Does social exclusion motivate interpersonal reconnection? Resolving the "porcupine problem."

TLDR

Six experiments support the social reconnection hypothesis that social exclusion heightens motivation to form new social bonds. Exclusion increased interest in new friends, collaborative desire, positive impressions, and reward valuation for new partners, but did not prompt reconnection with perpetrators or strangers, and the effect was weaker in those high in fear of negative evaluation.

Abstract

Evidence from 6 experiments supports the social reconnection hypothesis, which posits that the experience of social exclusion increases the motivation to forge social bonds with new sources of potential affiliation. Threat of social exclusion led participants to express greater interest in making new friends, to increase their desire to work with others, to form more positive impressions of novel social targets, and to assign greater rewards to new interaction partners. Findings also suggest potential boundary conditions to the social reconnection hypothesis. Excluded individuals did not seem to seek reconnection with the specific perpetrators of exclusion or with novel partners with whom no face-to-face interaction was anticipated. Furthermore, fear of negative evaluation moderated responses to exclusion such that participants low in fear of negative evaluation responded to new interaction partners in an affiliative fashion, whereas participants high in fear of negative evaluation did not.