Threats to belonging: understanding the impacts of relational closeness and strength of rejection
Date
2022
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
As social creatures, people thrive under conditions of sustained positive interactions. Experiences, such as social rejection, are a signal of threat to our sense of belonging with others and can contribute to physical and mental health declines. Sociometer theory emphasizes that threats to perceptions of belonging transpire across all types of relationships (Leary et al., 1995). This theory emphasizes that rejection from closer relationships threatens perceptions of belonging more than rejection from distal relationships. Antithetical empirical evidence and a different theory, Need Threat theory, suggest that relational closeness does not moderate the impact of rejection on belonging ( Williams, 2009). During earlier parts of my graduate career, I investigated these discrepancies through 4 studies addressing potential gaps in the previous literature. When met with mixed results in my own research, I proposed a possible hidden moderator of the strength of rejection (i.e., explicit and ambiguous rejection) for this dissertation. I proposed that I would find support for Sociometer theory, but only under ambiguous rejection conditions. Further, I expected to find support for Need Threat theory, but only under conditions of explicit rejection. I developed a novel paradigm to manipulate relationship closeness (conceptualized as commitment based on other work), adapted from the Investment Model of Commitment and the small talk component of the fast friends paradigm (Aron et al., 1997; Rusbult et al., 1998). After pilot testing this novel manipulation, I completed the primary study examining the joint impact of commitment and strength of rejection on perceived belonging. In this study, I found a main effect of commitment. Participants rejected by a partner they were highly committed to felt a more significant threat to their sense of belonging than rejection perpetrators participants were less committed to. This data supports Sociometer theory and the Investment Model of Commitment, but not Need Threat theory.
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Keywords
Close, Need threat, Social rejection, Sociometer