| The proposed research had two goals: (1) to show that ostracism causes feedback suppliers to negatively bias feedback on essays, but mainly for essays that challenge their own beliefs, and (2) to show that by introducing a psychosocial resource, the biasing effects of ostracism can be counteracted. Social ostracism was induced in all experiments by having participants engage in a computerized ball-tossing game called Cyberball (Williams et al., 2000). Participants then provided feedback on a poorly written essay, supposedly written by a fellow student. Feedback was the channel through which negative biases were predicted to appear. Study 1 showed no difference in how the essays were rated overall. Study 2 tested whether essay content might moderate the effect of ostracism on feedback. It did so by providing essays that antagonized, concurred with, or were irrelevant to participants' political views. Ostracism not only led to more critical feedback overall, it also led to significantly greater critical feedback on essays expressing antagonistic views to those of the participant. Study 3 tested whether the psychosocial resource of emotional disclosure would reduce the biasing effects of ostracism on feedback regarding an antagonistic view. This hypothesis was not confirmed; there was no interaction between ostracism and disclosure on feedback. However, internal analyses limited to pro-choice participants provided evidence that disclosures laden with cognitive-processing language were associated with more moderate feedback. The implications of these findings for understanding how ostracism and disclosure affect performance feedback are discussed. |
