Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 7-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

How Attributional Ambiguity Shapes Physiological and Emotional Responses to Social Rejection and Acceptance

How Attributional Ambiguity Shapes Physiological and Emotional Responses to Social Rejection and... The authors examined White and Black participants’ emotional, physiological, and behavioral responses to same-race or different-race evaluators, following rejecting social feedback or accepting social feedback. As expected, in ingroup interactions, the authors observed deleterious responses to social rejection and benign responses to social acceptance. Deleterious responses included cardiovascular (CV) reactivity consistent with threat states and poorer performance, whereas benign responses included CV reactivity consistent with challenge states and better performance. In intergroup interactions, however, a more complex pattern of responses emerged. Social rejection from different-race evaluators engendered more anger and activational responses, regardless of participants’ race. In contrast, social acceptance produced an asymmetrical race pattern—White participants responded more positively than did Black participants. The latter appeared vigilant and exhibited threat responses. Discussion centers on implications for attributional ambiguity theory and potential pathways from discrimination to health outcomes. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Personality and Social Psychology American Psychological Association

How Attributional Ambiguity Shapes Physiological and Emotional Responses to Social Rejection and Acceptance

Download PDF
14 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/american-psychological-association/how-attributional-ambiguity-shapes-physiological-and-emotional-T0W02ICih0

References (72)

Publisher
American Psychological Association
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 American Psychological Association
ISSN
0022-3514
eISSN
1939-1315
DOI
10.1037/0022-3514.94.2.278
pmid
18211177
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The authors examined White and Black participants’ emotional, physiological, and behavioral responses to same-race or different-race evaluators, following rejecting social feedback or accepting social feedback. As expected, in ingroup interactions, the authors observed deleterious responses to social rejection and benign responses to social acceptance. Deleterious responses included cardiovascular (CV) reactivity consistent with threat states and poorer performance, whereas benign responses included CV reactivity consistent with challenge states and better performance. In intergroup interactions, however, a more complex pattern of responses emerged. Social rejection from different-race evaluators engendered more anger and activational responses, regardless of participants’ race. In contrast, social acceptance produced an asymmetrical race pattern—White participants responded more positively than did Black participants. The latter appeared vigilant and exhibited threat responses. Discussion centers on implications for attributional ambiguity theory and potential pathways from discrimination to health outcomes.

Journal

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology – American Psychological Association

Published: Feb 1, 2008

There are no references for this article.