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Ostracism Online: A social media ostracism paradigm

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Abstract

We describe Ostracism Online, a novel, social media–based ostracism paradigm designed to (1) keep social interaction experimentally controlled, (2) provide researchers with the flexibility to manipulate the properties of the social situation to fit their research purposes, (3) be suitable for online data collection, (4) be convenient for studying subsequent within-group behavior, and (5) be ecologically valid. After collecting data online, we compared the Ostracism Online paradigm with the Cyberball paradigm (Williams & Jarvis Behavior Research Methods, 38, 174–180, 2006) on need-threat and mood questionnaire scores (van Beest & Williams Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91, 918–928, 2006). We also examined whether ostracized targets of either paradigm would be more likely to conform to their group members than if they had been included. Using a Bayesian analysis of variance to examine the individual effects of the different paradigms and to compare these effects across paradigms, we found analogous effects on need-threat and mood. Perhaps because we examined conformity to the ostracizers (rather than neutral sources), neither paradigm showed effects of ostracism on conformity. We conclude that Ostracism Online is a cost-effective, easy to use, and ecologically valid research tool for studying the psychological and behavioral effects of ostracism.

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Notes

  1. Using the nontransformed data in the model did not change the results meaningfully.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Free University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Wouter Wolf, Ana Levordashka, Johanna R. Ruff, Steven Kraaijeveld & Jan-Matthis Lueckmann

  2. Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Kipling D. Williams

  3. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Tinbergen Building, 9 South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3UD, England, UK

    Wouter Wolf

  4. Knowledge Media Research Center, Schleichstraße 6, 72076, Tübingen, Germany

    Ana Levordashka

Authors
  1. Wouter Wolf
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  2. Ana Levordashka
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  3. Johanna R. Ruff
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  4. Steven Kraaijeveld
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  5. Jan-Matthis Lueckmann
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  6. Kipling D. Williams
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Wouter Wolf or Ana Levordashka.

Additional information

The Ostracism Online paradigm: http://dx.doi.org/http://smpo.github.io/socialmedia/

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Wolf, W., Levordashka, A., Ruff, J.R. et al. Ostracism Online: A social media ostracism paradigm. Behav Res 47, 361–373 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-014-0475-x

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