Abstract
People are sensitive about whether they are accepted by others. Although social exclusion has adverse effects on a person's feelings and behavior, it remains unclear whether a similar response occurs when he or she is not chosen by others in a group to which the person believes that they belong. Here we report an event-related potential (ERP) study on the cognitive processes in response to such a micro-rejection using a simple computerized ball-tossing game called Cyberball. We found that a negative ERP component, feedback error-related negativity (fERN), was elicited around 200 ms after a ball toss when the ball did not come to a participant (micro-rejection) as compared to when the ball came to them (inclusion). As the fERN is known to occur when the event is worse than expected, our findings suggest that not being chosen by others in a group is perceived negatively.
