Ostracism in social networking

Previous research has shown the negative effects of ostracism across a number of different contexts. Recent years have seen a rise in the use of social networking. As a result the current research seeks to extend previous findings by exploring the effects of ostracism within the context of social networking. Participants were brought into the laboratory and randomly assigned to either the exclusion or inclusion condition. All participants were instructed to write a status update and comment on the statuses of others in the room using Facebook accounts created by the experimenter. Without their knowledge the settings in half of the accounts were changed such that their status would be invisible to the others in the room, ensuring they would receive no comments on their status. It was hypothesized that ostracism would impact on the individual’s fundamental needs such that those in the exclusion condition would feel significantly lower levels of belonging, self-esteem, meaningful existence and control than those in the inclusion condition. It was further hypothesized that this relationship would be moderated by individual differences, namely General Belonging, Rejection Sensitivity and Contingent Self Worth. Results confirmed the first hypothesis in that those in the exclusion condition felt significantly lower levels of belonging, selfesteem, meaningful existence and control than those in the inclusion condition. Results further showed that none of the moderators were significant suggesting that these individual difference variables had no significant impact on the effect of ostracism on the four needs