Wertheimer-Kolloquium

How Rejection Affects People

Prof. Roy Baumeister
University of Florida

Termin: 24. Juni 2015 Zeit: 16 Uhr c.t. Ort: Campus Westend, SH 5.101

If the need to belong is one of the most important foundations of human motivation, then social rejection, which thwarts that need, should produce striking effects. This talk covers the past decade’s work in my laboratory on how social rejection affects people. Their behavior changes drastically, including effects on aggression, helping, self-defeating behavior, intelligent performance, self-regulation, and the rational pursuit of enlightened self-interest. It explores cognitive factors and emotional ones. Surprisingly, the immediate impact of aggression appears to involve a numbness akin to shock reactions, characterized by a loss of emotion and even of sensitivity to pain.