Ostracism

Ostracism refers to the act of being excluded and ignored by individuals or groups (Williams 1997, 2001 as cited in Zadro, Williams, & Richardson, 2005), and it is ever-present in several forms. Ostracism is seen and exercised, at all levels of society, from formal sanctions among nations and institutions, to informal emergent response between peer and dyadic relationships (Zadro, Williams, & Richardson, 2004). The frequency of ostracism means that everyone is likely to be both a victim and a perpetrator of ostracism within nearly all of our relationships (Zadro et al., 2005).

Williams’ (1997, 2001) model of ostracism asserts that ostracism adversely affects the four primary human needs: belongingness, control, self-esteem and meaningful existence (as cited in Zadro et al., 2005). Several studies on the effects of short term ostracism have reported results that support the model. For example, the experiment conducted by Zadro et al. (2004) using the ball-tossing paradigm showed that targets of ostracism experienced depletion on the four primary needs after only six minutes, even when targets were aware that their exclusion was purely due to the programming of the computer or compliance of other participants to specific procedural instructions. However, most of these studies only examined the effects of ostracism on targets (Zadro et al., 2005).

A recent study conducted by Zadro et al. (2005), using the train ride paradigm, examined the effects of ostracism on targets and sources as well because sources of ostracism in previous studies (usually confederates) have reported feelings of need-reinforcement when they ostracize the targets, yet very little investigative research has been done on this issue. Targets of ostracism in the study reported depletion on all four primary needs (consistent with previous studies) compared to sources of ostracism, whereas sources and targets in the inclusion condition experienced no significant difference on the four primary...