Ostracism Disrupts Self-Continuity

Abstract

We conducted six studies to test our hypotheses that ostracism disrupts self-continuity and that self-affirmation counters ostracism’s negative influence on self-continuity. Participants who experienced more ostracism in their daily lives (Study 1), imagined being ostracized (Studies 2 and 5), recalled a past ostracism experience (Studies 3 and 6), and were ostracized in a ball-tossing game (Study 4) reported lower levels of self-continuity than their counterparts. Moreover, neither violations of expectation nor negativity of the experience was sufficient in decreasing self-continuity (Study 5). Finally, self-affirmation weakened the negative effect of ostracism on self-continuity (Study 6). Taken together, our findings provide converging causal evidence for our hypotheses and provide novel insights for the literature on how daily interpersonal interactions influence individuals’ sense of an enduring self. In addition, the moderation of self-affirmation reported in our research indicates an effective approach to diminishing the negative influence of ostracism.