GENDER OSTRACISM

Gender Ostracism

Gender Ostracism

Ostracism occurs when someone is ignored and excluded by others. According to Kipling Williams and his colleagues, the act of ostracism is an adaptive response that occurs within groups as a reaction to burdensome members who threaten the group's strength or safety (Williams, 2001). Ostracism can allow the ostracized individual to correct his or her behavior or seek out other groups to join, thereby ensuring the individual's survival. Al though considered largely a group phenomenon, ostracism can also occur within dyadic relationships, where it is commonly known as the silent treatment. Since the mid-1990s, researchers have conducted hundreds of experiments assessing the impact of ostracism (and the related phenomenon of rejection) on an individual's physiological responses, cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. A variety of paradigms have been used to manipulate ostracism and to measure its outcomes, resulting in converging evidence that even the slightest hint of ostracism is detected quickly and causes immediate pain, distress, an embodied feeling of coldness, threatened needs (belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence), and negative emotion. The evidence then diverges into different (sometimes paradoxical) behavioral responses.

Often, behavioral responses to ostracism appear to facilitate future inclusion in a group. For instance, ostracized individuals have been observed to pay closer attention to social information and to better interpret nonverbal social signals related to acceptance and liking (e.g., distinguishing between genuine and non-genuine smiles).

Methods to Experimentally Induce Ostracism

Ostracism study uses a kind of study procedures, or paradigms. Whereas a robust and reliable answer (e.g., agony, anguish, contradictory emotion) happens to all manipulations of ostracism, the variations documented overhead (emotional numbness, pro-social vs. antisocial responses) may contemplate dissimilarities amidst the paradigms that are not yet completely understood (Williams, 2007). The genuine cause we desire identical opening for our daughters to play sports is so they too ...