Death of the social self? Comparing the effects of ostracism to mortality salience

ABSTRACT

The ‘social death’ metaphor is used to reflect ostracism’s severity and death-related themes often influence ostracism research. To determine its accuracy, we examined the similarity of ostracism and mortality salience (MS) outcomes. To manipulate these constructs, we used writing prompts in Study 1, and Cyberball and a novel MS manipulation, ‘Cybergrave,’ in studies 2, 3a, and 3b. In Study 4, we correlated chronic ostracism and death-thought accessibility. Ostracism uniquely threatened psychological needs, whereas MS uniquely activated death thoughts. Moreover, the correlation between chronic ostracism and death-thought accessibility was small and non-significant when controlling for related variables. Results suggest the death metaphor may not always be accurate. Death-related language may bias how ostracism is conceptualized and studied, emphasizing pain over recovery.

KEYWORDS:

• Ostracism
• social exclusion
• mortality salience
• death
• death-thought accessibility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data not available- participant consent

The institutional review board at the university where the studies were conducted did not allow us to share the data with reviewers, because they are now requiring that we include in our post-session consent form exactly how and where data will be shared. Due to the sensitive nature of the research, supporting data is not available. We have shared, instead, the study materials, analysis code, and output files on the Open Science Framework.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15534510.2024.2342308

Notes

1. We incorrectly powered for a large effect for Studies 1 and 2 as opposed to a medium effect (η² = 0.06). An a priori power analysis with a medium effect yields a suggested sample size of 156 participants. In both Studies 1 and 2 we exceeded that number.

2. All study materials are uploaded to a project OSF page, https://osf.io/r9ntb

3. All participants completed this measure after the prostitution bail measure. It was included for exploratory purposes. Similarly, however, no analyses with shoplifting bail were significant. Details concerning this measure are included in the supplemental materials.

4. These analyses are in the supplemental materials.

5. For all studies, results were analyzed with those who failed the manipulation check included and excluded. If the pattern and significance of results did not change, we reported the analyses with the full sample. Degrees of freedom vary slightly across studies due to missing data. All 95% confidence intervals are of the mean difference.

6. Only measures that did not appear in the previous study will appear in this section. All other measures and their reliabilities can be found in the supplemental materials.

7. We directly replicated study 2 in a follow-up study, but still experienced participant attrition in the mortality salience condition. We report study 2a in the supplemental materials.

8. Due to COVID-19 quarantine we had to stop in-person recruitment of participants.

9. Reflective need satisfaction (measured several minutes after the manipulation) analyses are listed as primary analyses in the pre-registration but were not included in the manuscript because we did not have relevant hypotheses about the effects of the manipulations after time had passed. The analyses involving self-esteem as a moderator of the independent variable are listed as primary analyses in the pre-registration but are included in the supplemental materials as exploratory. These analyses are reported as exploratory because self-esteem was considered as a possible moderator only because Terror Management Theory suggests that it can moderate the effects of mortality salience. However, its interaction with ostracism on relevant dependent variables is not theoretically based.

10. We chose this effect size from Study 2a, our replication of Study 2, included in the supplemental materials.

11. Given that each study had six manipulation checks, the complete set of analyses can be found in the supplemental materials. Only participants who answered all three categorical questions correctly passed the manipulation check. Primary analyses were conducted with these participants included and excluded. Any deviations in pattern and significance are reported.

12. Please see the supplemental materials for the analyses.