The Negative Effect Of Social Exclusion On Cooperation:Intentional Revenge Or Lack Of Trust?

Regardless of the scale of organization,cooperation is the best choice to realize collective interests.Paradoxically,social exclusion often occurs in organizational contexts,which not only affects the emotional well-being of individuals,but may also have negative effects on their cooperation.Therefore,it is now an important academic topic under this social problem to explore how social exclusion has a negative effect on cooperation and what methods can be used to solve or alleviate it.Based on the temporal need-threat framework,previous researchers have proposed three main hypotheses about the role of social exclusion.The "re-connection hypothesis" believes that social exclusion motivates individuals expect to rebuild social relationships;the "aggression hypothesis" believes that social exclusion leads aggress towards general others;the "retaliate hypothesis" believes that the excluded will only retaliate against the perpetrators of the exclusion.But at present,there are only few studies comparing the three hypotheses,and there is no direct evidence to consider different types of social exclusion in single-round games.Therefore,we designed three studies to explore how social exclusion affects cooperation in single-round games and how to alleviate this problem.Study 1 aims to test the three main hypotheses of social exclusion in single-round social dilemmas with no feedback,and to explore whether the types of social exclusion(social neglect/social rejection)will affect cooperation.To test the robustness of the results,two social dilemmas were used to measure the level of cooperation in Study 1a and Study 1b.Then,Study 2 introduces the expectation of the partner’s cooperation level,and explores whether the reduction in cooperation of the excluded is due to "intentional retaliation" or "lack of trust".By comparing the difference between the actual cooperation behavior and their cooperative expectation of the partners in each condition,study 2’s results would favor one hypothesis over another.Built on the results of study 2,study 3 attempts to explore whether multiple rounds of friendly interaction can effectively enhance cooperation of the excluded.The results showed that:(1)In a single-round game,when partners are members of their group,compared with the social acceptance group,the two types of social exclusion groups(social neglect group/social rejection group)had less cooperation,but there was no significant difference between the two exclusion groups;when the partner is a stranger,there is no significant difference in the cooperation between the two types of social exclusion group and the social acceptance group(Study 1a,Study1 b,& Study 2).(2)Individuals who had been social excluded cooperated less with the perpetrators of exclusion,because they lacked trust of the partners rather than intentionally retaliated in kind(Study 2).(3)Multiple rounds of friendly interaction could alleviate the negative effect of social exclusion on cooperation,and this alleviation effect is more effective for the socially neglected group(Study 3).The above results show that in single-round games,no matter what type of social exclusion,its effects on cooperation are consistent with the "retaliate hypothesis".And this is not out of malicious retaliation by the excluded,but because they lack trust in the perpetrators of the exclusion.In addition,multiple rounds of friendly interaction have been shown to help rebuild the trust.Therefore,the results of this study provided direct support for the "retaliate hypothesis" of social exclusion in single-round games,and proved the cause of this phenomenon.At the same time,an effective plan to alleviate the negative effects of social exclusion was proposed.