Background and objectives

Prior studies have shown that people display signs of increased social approach motivation and affiliative behaviour in response to social exclusion. This response is considered an adaptive strategy that serves to repair damage to social networks and increase access to mood-enhancing social rewards. However, heightened trait social anxiety (SA) has been linked to decreased approach motivation and responsiveness to social rewards. In the current preliminary experimental study, we tested whether trait SA inhibits the expected increase in social approach following the pain of exclusion. We then tested whether diminished social approach is associated with reduced positive affect.

Methods

Participants played a game of Cyberball and were randomly assigned to receive significantly fewer passes (exclusion condition) or an equal number of passes (control condition) as other players. Subsequently, participants were given the opportunity to engage in an online social interaction activity with avatars they believed were other participants.

Results

Analyses revealed that the exclusion condition led to greater social pain than the control condition. Across conditions, greater social pain was associated with higher levels of approach motivation in anticipation of the social interaction activity, but only for individuals with lower levels of trait SA. Finally, when controlling for levels of trait SA, social pain was associated with positive affect following the social interaction activity, but only for individuals with higher levels of approach motivation.

Limitations

Participants consisted predominantly of female undergraduates, limiting generalizability of these data. As well, hypotheses were supported for the measure of approach motivation but not the measure of approach behaviour. Finally, this study was not powered to enable moderated mediation analyses, which would have provided the most direct test of the hypothesized model.

Conclusions

Heightened approach motivation in the face of social pain may facilitate increased positive affect. However, higher levels of trait SA dampen approach motivation. Future well-powered studies should use moderated mediation analyses to test the hypothesized model more parsimoniously.

中文翻译：

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应对社交创伤：社交痛苦和社交焦虑如何影响获得社交奖励的机会。

背景和目标

先前的研究表明，人们在应对社会排斥时表现出增加社会接近动机和亲和行为的迹象。这种反应被认为是一种适应性策略，可用于修复对社交网络的损害，并增加获得可改善情绪的社交奖励的机会。然而，特质社交焦虑 (SA) 的加剧与接近动机和对社会奖励的反应能力下降有关。在目前的初步实验研究中，我们测试了性状 SA 是否抑制了排斥的痛苦后社会方法的预期增加。然后我们测试了减少的社交方法是否与减少的积极影响有关。

方法

参与者玩网络球游戏并被随机分配与其他玩家一样接受明显更少的传球（排除条件）或相同数量的传球（控制条件）。随后，参与者有机会与他们认为是其他参与者的化身进行在线社交互动活动。

结果

分析表明，排斥条件比对照条件导致更大的社会痛苦。在各种情况下，更大的社交痛苦与预期社交互动活动的更高水平的接近动机相关，但仅适用于具有较低水平特征 SA 的个体。最后，当控制特质 SA 的水平时，社交痛苦与社交互动活动后的积极影响有关，但仅适用于具有较高接近动机水平的个体。

限制

参与者主要由女本科生组成，限制了这些数据的普遍性。同样，假设支持接近动机的测量，但不支持接近行为的测量。最后，这项研究无法进行适度的中介分析，这将提供对假设模型的最直接测试。

结论

面对社会痛苦时，提高接近动机可能会促进积极影响的增加。然而，更高水平的特质 SA 会抑制接近动机。未来强有力的研究应该使用适度的中介分析来更简洁地测试假设模型。