Vicarious Group-Based Rejection: Creating a Potentially Dangerous Mix of Humiliation, Powerlessness, and Anger

Tinka M Veldhuis, Ernestine H Gordijn, René Veenstra and Siegwart Lindenberg

PLOS ONE, 2014, vol. 9, issue 4, 1-10

Abstract: Rejection can convey that one is seen as inferior and not worth bothering with. Is it possible for people to feel vicariously rejected in this sense and have reactions that are similar to those following personal rejection, such as feeling humiliated, powerless, and angry? A study on personal rejection was followed by two main studies on vicarious group-based rejection. It was found that merely observing rejection of ingroup members can trigger feelings of humiliation that are equally intense as those experienced in response to personal rejection. Moreover, given that the rejection is explicit, vicariously experienced feelings of humiliation can be accompanied by powerlessness and anger. Potentially, this combination of emotions could be an important source of offensive action against rejecters.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0095421 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 95421&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0095421

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0095421

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().