Ostracism Induced Need Threats: The Role of Personality and Compensation

Friedrichsen, Isabella (2022) Ostracism Induced Need Threats: The Role of Personality and Compensation. Bachelor thesis, Psychology.

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Abstract

Ostracism is the act of socially excluding others. Excluded individuals may engage in behaviors ranging from school shootings to donating money. In this project, we disentangle two possible behaviors, namely; prosocial and aggressive behavior. The Temporal Need Threat Model suggests that fundamental needs are threatened during ostracism and to fortify these needs individuals engage in compensatory behavior. We introduce personality as a moderator for the type of compensation that individuals engage in. In an online social media ostracism manipulation, we elicit a need threat in a 217 of 449 participants. We implement the Tangram puzzle task to enable participants to either engage in prosocial or aggressive behavior towards others. We measure their needs before and after the compensation. Then we assess their personality and look at the traits; agreeableness and openness from the Big Five to explain the compensatory behavior. Although we do find that participant’s needs are threatened in the exclusion condition, we find that personality does not predict the type of compensation. We find that for the excluded, need satisfaction rises after the compensation however, cannot be explained by the compensation itself. Concludingly, we propose that an increase in internal validity could aid future research on the role of personality in reaction to psychological threats, such as ostracism.

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor)
Supervisor name:	Agostini, M.
Degree programme:	Psychology
Differentiation route:	None [Bachelor Psychology]
Date Deposited:	27 Jul 2022 14:42
Last Modified:	27 Jul 2022 14:42
URI:	http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/1177

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