Ouch! That Stings! Why Rejection Hurts So Much (And How to Deal With It)
Episode Stats
Summary
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love. Being rejected by a crush, a romantic partner, or a friend or potential employer not only ruins the taste of one s favorite sandwich bread, but causes great psychological distress and even physical pain. Here to walk us through one of life s worst feelings is Mark Leary, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University and the editor of Interpersonal rejection.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love charlie brown one said
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indeed being spurned by one's crush or for that matter by a friend or potential employer not only
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ruins the taste of one's favorite sandwich bread but causes great psychological distress and even
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physical pain here to walk us through one of life's worst feelings is mark leary professor of
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psychology and neuroscience at duke university and the editor of interpersonal rejection today on the
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show mark unpacks the experience of social rejection including why we're so sensitive to it and the
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emotions and behaviors it causes which can be positive and pro-social or maladaptive and even
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violent we discuss the role that is played by the sociometer concept mark originated in monitoring
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our social acceptance and rejection and what influences its sensitivity to fluctuations in
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our relational value and mark offers advice on how to remove some of the sting of rejection
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and civilly reject others after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash rejection
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all right mark leary welcome back to the show i'm delighted to be here so you are a professor of
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psychology you have done research on the self we had you on last time to discuss the curse of the self
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but you also done research on interpersonal rejection which is social rejection how do you
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as a psychologist define interpersonal rejection i think it's easiest to think of rejection as a
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subjective psychological experience it's hard to define it in terms of how people behave toward us
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because different people interpret other people's behaviors in different ways and i might feel
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rejected by something somebody does and you wouldn't so rejection is really the psychological experience
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of feeling like other people don't adequately value their relationship with us at this moment
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it's a signal of low relational value all right we're going to get into this objective subjective split
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with social rejection and talking about your idea of the sociometer yes here in a bit but let's talk
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about this what happens to us emotionally and even physically when we experience social rejection
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well anytime we feel like people don't adequately value their connection with us at the moment and it could
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be a big thing it could be a romantic rejection we got fired from our job got kicked off the team we
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were ostracized it could be a big kind of rejection like that that makes us very clear other people
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don't value their connection with us it could be very minor things we just felt ignored or dismissed or
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hey we didn't get invited to that party those things all kick off a series of psychological and
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emotional and behavioral reactions in us that involve our emotions and we can go into detail about what those
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emotions are and our views of ourselves and our behavior becomes affected anytime we feel rejected
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we clearly have a response it's hard to imagine a person who's been rejected who just shrugs and has
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absolutely no reaction whatsoever we are very sensitive to the possibility of being rejected
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it's a feature of human nature it's an evolved part of the human brain to be sensitive to rejection
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because throughout evolutionary history we had to live in groups with other people and they had to
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accept us they couldn't kick us out we would never have survived out there on the plains of africa
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during evolution just living by ourselves and so we had to behave in ways that led other people to at
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least minimally accept us and be very sensitive to those instances in which they found us lacking in
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some ways and wanted to reject us so that's why we are so so sensitive to other people's acceptance and
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rejection of us so what are some of those emotions we might experience when we feel like we've been
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rejected by somebody or excluded the key emotion that is probably common to most instances of
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rejection is the thing that we in everyday life call hurt feelings you know why are your feelings hurt
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your feelings are hurt when you feel that someone doesn't adequately value you at the moment and this
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could even be someone that you know loves you and cares about you but at that moment they don't seem to
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really value their connection with you i could imagine you know on my anniversary suggesting to
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my wife hey let's go out to dinner she goes oh i'd love to but you know i really want to watch wheel of
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fortune tonight or something oh that would sting so hurt feelings is the fundamental rejection emotion
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but we experience other things as well depending on the consequences of the rejection so if rejection
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involves losing a valued relationship somebody rejects us tells us they never want to see us
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again we often feel very sad and sadness is caused by the loss of something valued if we feel like it was
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unfair that they rejected us that often creates anger hostility people get enraged at times if the
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rejection leads to negative consequences of various kinds we can experience anxiety well what's going to
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happen now i'm getting kicked out of my house if we think it's going to last for a long time and we're
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not going to find anybody else for a friend or a romantic partner or group memberships well then we'll
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feel lonely it's really interesting there are so many negative emotions attached to rejection that it sort
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of suggests to me that evolution really wanted us to make sure that we didn't miss any instances in
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which we were rejected that's how important it is it triggers all kinds of negative things depending on the
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context and it motivates us to respond in one way or another you mentioned whenever we experience
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these emotions we also have there's changes in our behavior what are some behavior responses to
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rejection there's three major categories one is sort of a helpless resignation okay she kicked me out
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of the house and you know i gotta go on with my life and it's just a helpless resignation
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passive moving on a second one is a very pro-social reaction where it's clear that i might be able to
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repair this rejection get back on the team to get the friend to come back to win the romantic partner
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back if i just treat them nice enough so in some instances people begin to behave more more positively
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more pro-socially or they as we just discussed people become aggressive and angry about it
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they become vengeful and they want to get back at the person and which way people respond depends a lot
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on what they think the prospect is for getting the person back if i am sure that you're gone and you're
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not coming back at all and particularly if i think it was my fault and i'm just going to be resigned and
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i'm going to walk away with my head hung down and my feelings hurt if i think there's some chance of
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repairing whatever it was that led to the rejection then i'm going to behave positively to try to get back on the
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team to try to get the job to try to get the romantic partner back if i feel like there's no chance at
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all i'm going to get you back and this is all your fault and i blame you then you're going to get the
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anger and potential aggression in response so we can either sort of sulk away we can respond more
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positively or we become angry and in addition to the psychological responses emotional responses behavior
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responses rejection can also affect us physiologically like it actually you know can cause changes
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in our body where we kind of feel physical pain almost absolutely we suggested just speculatively
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years ago that the systems that make us experience hurt feelings in the brain may be somehow related
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to the same systems that make us feel physical pain and at the time we were just guessing it was
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speculative but neuroscientists have shown that that's the case that some of the same brain systems
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that light up when you are physically in pain also light up when you're in social pain because other
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people haven't valued enough not only that but you kick into high gear your sympathetic nervous system
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kicks on with the classic fight or flight or freeze reaction that we have anytime we have a strong
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emotional reaction so yeah we hurt we're experiencing some psychological pain and our whole system gets
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really revved up have you seen there's a simpsons episode where lisa simpson goes on what ralph
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wiggum thinks is a date but lisa doesn't think it's a date but ralph does and then and in the moment
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like lisa rejects him very publicly saying this is not a date i'm just going with you
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you know and uh you can see ralph just physically like his heartbreak it got recorded on tv and bart
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replays it over and over again he's like hey lisa you can actually pinpoint the second
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when you break ralph's heart and just plays it over and over again i think we've all experienced
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that ralph wiggum where you're just like oh you just like oh man that feels so bad to be rejected
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everything seemed to be okay and it takes a split second and suddenly you've got that broken heart
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and the pain and the resignation all at once yeah it comes on quickly in elementary school kids are
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often taught you have to include everyone be friends with everyone but something you argue is that
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social rejection or interpersonal rejection is actually a necessary part of social life why is
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that yeah i i would hate to quite word it that way and i may have worded it that way sometime in the past
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it's not so much we have to reject other people but we have to recognize we can't value everybody we
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meet equally and they can't value us equally we only have so much time and energy for our social
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connections so how many good friends can you really have research suggests that it's maximum
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five to seven good friends and most people don't even have that many you just can't you can't have
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40 really good friends you can't maintain those kinds of friendships so it is true that we have to be aware
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of the fact that we can't have close supportive social connections with a very very large number of
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people and we need to think about that from both sides one is from the side we know we can't value
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everybody equally sure we can treat everybody in a friendly way but that doesn't mean we have a strong
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supportive emotional connection to that person we only have so much time and energy but we also have to
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realize that's true of everybody else so sometimes when we feel rejected it's not that the other person is
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rejecting us it's the fact that their niches these their little slots to have friends and romantic
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partners and people in their lives are kind of filled up and there's just not room for us and yes
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they don't value us as one of their top five people but that doesn't mean they devalue us we're just on a
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different tier and i think it's important for people to remember when dealing with their own feelings of
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rejection with friends or in work settings or on teams and other people any other person can't have
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close connections with everybody and maybe you're sort of secondary status but that doesn't mean
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they're really rejecting or devaluing you yeah that makes sense yeah you can only have one spouse
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unless you're a polygamist yeah i guess but yeah an employer can only hire so many people so they can't
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hire everyone that wants a job so they have to they have to reject and it's again like you said it
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doesn't mean like they devalue you or you think you're not worthy of being valued having that
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relationship they just they don't have enough room in their finite social brain that's well said
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yeah so typically when i think people think of social rejection they think of like romantic
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rejection we'll talk a little bit about that or being rejected by friends but we experience social
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rejection when you you know apply for a job and you don't get it that's a form of social rejection
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you're being excluded from a group or i remember when i was in college and i applied for
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a particular scholarship like the presidential leadership scholarship i didn't get it and i felt
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rejected that's a form of another form of interpersonal rejection and going back what you said earlier
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this idea that social rejection or interpersonal rejection is a subjective feeling i want to dig deeper
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into this because as you said objectively someone can look like they're being accepted socially from a
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third party they belong to the group etc but subjectively that person who looks like from a
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third party they're being accepted they feel like they're being socially excluded so walk us through
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more of this objective subjective split of interpersonal rejection no that's a very important point
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our reactions to rejection situation situations that appear to be rejecting are based entirely on our
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perceptions of what's going on in our interpretations and those aren't always right people may not realize
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that they're being rejected in many cases everybody can see that she doesn't want to have anything to
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do with you you don't seem to get it or they can feel rejected when they're not which is actually
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i think probably more common so i think when we feel rejected one of the things that's really useful
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to do is to try to be as honest and accurate as possible
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and deconstructing what is really going on here knowing that our perception of the events our
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interpretation of the events may in fact not be accurate and we've done several studies over the
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years that show that people's judgments of how much other people are being accepting actual other
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people in that situation we have the ratings of those other people how much they like and accept you
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and we get your ratings of how much you think they like and accept you and you're way off
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but you think that you're right and as human beings we do tend to err in the direction of
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overestimating rejection that's true of most threat systems in the body we're more likely to react to
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things as if they're dangerous when they're not than to think that dangerous things are safe we always
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lean in the direction of of over interpreting threats all animals do that you think of the deer how
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many times does a deer in the woods get kind of skittish and startled and run away when it's really
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nothing going on that's to make sure it doesn't miss a real threat and so our brains are programmed
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to overreact to potential rejection when it's not really there just to make sure we don't miss
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a real rejection it's like making sure the fire alarm really does pick up a fire so it's gonna go off
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when i just burn food on the stove in the kitchen i think people need to realize that too we we
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overestimate rejection we underestimate the degree to which people want to have connections with us
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and so we feel worse about our social lives sometimes than we really should how does your
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idea of the sociometer play into this objective subjective split of rejection well the sociometer
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is a label that i made up for the psychological and brain systems that monitor our social acceptance
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and rejection that monitor our relational value in other people's eyes it's almost like we have
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antenna up almost all the time that's monitoring the social environment for information about how
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other people feel about us we're not consciously thinking about it all the time we don't walk through
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life just thinking hey what's he think oh does she like me oh is he being rejecting but we have
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these antenna up and they're monitoring the social situation but now and then just non-consciously
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they pick up some little cue that little frown from that person that look of disinterest it dawns
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you that it took her two days to reply to your email and then a little warning system goes off
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that says hey you probably ought to take a look at this there may be a problem here it's like a smoke
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detector going off so the sociometer is just this gauge that monitors our relational value and when it
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goes off then we start looking around and trying to figure it out we start looking at the situation and
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what did i do and what did she really mean by that and then the emotions begin to come out with
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described our views of ourselves start to come out and change if we start feeling like we're being
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devalued we start wondering what's wrong with us and our self-esteem can go down so it's just it's
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just a monitoring system operates non-consciously most of the time but then when it picks up some kind
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of information regarding rejection then we kick into a conscious analysis of it and have a reaction
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and from what i've read it sounds like the sociometer is it can be context specific like it's going to be
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more sensitive in certain situations than others so for example my sociometer in relation to my family
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i'm going to be more sensitive to maybe slights from them than say to you know strangers on the
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internet like i don't really care if i get excluded by some rando on the internet but if my wife gives me
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the cold shoulder i'm going to be more sensitive to that that no that's absolutely true and and that
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makes sense obviously because we worry more about our relational value to the people who are close to
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us that we have relationships with us but if we're just passing in the street you know it really
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shouldn't matter the interesting thing is it does sometimes sometimes we do have a reaction our
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sociometer sends off a warning signal about somebody's reaction that really shouldn't matter to us
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in the least i remember i was in switzerland a few years ago checking out of a grocery store and i just
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made some what i thought was a funny comment to the woman who was checking me out and i don't know
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it was a language difference or a cultural difference but she looked at me like with disgust on her face
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like well you know what what kind of a maggot are you anyway and i realized i just sort of stumbled out
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of the store and i got out in front of the store and i just thought oh my god and my feelings were hurt
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and i felt like gee she thought i was an idiot and but then it dawned on me why do i care
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i mean i'm never going to see this person again she just didn't think i was funny what that told
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me is our sociometers even though they do distinguish between important relationships
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and non-important relationships they still are prone to over trigger in situations that really
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don't matter very much so how that guy bumps into me in the bar which seems to me like he's dismissing
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me somehow it affects me even though it doesn't matter and i think it's important to know that
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that just because your sociometer kicks off and you're getting charged up about this rejection
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this might not matter in your life at all move on it does not matter how does our sociometer
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develop is it something that we're born with or do we develop it through experience
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well certainly uh its operation develops as kids grow you know when you're born and you're an infant
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you're not judging the degree to which you're accepted or rejected by other people as you get older
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it begins to become active and by the time kids are two and a half three years old they
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are beginning to realize some people treat me better some people seem to like me and some people
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don't and as it develops it becomes calibrated in terms of the experiences we've had the ideal
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situation think of it as a gas gauge in a car but this is a gauge in your brain that's judging how
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much other people value their relationships with you the ideal situation just like with a gas gauge
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in a car is that it's perfectly accurate in telling you how much value you have to other people
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telling you exactly how accepted or rejected you are but it can become miscalibrated i had an old car
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once that you know it would tell me i had three quarters of a tank when it was really running on
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empty well that's not good you need to know how much gas is really in the car and if you grow up in
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an environment where you're you are rejected a lot or you're neglected by your parents and you
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aren't taken seriously and you're dismissed your sociometer begins to calibrate too low it begins
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to assume that most of the feedback that's coming in is negative feedback and so it's more sensitive
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to those things and you walk through life not feeling acceptable if you grow up in an environment
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where you get a lot of praise and people do seem to like you and your parents are supportive
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your sociometer will either be accurate or potentially calibrated a little too high
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if you think of a narcissist a narcissist sociometer is calibrated too high they think that they're
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wonderful and other people ought to accept them all the time and only rarely do they become aware
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of the fact well no these people think i'm an idiot so again another point i think for a listener in
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terms of thinking about this is how accurate is your sociometer if we tested it against the actual
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amount of acceptance and rejection you're experiencing and as it moves up and down as you move through
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life uh how accurate is it and there's no way to know for sure but i think it's useful to think
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about the fact that your particular sociometer is not always spot-on accurate okay so people can have
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a more sensitive or less sensitive sociometer it sounds like it's a lot of just based on your
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experience growing up this reminds me of a book i read a while back ago a culture of honor by richard
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nesbitt nesbitt it's a sociologist he was trying to explore yeah social psychologist yeah social
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psychologist he was exploring like why is there more violence in the american south than there is
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in you know north the new england area and his thesis was that well in the american south there
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is this culture of honor where you know from childhood you are basically inculcated to be very
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sensitive to your status amongst other people and if you ever see a slight to your status then like
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the way you respond is through violence like hey you talking to me you know you can either duel or
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you punch you're going to fight but in the northern states that culture didn't exist and so
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they've done studies where you know they go to universities and insult a college student in the
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american south or a student from the north and the young men from the south are more inclined to feel
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aggressive and want to fight yeah yeah yeah yeah that's a well-known set of studies in social
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psychology it's very interesting and it has a lot to do uh he traces it historically to the fact that in
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the south you had people living by themselves i mean like in rural areas where you didn't have law
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enforcement that if in fact someone was presenting a threat and seeming to disrespect you you were
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going to have to handle it yourself and shut it down on the spot if you were living in philadelphia
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and somebody was disrespecting you yeah you didn't have to worry too much because there was a probably
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a constable up on the policeman up on the corner somewhere who would take care of things so it was
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protective at one time it made a certain amount of sense not to tolerate any disrespect because that
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might inflame into somebody attacking me makes a lot less sense now yeah another theory is that the
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south was settled by a lot of scotch irish and they're the genetic and cultural descendants of the
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warrior pastoral celts and that's still influencing men today so i mean i think that's an interesting
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theory what about differences between men and women are there differences in the sociometers between the
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sexes generally no there's differences in what they respond to as indications of low relational
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value that men and women are concerned about different things in terms of how they want to
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be perceived by other people but men and women are sociometers are are equally responsive to certain
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kinds of social threats and they kind of fire off in pretty much the same way their behavioral reactions
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differ somewhat because we're socialized to behave differently as men and women and the brain systems are
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even different and male testosterone increases the chances you're going to get an aggressive response
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but the sociometers themselves seem to work pretty comparably we're going to take a quick break for
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your word from our sponsors and now back to the show so you mentioned earlier some of the responses we
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can have to interpersonal rejection or that feeling that our relationship with someone's not being valued as
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much as we want it to be valued we can you know kind of sulk and just feel bad and just sort of retreat
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socially or someone could try to get back into to the good graces of someone what are some strategies
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that we typically try to use with that approach they can be anything you would normally do to get
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someone else to like you you could be doing favors for them complimenting them just kind of being nice
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in a passing fashion until they warm up to you again it's exactly the same things you would do with
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a stranger if you were trying to get them to like you you just crank that up a notch and that shows up in
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real relationships and it shows up in laboratory experiments where people feel rejected by people
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they don't even know in a laboratory setting and then you look and see how they interact with that
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person when they have to talk to them again and if they're trying to get back in their good graces
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they're just more positive and they're agreeing more and they're nodding their head more and they're
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showing more eye contact and they're smiling all the things you do to try to get other people to like
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you and is it the same thing if we're trying to avoid social rejection let's say we have a
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relationship with somebody and we want to maintain it are there things we do to do that if if it's
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somebody that we know well we're trying to maintain it obviously we do things to make sure that we keep
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the relationship strong by being positive and supportive and happy and pleasant and complimenting
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and not making them mad very often and we kind of do that automatically with our friends and romantic
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partners and family members if you're dealing with strangers you get two different reactions
00:24:58.780
depending on the person's confidence if i'm a confident person feel like i have good social
00:25:03.500
skills and i've just met you and i really want you to like me well yes then i'm going to agree with
00:25:08.580
you and i'll bring up interesting conversations and follow up on what you said everything i can do to
00:25:12.900
make you like me if you're not a confident person those people sometimes shut down i'm more worried
00:25:19.280
about you disliking me so i'm overly careful and cautious in what i say and it works against me i'm not
00:25:26.320
doing really positive things because i'm trying to be real careful not to do negative things that
00:25:30.880
will lead you to devalue me but it also doesn't allow me to come across in my best way so it's
00:25:36.100
sort of moderated by how how much social confidence you have so you're playing not to lose socially in
00:25:41.500
that situation yes yeah defensive rather than offensive yep never good it's not a good strategy
00:25:48.080
generally not then there's maladaptive ways you respond with anger aggression violence i want to dig
00:25:54.080
more into this because something i've noticed i'm sure other people have noticed too is with the
00:25:59.500
mass shootings that we've had here in the united states you always look at who was the culprit and
00:26:04.400
it ends up being typically a young man and their history is one of they were bullied ostracized just
00:26:12.420
they were socially rejected has there been any research done about the connection between social
00:26:18.040
rejection and violence and like mass shootings yes yes in fact i've been involved in two large
00:26:25.000
projects where we actually did case studies of all of the school shootings that we could get our hands
00:26:30.620
on to try to understand what were the common characteristics in the shooters there have also
00:26:35.820
been examples of experimental research in laboratories where they bring participants in often college students
00:26:42.060
but not always and they either get accepting feedback or rejecting feedback and then they have laboratory
00:26:48.060
measures of aggression the next thing you're supposed to do is blast this other person with loud noise because
00:26:54.180
this other person's doing a task and part of the study is you're supposed to give them loud noise to see how
00:26:58.180
much it interferes with them doing the task but you get to choose how much noise and how loud a noise you're
00:27:03.460
giving them and people who are rejected by this person blast them with a whole lot more noise now that's a lot
00:27:09.140
different than shooting somebody but it shows that even in a laboratory situation the motive to
00:27:13.540
aggress against people who reject us goes up when we feel rejected now the other studies have had
00:27:19.500
you feeding other participants in a study crackers with hot sauce on them and you either believe the
00:27:26.060
other person likes hot sauce or doesn't like hot sauce and you feel like the other person was either
00:27:30.520
rejecting or accepting of you you find that you start giving more of the rejecting people who don't like
00:27:35.520
hot sauce more hot sauce and again that's different than shooting people but but it shows the same
00:27:41.500
basic psychological process i'm going to aggress against people that i feel like have devalued and
00:27:47.560
rejected me of course nobody gets through the school system without some rejections romantic
00:27:53.120
rejections or you don't make the team or you're teased or you're bullied i mean everybody experiences
00:27:57.720
that but only a small fraction go out and shoot somebody and you're right it's almost always males less
00:28:03.240
less than five percent of school shootings were perpetrated by girls more than 95 were guys so
00:28:10.020
what what makes the difference and in our case studies of hundreds of shootings rejection shows
00:28:16.060
up a lot not in every case but it does show up a lot i feel ostracized i'm on the outside people make
00:28:21.640
fun of me i've been bullied but it almost always involves one or more of three or four other things
00:28:28.040
you find that the school shooters not only have been rejected but they have already shown certain
00:28:34.000
psychological problems evidence of sadism in the past like you know smashing worms or trying to kill
00:28:41.500
little birds when they were kids or destructive aggression or vandalism or depression or suicide
00:28:48.820
being suicidal so if you take rejection and then combine it with already existing psychological
00:28:55.500
problems the likelihood of aggression goes up the shooters generally have a familiarity with and
00:29:01.740
fascination with guns makes sense if you've never seen a gun in your life or ever had a gun you're
00:29:06.520
probably less likely to shoot somebody than if if you're comfortable with guns we find out a lot of
00:29:10.980
the shooters have a fascination with violence and death you know they're interested in the holocaust or
00:29:17.120
they read about other school shootings or they like to read stories about violent people so it's not just
00:29:23.300
the rejection that does it it's combining it with a motive the rejection gives you me a motive to shoot
00:29:30.380
people at my school because they don't accept me the availability of guns or explosives gives me a means
00:29:35.780
to do it and my psychological problems often mean i don't have the same control over myself we've got
00:29:42.720
other adjustment problems that make it less likely a lot of us have have had urges a thought through my
00:29:48.040
mind man i'd like to kill that guy but but of course we're not going to do it because we have self-control
00:29:52.600
so it helps to explain a little bit i mean not all shooters the same but rejection often plays a part
00:29:58.760
along with these other things going back to the sociometer have you found any evidence that the
00:30:03.140
sociometers of these mass shooters or anyone else who takes part in violence in response to social
00:30:09.020
rejection like it's out of whack it's maybe more sensitive than it needs to be yeah that that would
00:30:14.720
be a very hard kind of research to do we don't have any data on that but that would make a certain
00:30:19.420
degree of sense because again you know there's plenty of the rest of us who have been rejected
00:30:24.300
who have our own psychological problems who might own firearms who still don't go shoot people so it
00:30:30.120
does suggest the sociometer may be out of whack but i don't know any evidence of that let's dig into
00:30:34.940
romantic rejection i think men experience a lot of romantic rejection but women can experience it too
00:30:39.920
but men typically experience it because they're the ones doing the pursuing in a relationship usually
00:30:45.160
they've got to ask women out on a date which means that they set themselves up to be told no
00:30:50.660
so i mean just based on your research on the best way to respond to social rejection any advice for men
00:30:58.640
out there who are in the dating scene on how to alleviate the blow of social rejection i think the
00:31:05.060
best way to to cope with it is to go back to this idea that we can't be valued by everybody there's a lot
00:31:12.080
of people in the world and only a only a few of them can really value in us us enough to date us to
00:31:19.480
get involved with romantically involved with us to form a permanent relationship so i think we just have
00:31:26.220
to go into it knowing that this this is just a low low probability event that i'm going to be able to
00:31:33.100
match up with this person who wants to go out with me as much as i want to go out with her and that
00:31:38.040
doesn't mean it says anything about me and it doesn't mean it says anything about her feelings
00:31:42.940
about me except for the fact that i'm just not making the very top few people in the whole world
00:31:48.660
that she might be interested in going out with i think sort of to talk to yourself about this this
00:31:54.140
is often not an acceptance rejection reaction it's a compatibility reaction because because i have
00:32:00.760
sort of turned people down in my own life who i liked a lot yeah i want to hang around with you
00:32:06.140
you'd make a good friend but as a romantic partner now i don't i don't think we're compatible i don't
00:32:10.840
think that's going to work for either one of us and so i'm going to turn you down so one way to
00:32:15.800
soften it i think is to realize this woman has a lot of choices and just because you're not among the
00:32:21.280
very top ones doesn't really say she's rejecting or devaluing you and it has a lot more to do
00:32:26.240
compatible with compatibility than the fact that she thinks that you possess undesirable characteristics
00:32:30.940
your colleague roy baumeister we've had him on the podcast before he did research on what it's
00:32:37.300
like to be the rejecter of romantic overtures do you know what his research found with that
00:32:43.440
yes that that that was a fascinating set of studies on unrequited love where one person is attracted to
00:32:50.300
another one and has reached out and sort of thinks that we ought to get together and the other one is
00:32:54.000
not interested and you know when you see movies about unrequited love where there's a pursuer and
00:33:01.320
they keep getting turned down you sort of get the sense that the person getting turned down is suffering
00:33:06.240
a lot and the person being pursued you know is not being affected by this very much but what roy's
00:33:12.560
research showed as i remember is that the person who's being pursued has as many negative reactions as
00:33:19.460
the person who's pursuing and who's being rejected so yes the person being rejected is heartbroken they
00:33:25.440
they protest i they persist you know please let's go out i want to get to know you they can feel sad and
00:33:31.480
in despair um they can get angry and defensive the rejectee the person who's experiencing the unrequited
00:33:39.700
love experiences all of the stuff we've been talking about today but the rejecter also experiences
00:33:45.140
negative emotions you know they they feel trapped and put upon and frustrated they're like in a no-win
00:33:52.020
situation because this is often somebody they know the person who's pursuing them somebody they like
00:33:57.860
and if they say no and turn them down it kind of damages a friendship in some cases but if they say yes
00:34:04.380
they're getting into a relationship they really don't want to be in so it's no win about it and they
00:34:09.220
certainly feel badly about hurting the other person's feelings it's not easy to just be cavalier about
00:34:14.400
rejecting somebody if you fire somebody from a job or don't hire them it's i've been on the other
00:34:19.600
side of it and no it hurts to turn other people down to kick somebody off the team to break up with
00:34:25.000
somebody so it was interesting that it's not just the people being rejected who experience negative
00:34:30.920
emotions going through the process of being a rejecter rejecting other people is negative too yeah
00:34:37.480
i thought it was interesting baumeister said that the pursuee the person who's you know in the
00:34:42.720
pursuing part of the romantic relationship they experience negative emotions when they get
00:34:47.100
rejected but he also says actually they experience a lot of positive emotions in the process like they
00:34:51.320
feel good like i'm in love and i'm gonna i want to do these things to get this person's attention
00:34:55.860
that it feels good to be in love but then it feels bad when you get rejected and then he said the person
00:35:01.380
who is the pursuee you know the one has to do the rejecting it's more of a problem to be solved like
00:35:07.560
they don't they might not actually feel any of those good feelings and they just got to figure out
00:35:11.700
how do i let this person down without hurting their feelings so it just kind of becomes an
00:35:15.900
annoyance yep yeah and yeah i mean i think um i think there's some guys out there that have this
00:35:21.560
idea that women just love to turn guys down reading the research suggests like no most women they feel
00:35:27.780
really bad when they have to turn a guy down yes i think that's true yeah okay so as we discussed you
00:35:33.520
can't be friends with everybody you can't be romantic partners with everybody you can't invite
00:35:37.020
everyone to work for you or be part of your team so you're going to have to socially reject people
00:35:42.840
it's just a part of life the question is how do you do it in a way you know with some class like in a
00:35:48.440
way that respects the other person's dignity wow that is a great question so everything i'm going to
00:35:54.600
say is just totally speculative based a little bit on research baby but mostly i'm just making this up
00:36:00.020
your listeners need to know this is not research based that is very difficult to do as we were just
00:36:05.000
discussing to have to reject somebody and i guess i would say that you have to be basically honest
00:36:12.660
with the person but also kind in how you do it and what that means is framing the rejection in a way
00:36:21.360
that doesn't damage their self-esteem and often that that it's true that you can say you know no i
00:36:27.040
really do like you i mean i think you're a great person but to be honest here here's the reason why
00:36:33.340
again compatibility might be a good explanation so you know i really like you i mean we have a lot
00:36:37.680
of fun as friends but you know i'm just not sure we're really compatible as partners i think there's
00:36:42.880
things about me you wouldn't like and there may be things about you that i wouldn't like and you're
00:36:46.780
a great person but it's just not the best fit for me i would even pepper the uh the rejection with
00:36:52.880
certain compliments because what you're trying to do is show that i do value you i value my connection
00:36:59.480
with you if that's true and in many cases where you have to reject somebody you really do sort of
00:37:03.520
value your connection with them but not enough to go the next step and really accept them fully and
00:37:09.260
be in a romantic relationship with them for example i think even turning people down for a job you
00:37:14.980
interview them for a job yeah you got to tell them no i'm sorry you didn't get the job but you got
00:37:19.560
to sort of be honest about why to some extent say hey you've got great credentials you know i think
00:37:24.120
under other circumstances i could have seen we could have hired you but we had this other candidate who had
00:37:28.400
this thing you didn't have and i think most people when they hear it really laid out and they understand
00:37:34.360
what's going on i think they accept it better as i said we have this tendency as human beings to
00:37:39.800
over interpret reactions as more negative than they are other people's reactions so to the extent you
00:37:45.900
can be up front and show no this isn't blanket rejection this isn't blanket negativity toward you
00:37:50.920
i've got some very positive thoughts about you but here's the reason why we can't go along with
00:37:56.460
this that i don't value you enough to give you the job or to go to the prom with you or whatever it
00:38:01.040
might be i value our connection but not as much as you would like is sort of what the message would
00:38:05.460
be well mark this has been a great conversation anywhere people can go to learn more about your work
00:38:10.540
i think the best thing if anybody's interested in most of these topics is just google
00:38:15.920
mark leary rejection i just tried it this morning just to see what came up and you get a whole lot of
00:38:22.120
stuff that either i've written or things about what i've written that's accessible online and you
00:38:27.300
can take your pick about how people try to be accepted we've done a lot of research on how is it
00:38:33.040
that we try to make sure we're not rejected how is it when we are rejected how do we behave and so
00:38:39.140
yeah there's a lot out there i just google mark leary rejection and you'll find things well mark
00:38:45.200
this has been a great conversation thanks for your time it's been a pleasure
00:38:47.200
i've enjoyed it a lot thank you so much my guest today was mark leary he's the editor of the book
00:38:53.440
interpersonal rejection it's available on amazon.com check out our show notes at aom.is
00:38:58.000
slash rejection where you find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic
00:39:01.400
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at
00:39:12.820
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00:39:36.280
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