejection examines research into the related phenomena of ostracism, exclusion and rejection. most individuals have experienced both sides of the coin: being ostracized and ostracizing others. people experience mild forms of ostracism on a daily basis, but some endure years and decades of being the social outcast. how does it feel to be shunned, left out, not wanted? research suggests that even the mildest and briefest forms of ostracism are painful and have downstream consequences to our feelings of social connection. longer-term ostracism has devastating consequences on individuals’ health and well-being. this innovative compilation covers how being cast out affects the brain and body chemistry, feelings and emotions, thoughts and beliefs, and behaviors. in addition to the primary focus on targets of ostracism, researchers also examine the motives and consequences of ostracizing. social scientists from social psychology, developmental psychology, neuroscience, communication science, cross-cultural psychology, and anthropology tackle these questions with cutting-edge methods and provocative theories. a key volume for all in those fields, this book also presents applications from the schoolyard to the workplace, and sounds a much-needed call for further research on this universal behavior of all social animals.”

“High levels of party voting cohesion are common in modern legislatures. current explanations divide into sociological (based on norms and roles) and rational choice (based on systems of punishment and reward). the latter approach dominates, but cannot explain cohesion in systems with weak disciplinary sanctions, such as the british house of lords. social psychology has provided a great deal of insight into conformity in groups, but this has rarely been deployed in studying parties. neuroscience now also allows us better to understand the physiological mechanisms underlying responses such as need to belong and fear of ostracism. this article outlines key theories and findings from psychology relevant to parliamentary party cohesion, and then explores these using survey data from the relatively ‘discipline free’ house of lords. it is suggested that psychological factors such as social identity are important to the operation of party groups, and stronger interdisciplinary links are proposed between political science and psychology. © the author(s) 2012.”

“From ostracism on the playground to romantic rejection, bullying at work, and social disregard for the aged, individuals are at constant risk of experiencing instances of social exclusion, including ostracism, rejection, dehumanization, and discrimination. these phenomena have a powerful impact as testified by their immediate influence on people’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. social exclusion: psychological approaches to understanding and reducing its impact investigates different psychological approaches, across multiple psychological subdisciplines, to understanding the causes and consequences of social exclusion and possible ways to reduce or buffer against its negative effects. the purpose of this volume is threefold. first, it lays the groundwork for the understanding of social exclusion research; reviewing the different instances of social exclusion in everyday life and methods to experimentally investigate them. second, this volume brings together different psychological approaches to the topic of social exclusion. leading scholars from around the world contribute perspectives from social psychology, social neuroscience, developmental psychology, educational psychology, work and organizational psychology, clinical psychology, and social gerontology to provide a comprehensive overview of social exclusion research in different psychological subdisciplines. taken together, these chapters are conducive to the important development of new and more integrative research models on social exclusion. finally, this volume discusses psychological strategies such as emotion regulation, psychological resources, and brain mechanisms that can reduce or buffer against the negative consequences of social exclusion. from school shootings to domestic violence, from cognitive impairment to suicide attempts, the negative impact of social exclusion has been widely documented. thus, from an applied perspective, knowing potential ways to mitigate the negative effects of social exclusion can have a significant positive influence on people’s-and society’s-well-being. overall, this book provides the reader with the knowledge to understand the impact of social exclusion and with tools to address it across many different contexts. importantly, social exclusion: psychological approaches to understanding and reducing its impact aims to bridge the gap between the approaches of different psychological subdisciplines to this topic, working towards a comprehensive, integrativ…”

“High levels of party voting cohesion are common in modern legislatures. current explanations divide into sociological (based on norms and roles) and rational choice (based on systems of punishment and reward). the latter approach dominates, but cannot explain cohesion in systems with weak disciplinary sanctions, such as the british house of lords. social psychology has provided a great deal of insight into conformity in groups, but this has rarely been deployed in studying parties. neuroscience now also allows us better to understand the physiological mechanisms underlying responses such as need to belong and fear of ostracism. this article outlines key theories and findings from psychology relevant to parliamentary party cohesion, and then explores these using survey data from the relatively ‘discipline free’ house of lords. it is suggested that psychological factors such as social identity are important to the operation of party groups, and stronger interdisciplinary links are proposed between political science and psychology.”

“Despite significant social difficulties, children with autism spectrum disorder (asd) are vulnerable to the effects of social exclusion. we recorded eeg while children with asd and typical peers played a computerized game involving peer rejection. children with asd reported ostracism-related distress comparable to typically developing children. event-related potentials (erps) indicated a distinct pattern of temporal processing of rejection events in children with asd. while typically developing children showed enhanced response to rejection at a late slow wave indexing emotional arousal and regulation, those with autism showed attenuation at an early component, suggesting reduced engagement of attentional resources in the aversive social context. results emphasize the importance of studying the time course of social information processing in asd; they suggest distinct mechanisms subserving similar overt behavior and yield insights relevant to development and implementation of targeted treatment approaches and objective measures of response to treatment. © 2011 elsevier ltd. all rights reserved.”

“This paper presents a 3d interactive gaming paradigm for the secluded space of an fmri scanner. the cyberball3d+ game is a virtual ball-toss game in which the participant is either excluded or not from ball tossing played by three virtual players and the subject in the scanner. it has been used in simple sketch mode by neuroscientists for research on ostracism, social exclusion or rejection as well as discrimination and prejudice. the game proposed is designed to render an interactive virtual environment (ve) on an fmri display, enabling the conduct of formal neuroscientific experiments and investigating the effects of social exclusion, empathy and different level of anthropomorphism on human brain activity. although, here, the focus is on the technical implementation of the system, the goal is to use this system to explore whether the pain felt by someone when socially excluded is the same when observing other people get socially excluded and whether there are differences in relation to empathy for friends and strangers. moreover, for the first time, we propose a validated neuroscientific measure of character believability and emotional engagement. the system was developed in close collaboration between the technical university of crete where the technical implementation took place and the brighton and sussex medical school where the initial fmri experiments were conducted using the system proposed. a broader aim of this work is to assess whether such powerful social-psychological studies could be usefully carried out within ves advancing cognitive neuroscience and computer graphics as well as serious gaming research.”

“An accumulating body of research has shown deleterious outcomes of being lonely, including hostility and violence. on the other hand, the belongingness theory (baumeister & leary, 1995) suggests that individuals must have certain levels of belonging to act aggressively. literature on ostracism has suggested that ostracized individuals show increased aggression only when their need for control is thwarted. consequently, moderating factors appear to be present between ostracism and subsequent aggressive responses. i propose that loneliness is one such moderator, such that lonely individuals show decreased propensity for aggression relative to non-lonely individuals after being ostracized. propensity for aggression is conceptualized as attentional bias to aggressive words. the event-related potential technique was used to examine neural correlates of this bias. results showed that loneliness did moderate the neural responses to aggressive words following an ostracism experience. lonely individuals who were ostracized showed decreased n1 response to aggressive words compared to non-lonely individuals who showed more pronounced n1 response to aggressive and general negative words in an emotional stroop task. these results support the notion of belongingness being a prerequisite for aggression. caution must be taken not to assume a direct relationship between loneliness and aggression.”

“We studied time-based neural activity with event-related potentials (erps) in young adults during a computer-simulated ball-toss game. experiencing fair play initially, participants were ultimately excluded by other players. dense-array erps showed time-dependent associations between slow-wave activity (580-900 ms) in left prefrontal/medial frontal cortical regions for exclusion events and self-reported distress. more subtle ‘micro-rejections’ during fair play showed a similar distress to erp association (420-580 ms). in both cases, greater positive amplitude neural activity was associated with less post-exclusion distress. findings suggest that rapidly occurring neural responses to social exclusion events are linked to individual differences in ostracism-related distress. relations emerged even during fair play, providing a window into the neural basis of more subtle social-cognitive perceptual processes. © 2009 wolters kluwer health | lippincott williams & wilkins.”

“Alcohol-dependence is associated with cognitive and biological alterations, and also with interpersonal impairments. although overwhelming in clinical settings and involved in relapse, these social impairments have received little attention from researchers. particularly, brain alterations related to social exclusion have not been explored in alcohol-dependence. our primary purpose was to determine the neural correlates of social exclusion feelings in this population. in all, 44 participants (22 abstinent alcohol-dependent patients and 22 paired controls) played a virtual game (cyberball) during fmri recording. they were first included by other players, then excluded, and finally re-included. brain areas involved in social exclusion were identified and the functional connectivity between these areas was explored using psycho-physiological interactions (ppi). results showed that while both groups presented dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dacc) activations during social exclusion, alcohol-dependent participants exhibited increased insula and reduced frontal activations (in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex) as compared with controls. alcohol-dependence was also associated with persistent dacc and parahippocampal gyrus activations in re-inclusion. ppi analyses showed reduced frontocingulate connectivity during social exclusion in alcohol-dependence. alcohol-dependence is thus linked with increased activation in areas eliciting social exclusion feelings (dacc-insula), and with impaired ability to inhibit these feelings (indexed by reduced frontal activations). altered frontal regulation thus appears implied in the interpersonal alterations observed in alcohol-dependence, which seem reinforced by impaired frontocingulate connectivity. this first exploration of the neural correlates of interpersonal problems in alcohol-dependence could initiate the development of a social neuroscience of addictive states. © 2012 american college of neuropsychopharmacology. all rights reserved.”

“● emerging neuroscience and psychological evidence suggests a substantial overlap between physical pain and social pain, which includes commonalities in genetic variants, inflammatory responses and neural pathways. ● social pain, like physical pain, may serve an adaptive evolutionary function, which may explain its similarities with physical pain. social factors & vulnerability in chronic pain ● social factors may increase vulnerability to chronic pain via both focal exposure to major life stressors (e.g., trauma) and through chronic exposure to socially painful situations (e.g., ostracism, isolation and prolonged social conflict). ● heightened pain sensitivity and maladaptive pain coping may be more likely due to exacerbated negative emotional states that are reactive to social factors such as stress and interpersonal conflict. social factors & resilience in chronic pain ● two primary contributors to more effective pain adaptation are positive emotional states and meaningful social ties, including social support, which may predict lower levels of pain intensity and bolster more effective psychological responses under painful conditions. social relationships of those in chronic pain: the importance of social intelligence ● the presence of social support is not always a sufficient condition to promote effective pain adaptation, as overly responsive social networks may compromise self-sufficiency and underutilized social networks may not confer maximal benefits to psychological well-being and pain coping. ● greater attention to individual factors, such as goals and strategies for bolstering enjoyment and meaningful interactions with one’s social networks, may yield benefits in improving physical and psychological functioning. ● novel interventions, such as those to enhance social intelligence, may help to address the social distress and decreased interpersonal enjoyment that are common in people with a chronic pain condition. interventions for caregivers ● addressing the adaptation of caregivers and family members of individuals with chronic pain may serve to ameliorate the pain and emotional distress experienced by both patients and their loved ones. ● interventions for clinicians that enhance compassionate and empathic responses to patients with chronic pain may enhance therapeutic alliance and improve treatment outcomes. future directions for study ● positive psychology interventions are a promising area of psychological intervention that may improve i…”

“Exclusion is a social phenomenon that reliably causes negative consequences for the excluded. from aggression to self-control failure, exclusion yields several maladaptive dividends. however, neuroscience research has peered inside the mechanics of exclusion’s effects, yielding many valuable insights. the chief contribution of the neuroscience of exclusion has been to uncover that social exclusion is truly painful. social pain’s automatic components in the brainstem, anterior cingulate and insular cortices, are counterbalanced by the controlled, regulatory function of the prefrontal cortex. in this chapter, we draw from literatures on emotion regulation, self-affirmation, and mindfulness to suggest ways in which both automatic and controlled neural responses to social exclusion can be altered to promote functional responses. such regulatory modifications can promote affiliative over aggressive behavioral responses, prevent self-regulatory failure, and reduce stress and inflammatory responses in the body’s periphery. given the substantial impact of individual differences on neural responses to exclusionary threats, there exist ways in which these regulatory strategies can be tailored to individual personality profiles. we hope to detail how the neuroscience of exclusion has matured and is now poised to transition from descriptive research to prescriptive interventions.”

“Anyone who lived through high school gym class knows the anxiety of being picked last for the dodgeball team. the same hurt feelings bubble up when you are excluded from lunch with co-workers, fail to land the job you interviewed for or are dumped by a romantic partner. rejection feels lousy. yet for many years, few psychologists tuned into the importance of rejection. ‘it’s like the whole field missed this centrally important part of human life,’ says mark leary, phd, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at duke university. that’s changed over the last decade and a half, as a growing number of researchers have turned their eyes toward this uncomfortable fact of life. ‘people have realized just how much our concern with social acceptance spreads its fingers into almost everything we do,’ he says. as researchers have dug deeper into the roots of rejection, they’ve found surprising evidence that the pain of being excluded is not so different from the pain of physical injury. rejection also has serious implications for an individual’s psychological state and for society in general. social rejection can influence emotion, cognition and even physical health. ostracized people sometimes become aggressive and can turn to violence. in 2003 leary and colleagues analyzed 15 cases of school shooters, and found all but two suffered from social rejection (aggressive behavior, 2003). clearly, there are good reasons to better understand the effects of being excluded. ‘humans have a fundamental need to belong. just as we have needs for food and water, we also have needs for positive and lasting relationships,’ says c. nathan dewall, phd, a psychologist at the university of kentucky. ‘this need is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history and has all sorts of consequences for modern psychological processes.’ pain in the brain as clever as human beings are, we rely on social groups for survival. we evolved to live in cooperative societies, and for most of human history we depended on those groups for our lives. like hunger or thirst, our need for acceptance emerged as a mechanism for survival. ‘a solitary human being could not have survived during the six million years of human evolution while we were living out there on the african savannah,’ leary says. with today’s modern conveniences, a person can physically survive a solitary existence. but that existence is probably not a happy one. thanks to millions of years of natural selection, being rejected is still pai…”