The Influence Of Emotion Regulation Strategy On Implicit Aggression After Social Exclusion

Social exclusion is a common phenomenon in our daily life.The concept of social exclusion refers to the phenomenon that people’s need of belongingness and social relationships is thwarted because the one is excluded by a group or other people,occurring in various patterns,such as exclusion,rejection,isolation and ostracism.Social exclusion not only has a negative impact on the physical and mental health of the individual,but also adversely affect others and society.A large number of studies have found that social exclusion leads to the occurrence of aggression,but there are few studies explored the relationship between social exclusion and implicit aggression.To further understand the relationship between social exclusion and aggression,this study explores the influence of social exclusion on implicit aggression.In addition,in order to reduce the negative impact of social exclusion,this study introduces emotion regulation strategy(cognitive reappraisal/expression suppression)to explore whether it can influence the implicit aggression of the excluded.This study consists of three parts.Study 1 explores the influence of social exclusion on implicit aggression.Study 1 uses one-factor between-subjects experimental design,through Cyberball paradigm manipulated social exclusion,and randomly assigns subjects to the exclusion group and the acceptance group.Study 1 finds that social exclusion will increase the implicit aggression of the excluded.Study 2 uses one-factor between-subjects experimental design to explore whether the emotion regulation strategy can affect the implicit aggression of the excluded.The Cyberball paradigm was also used to manipulate social exclusion.After all subjects accepted the social exclusion operation,different emotion regulation strategies(cognitive reappraisal,expression suppression,no strategy)are initiated.Study 2 finds that after social exclusion,both cognitive reappraisal strategy and expression suppression strategy can significantly reduce the implicit aggression of excluded people,and the difference between the cognitive reappraisal strategy and the expression suppression strategy is not significant.Study 3 uses one-factor between-subjects experimental design,through the recall paradigm manipulated social exclusion,and explores under different social exclusion paradigms,whether the influence of emotion regulation strategy on the implicit aggression of the excluded people is the same as that of Study 2.At the same time,Study 3 uses the ice water paradigm to measure explicit aggression and explores whether the emotion regulation strategy will also have an impact on explicit aggression.Study 3 finds that after social exclusion,cognitive reappraisal strategy reduce the implicit aggression significantly,expression suppression strategy on implicit aggression is not significant,cognitive reappraisal strategy and expression suppression strategy have no significant effect on the explicit aggression of the excluded.Based on the above research,this study draws the following four conclusions:(1)Social exclusion will increase the implicit aggression of the excluded;(2)After social exclusion,the cognitive reappraisal strategy can significantly reduce the implicit aggression of the excluded;(3)After social exclusion,the influence of expression suppression strategy on the implicit aggression of excluded persons is different in different social exclusion research paradigms.The specific performance is as follows:Under the Cyberball paradigm,the expression suppression strategy can significantly reduce the implicit aggression of the excluded;while in the recall paradigm,the expression suppression strategy can also reduce the implicit aggression of the excluded,but the difference is not significant;(4)Under the recall paradigm,the influence of the emotiona regulation strategy on the explicit aggression of the excluded is not significant.