Child Witnesses to Ostracism: Innocent Bystanders or Contributors to Social Isolation?

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Child Witnesses to Ostracism
Innocent Bystanders or Contributors to Social
Isolation? Anne Howard, Tiffanie
Almeida, John Pryor, Ph.D., Steven Landau,
Ph.D. Department of
Psychology Illinois
State University

• RESULTS
• A series of t-tests revealed no gender
  differences among any dependent variables. In
  addition, participants age was unrelated to
  self-reported social behaviors or performance in
  the game. As such, all data were pooled for boys
  and girls and across grade level.
• To determine if participants were selective in
  their willingness to play catch with the other
  players, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA)
  with repeated measures was applied to the percent
  of ball tosses to each player. Contrary to
  expectations, participants threw the ball to
  Chris (M 41, SD 3.67), the ostracized
  player, significantly more than to Alex (M 29,
  SD 2.33) or Pat (M 30, SD 4.16), Wilks
  lamda .70, F(2, 17) 3.63, p lt .05. See Figure
  1.

• ABSTRACT
• Purpose Although it is well established that
  ostracism is highly aversive, no known study has
  examined the processes involved when a child
  witnesses the social exclusion of another child.
  The purpose of this study was to ascertain if 4th
  - through 8th children would be willing to play
  with a child whom they observe is excluded by
  others. Method Before joining a
  computer-generated ball-toss game of CyberBall,
  one-half of child participants were assigned to
  an ostracism condition in which they saw one
  cyber player excluded from the game by two other
  players. Participants in the control condition
  viewed the game in which no player was
  ostracized. After viewing the game, children
  entered the game with the other cyber players,
  and one game player was excluded by the other two
  players (i.e., they did not throw the ball to
  him/her). Results Although no differences in
  ball-throwing frequency existed between the
  ostracism and control group, participants engaged
  in a reversal of ostracism by throwing the ball
  to the excluded player more than the other
  virtual players. Also, self-reported prosocial
  behavior predicted the extent to which the
  participant engaged in this inclusion.
  Conclusions Witnessing ostracism did not deter
  participants from including an excluded child.
  Indeed, participants willingness to play with an
  ostracized player was predicated on their
  self-reported prosocial behavior. Further
  research is needed to explore the utility of
  Cyberball and to gain a better understanding of
  the role of peer bystanders.
• INTRODUCTION
• As humans, each of us has a strong need to
  belong, and this need transcends age, gender,
  racial, and cultural boundaries (Baumeister
  Leary, 1995). As such, the experience of social
  ostracism, a form of rejection, exclusion, or
  isolation, can be extremely unpleasant and
  unsettling (Williams, 1997, 2001 Williams,
  Cheung, Choi, 2000).
• Regarding children and teens, social exclusion
  can be both an outcome and a predictor of violent
  behavior.
• Regarding the outcome value of ostracism,
  children chronically victimized by bullies often
  experience social exclusion associated with
  their victim status. For example, research
  indicates the peer witnesses of bullying (i.e.,
  bystanders not directly involved) devalue the
  victim and tend to be unmoved by the prospect
  that the victim will suffer future harm (Perry,
  Williard, Perry, 1990).
• Regarding the predictive value of ostracism, a
  sense of social exclusion is recognized as a
  common characteristic of the perpetrators of
  school shootings (Leary, Kowalski, Smith,
  Phillips, 2003).
• Despite overwhelming evidence to suggest that
  ostracism has detrimental effects on the
  adjustment of children and adolescents, scant
  attention has been paid to understanding the
  processes involved.
• While extensive research has focused on the
  dyadic nature of relational, physical, and other
  forms of aggression, little is known about the
  peer bystanders who witnesses these occurrences.
  Specifically, research is yet to uncover the
  contribution that peers make to the ostracism of
  socially excluded children. Peer bystanders may
  become active participants, and exacerbate the
  exclusion process, or merely passive, hoping to
  avoid involvement in the antisocial episode.

• It was anticipated that, upon questioning,
  children who witness ostracism would express
  feelings indicating they devalue the ostracized
  child to whom no one throws the ball, as well as
  an indifference regarding future malevolence
  towards that child.
• It was predicted that children who present a
  self-reported profile of high negative and low
  positive social behaviors (i.e., relational
  aggression) would be more likely to engage in
  ostracizing behavior during game-play.
• METHOD
• Participants
• Twenty 4th- through 8th grade boys and girls who
  attend a university-affiliated laboratory school
  served as participants. Fifty-five percent were
  male (Mean age 12.5).
• Procedure
• Each participant was told that s/he was going to
  evaluate a new computer game called CyberBall,
  and that the other players in the game were real
  children from neighboring states.
• Each child participated in two trials of
  CyberBall
• 1. In the first trial, participants passively
  viewed the game being played by three cyber
  players. Those assigned to the ostracism
  condition observed two of the virtual players
  throwing the ball back-and-forth (i.e., never
  throwing the ball to the third player who was
  being ostracized). Participants in the control
  condition watched the three players randomly
  throw the ball to each other an equal number of
  times.
• 2. Following their exposure to either the
  ostracism or control condition, each participant
  entered the game with the other three players.
  Trial 2 was the same for each participant, and
  the game was programmed such that one player,
  Chris, was ostracized (i.e., excluded from the
  game) by the two other players. The only way
  Chris received the ball was if the participant
  threw it to him/her. The number of times each
  participant threw his/her ball to each of the
  three cyber players was recorded.