The Art of Manliness - Ouch! That Stings! Why Rejection Hurts So Much (And How to Deal With It)

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.980 nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love charlie brown one said

00:00:16.080 indeed being spurned by one's crush or for that matter by a friend or potential employer not only

00:00:22.060 ruins the taste of one's favorite sandwich bread but causes great psychological distress and even

00:00:26.940 physical pain here to walk us through one of life's worst feelings is mark leary professor of

00:00:31.900 psychology and neuroscience at duke university and the editor of interpersonal rejection today on the

00:00:37.440 show mark unpacks the experience of social rejection including why we're so sensitive to it and the

00:00:42.440 emotions and behaviors it causes which can be positive and pro-social or maladaptive and even

00:00:47.640 violent we discuss the role that is played by the sociometer concept mark originated in monitoring

00:00:53.120 our social acceptance and rejection and what influences its sensitivity to fluctuations in

00:00:57.640 our relational value and mark offers advice on how to remove some of the sting of rejection

00:01:01.820 and civilly reject others after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash rejection

00:01:07.280 all right mark leary welcome back to the show i'm delighted to be here so you are a professor of

00:01:22.140 psychology you have done research on the self we had you on last time to discuss the curse of the self

00:01:27.760 but you also done research on interpersonal rejection which is social rejection how do you

00:01:35.020 as a psychologist define interpersonal rejection i think it's easiest to think of rejection as a

00:01:42.340 subjective psychological experience it's hard to define it in terms of how people behave toward us

00:01:48.520 because different people interpret other people's behaviors in different ways and i might feel

00:01:53.220 rejected by something somebody does and you wouldn't so rejection is really the psychological experience

00:01:58.980 of feeling like other people don't adequately value their relationship with us at this moment

00:02:05.560 it's a signal of low relational value all right we're going to get into this objective subjective split

00:02:12.240 with social rejection and talking about your idea of the sociometer yes here in a bit but let's talk

00:02:19.200 about this what happens to us emotionally and even physically when we experience social rejection

00:02:25.560 well anytime we feel like people don't adequately value their connection with us at the moment and it could

00:02:32.340 be a big thing it could be a romantic rejection we got fired from our job got kicked off the team we

00:02:38.320 were ostracized it could be a big kind of rejection like that that makes us very clear other people

00:02:44.040 don't value their connection with us it could be very minor things we just felt ignored or dismissed or

00:02:49.640 hey we didn't get invited to that party those things all kick off a series of psychological and

00:02:57.220 emotional and behavioral reactions in us that involve our emotions and we can go into detail about what those

00:03:02.760 emotions are and our views of ourselves and our behavior becomes affected anytime we feel rejected

00:03:09.300 we clearly have a response it's hard to imagine a person who's been rejected who just shrugs and has

00:03:14.900 absolutely no reaction whatsoever we are very sensitive to the possibility of being rejected

00:03:20.180 it's a feature of human nature it's an evolved part of the human brain to be sensitive to rejection

00:03:27.020 because throughout evolutionary history we had to live in groups with other people and they had to

00:03:31.980 accept us they couldn't kick us out we would never have survived out there on the plains of africa

00:03:37.920 during evolution just living by ourselves and so we had to behave in ways that led other people to at

00:03:44.140 least minimally accept us and be very sensitive to those instances in which they found us lacking in

00:03:50.260 some ways and wanted to reject us so that's why we are so so sensitive to other people's acceptance and

00:03:55.680 rejection of us so what are some of those emotions we might experience when we feel like we've been

00:04:00.400 rejected by somebody or excluded the key emotion that is probably common to most instances of

00:04:07.000 rejection is the thing that we in everyday life call hurt feelings you know why are your feelings hurt

00:04:12.920 your feelings are hurt when you feel that someone doesn't adequately value you at the moment and this

00:04:18.200 could even be someone that you know loves you and cares about you but at that moment they don't seem to

00:04:23.700 really value their connection with you i could imagine you know on my anniversary suggesting to

00:04:29.080 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

00:04:34.380 fortune tonight or something oh that would sting so hurt feelings is the fundamental rejection emotion

00:04:41.700 but we experience other things as well depending on the consequences of the rejection so if rejection

00:04:48.500 involves losing a valued relationship somebody rejects us tells us they never want to see us

00:04:54.440 again we often feel very sad and sadness is caused by the loss of something valued if we feel like it was

00:05:01.480 unfair that they rejected us that often creates anger hostility people get enraged at times if the

00:05:08.940 rejection leads to negative consequences of various kinds we can experience anxiety well what's going to

00:05:15.180 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

00:05:20.300 not going to find anybody else for a friend or a romantic partner or group memberships well then we'll

00:05:25.360 feel lonely it's really interesting there are so many negative emotions attached to rejection that it sort

00:05:32.500 of suggests to me that evolution really wanted us to make sure that we didn't miss any instances in

00:05:39.600 which we were rejected that's how important it is it triggers all kinds of negative things depending on the

00:05:44.560 context and it motivates us to respond in one way or another you mentioned whenever we experience

00:05:50.140 these emotions we also have there's changes in our behavior what are some behavior responses to

00:05:55.420 rejection there's three major categories one is sort of a helpless resignation okay she kicked me out

00:06:04.020 of the house and you know i gotta go on with my life and it's just a helpless resignation

00:06:08.360 passive moving on a second one is a very pro-social reaction where it's clear that i might be able to

00:06:16.140 repair this rejection get back on the team to get the friend to come back to win the romantic partner

00:06:21.900 back if i just treat them nice enough so in some instances people begin to behave more more positively

00:06:28.040 more pro-socially or they as we just discussed people become aggressive and angry about it

00:06:34.220 they become vengeful and they want to get back at the person and which way people respond depends a lot

00:06:40.480 on what they think the prospect is for getting the person back if i am sure that you're gone and you're

00:06:47.540 not coming back at all and particularly if i think it was my fault and i'm just going to be resigned and

00:06:52.440 i'm going to walk away with my head hung down and my feelings hurt if i think there's some chance of

00:06:57.120 repairing whatever it was that led to the rejection then i'm going to behave positively to try to get back on the

00:07:03.820 team to try to get the job to try to get the romantic partner back if i feel like there's no chance at

00:07:09.560 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 0.95

00:07:14.420 anger and potential aggression in response so we can either sort of sulk away we can respond more

00:07:20.400 positively or we become angry and in addition to the psychological responses emotional responses behavior

00:07:27.460 responses rejection can also affect us physiologically like it actually you know can cause changes

00:07:33.720 in our body where we kind of feel physical pain almost absolutely we suggested just speculatively

00:07:40.680 years ago that the systems that make us experience hurt feelings in the brain may be somehow related

00:07:48.140 to the same systems that make us feel physical pain and at the time we were just guessing it was

00:07:54.340 speculative but neuroscientists have shown that that's the case that some of the same brain systems

00:07:59.700 that light up when you are physically in pain also light up when you're in social pain because other

00:08:06.580 people haven't valued enough not only that but you kick into high gear your sympathetic nervous system

00:08:12.480 kicks on with the classic fight or flight or freeze reaction that we have anytime we have a strong

00:08:17.860 emotional reaction so yeah we hurt we're experiencing some psychological pain and our whole system gets

00:08:24.280 really revved up have you seen there's a simpsons episode where lisa simpson goes on what ralph

00:08:32.160 wiggum thinks is a date but lisa doesn't think it's a date but ralph does and then and in the moment

00:08:37.960 like lisa rejects him very publicly saying this is not a date i'm just going with you

00:08:42.480 you know and uh you can see ralph just physically like his heartbreak it got recorded on tv and bart

00:08:49.200 replays it over and over again he's like hey lisa you can actually pinpoint the second

00:08:52.760 when you break ralph's heart and just plays it over and over again i think we've all experienced

00:08:57.680 that ralph wiggum where you're just like oh you just like oh man that feels so bad to be rejected

00:09:02.720 everything seemed to be okay and it takes a split second and suddenly you've got that broken heart

00:09:08.220 and the pain and the resignation all at once yeah it comes on quickly in elementary school kids are

00:09:14.400 often taught you have to include everyone be friends with everyone but something you argue is that

00:09:19.420 social rejection or interpersonal rejection is actually a necessary part of social life why is

00:09:26.260 that yeah i i would hate to quite word it that way and i may have worded it that way sometime in the past

00:09:33.180 it's not so much we have to reject other people but we have to recognize we can't value everybody we

00:09:39.920 meet equally and they can't value us equally we only have so much time and energy for our social

00:09:46.500 connections so how many good friends can you really have research suggests that it's maximum

00:09:52.480 five to seven good friends and most people don't even have that many you just can't you can't have

00:09:57.560 40 really good friends you can't maintain those kinds of friendships so it is true that we have to be aware

00:10:03.780 of the fact that we can't have close supportive social connections with a very very large number of

00:10:10.240 people and we need to think about that from both sides one is from the side we know we can't value

00:10:16.340 everybody equally sure we can treat everybody in a friendly way but that doesn't mean we have a strong

00:10:21.480 supportive emotional connection to that person we only have so much time and energy but we also have to

00:10:27.360 realize that's true of everybody else so sometimes when we feel rejected it's not that the other person is

00:10:32.820 rejecting us it's the fact that their niches these their little slots to have friends and romantic

00:10:39.360 partners and people in their lives are kind of filled up and there's just not room for us and yes

00:10:45.320 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

00:10:50.860 different tier and i think it's important for people to remember when dealing with their own feelings of

00:10:55.960 rejection with friends or in work settings or on teams and other people any other person can't have

00:11:03.020 close connections with everybody and maybe you're sort of secondary status but that doesn't mean

00:11:07.500 they're really rejecting or devaluing you yeah that makes sense yeah you can only have one spouse

00:11:12.220 unless you're a polygamist yeah i guess but yeah an employer can only hire so many people so they can't 0.81

00:11:18.420 hire everyone that wants a job so they have to they have to reject and it's again like you said it

00:11:22.980 doesn't mean like they devalue you or you think you're not worthy of being valued having that

00:11:28.640 relationship they just they don't have enough room in their finite social brain that's well said

00:11:33.340 yeah so typically when i think people think of social rejection they think of like romantic

00:11:38.160 rejection we'll talk a little bit about that or being rejected by friends but we experience social

00:11:42.500 rejection when you you know apply for a job and you don't get it that's a form of social rejection

00:11:47.440 you're being excluded from a group or i remember when i was in college and i applied for

00:11:52.760 a particular scholarship like the presidential leadership scholarship i didn't get it and i felt

00:11:58.660 rejected that's a form of another form of interpersonal rejection and going back what you said earlier

00:12:03.660 this idea that social rejection or interpersonal rejection is a subjective feeling i want to dig deeper

00:12:11.480 into this because as you said objectively someone can look like they're being accepted socially from a

00:12:18.360 third party they belong to the group etc but subjectively that person who looks like from a

00:12:24.200 third party they're being accepted they feel like they're being socially excluded so walk us through

00:12:30.020 more of this objective subjective split of interpersonal rejection no that's a very important point

00:12:35.940 our reactions to rejection situation situations that appear to be rejecting are based entirely on our

00:12:42.860 perceptions of what's going on in our interpretations and those aren't always right people may not realize

00:12:48.860 that they're being rejected in many cases everybody can see that she doesn't want to have anything to

00:12:52.560 do with you you don't seem to get it or they can feel rejected when they're not which is actually

00:12:57.640 i think probably more common so i think when we feel rejected one of the things that's really useful

00:13:03.160 to do is to try to be as honest and accurate as possible

00:13:06.900 and deconstructing what is really going on here knowing that our perception of the events our

00:13:13.780 interpretation of the events may in fact not be accurate and we've done several studies over the

00:13:19.240 years that show that people's judgments of how much other people are being accepting actual other

00:13:25.000 people in that situation we have the ratings of those other people how much they like and accept you

00:13:29.200 and we get your ratings of how much you think they like and accept you and you're way off

00:13:34.700 but you think that you're right and as human beings we do tend to err in the direction of

00:13:40.460 overestimating rejection that's true of most threat systems in the body we're more likely to react to

00:13:47.620 things as if they're dangerous when they're not than to think that dangerous things are safe we always

00:13:54.520 lean in the direction of of over interpreting threats all animals do that you think of the deer how

00:13:59.360 many times does a deer in the woods get kind of skittish and startled and run away when it's really

00:14:03.720 nothing going on that's to make sure it doesn't miss a real threat and so our brains are programmed

00:14:09.220 to overreact to potential rejection when it's not really there just to make sure we don't miss

00:14:14.660 a real rejection it's like making sure the fire alarm really does pick up a fire so it's gonna go off

00:14:20.780 when i just burn food on the stove in the kitchen i think people need to realize that too we we

00:14:25.580 overestimate rejection we underestimate the degree to which people want to have connections with us

00:14:31.320 and so we feel worse about our social lives sometimes than we really should how does your

00:14:36.160 idea of the sociometer play into this objective subjective split of rejection well the sociometer

00:14:43.340 is a label that i made up for the psychological and brain systems that monitor our social acceptance

00:14:50.080 and rejection that monitor our relational value in other people's eyes it's almost like we have

00:14:55.960 antenna up almost all the time that's monitoring the social environment for information about how

00:15:01.680 other people feel about us we're not consciously thinking about it all the time we don't walk through

00:15:06.320 life just thinking hey what's he think oh does she like me oh is he being rejecting but we have

00:15:10.460 these antenna up and they're monitoring the social situation but now and then just non-consciously

00:15:15.960 they pick up some little cue that little frown from that person that look of disinterest it dawns

00:15:21.900 you that it took her two days to reply to your email and then a little warning system goes off 0.74

00:15:28.080 that says hey you probably ought to take a look at this there may be a problem here it's like a smoke

00:15:33.080 detector going off so the sociometer is just this gauge that monitors our relational value and when it

00:15:40.800 goes off then we start looking around and trying to figure it out we start looking at the situation and

00:15:46.000 what did i do and what did she really mean by that and then the emotions begin to come out with

00:15:50.680 described our views of ourselves start to come out and change if we start feeling like we're being

00:15:56.520 devalued we start wondering what's wrong with us and our self-esteem can go down so it's just it's

00:16:00.780 just a monitoring system operates non-consciously most of the time but then when it picks up some kind

00:16:05.940 of information regarding rejection then we kick into a conscious analysis of it and have a reaction

00:16:11.400 and from what i've read it sounds like the sociometer is it can be context specific like it's going to be

00:16:17.220 more sensitive in certain situations than others so for example my sociometer in relation to my family

00:16:24.820 i'm going to be more sensitive to maybe slights from them than say to you know strangers on the

00:16:32.740 internet like i don't really care if i get excluded by some rando on the internet but if my wife gives me

00:16:39.000 the cold shoulder i'm going to be more sensitive to that that no that's absolutely true and and that

00:16:44.720 makes sense obviously because we worry more about our relational value to the people who are close to

00:16:49.720 us that we have relationships with us but if we're just passing in the street you know it really

00:16:55.000 shouldn't matter the interesting thing is it does sometimes sometimes we do have a reaction our

00:17:01.320 sociometer sends off a warning signal about somebody's reaction that really shouldn't matter to us

00:17:06.680 in the least i remember i was in switzerland a few years ago checking out of a grocery store and i just

00:17:13.260 made some what i thought was a funny comment to the woman who was checking me out and i don't know

00:17:18.380 it was a language difference or a cultural difference but she looked at me like with disgust on her face 0.94

00:17:23.340 like well you know what what kind of a maggot are you anyway and i realized i just sort of stumbled out 0.91

00:17:29.180 of the store and i got out in front of the store and i just thought oh my god and my feelings were hurt 0.99

00:17:32.960 and i felt like gee she thought i was an idiot and but then it dawned on me why do i care

00:17:37.660 i mean i'm never going to see this person again she just didn't think i was funny what that told 0.73

00:17:42.840 me is our sociometers even though they do distinguish between important relationships

00:17:47.440 and non-important relationships they still are prone to over trigger in situations that really

00:17:53.420 don't matter very much so how that guy bumps into me in the bar which seems to me like he's dismissing

00:17:59.860 me somehow it affects me even though it doesn't matter and i think it's important to know that

00:18:05.280 that just because your sociometer kicks off and you're getting charged up about this rejection

00:18:09.400 this might not matter in your life at all move on it does not matter how does our sociometer

00:18:15.300 develop is it something that we're born with or do we develop it through experience

00:18:18.980 well certainly uh its operation develops as kids grow you know when you're born and you're an infant

00:18:25.980 you're not judging the degree to which you're accepted or rejected by other people as you get older

00:18:30.560 it begins to become active and by the time kids are two and a half three years old they

00:18:35.200 are beginning to realize some people treat me better some people seem to like me and some people

00:18:40.900 don't and as it develops it becomes calibrated in terms of the experiences we've had the ideal

00:18:49.720 situation think of it as a gas gauge in a car but this is a gauge in your brain that's judging how

00:18:55.440 much other people value their relationships with you the ideal situation just like with a gas gauge

00:19:00.300 in a car is that it's perfectly accurate in telling you how much value you have to other people

00:19:07.420 telling you exactly how accepted or rejected you are but it can become miscalibrated i had an old car

00:19:15.060 once that you know it would tell me i had three quarters of a tank when it was really running on

00:19:18.640 empty well that's not good you need to know how much gas is really in the car and if you grow up in

00:19:23.680 an environment where you're you are rejected a lot or you're neglected by your parents and you

00:19:28.920 aren't taken seriously and you're dismissed your sociometer begins to calibrate too low it begins

00:19:35.180 to assume that most of the feedback that's coming in is negative feedback and so it's more sensitive

00:19:39.980 to those things and you walk through life not feeling acceptable if you grow up in an environment

00:19:45.580 where you get a lot of praise and people do seem to like you and your parents are supportive

00:19:49.820 your sociometer will either be accurate or potentially calibrated a little too high

00:19:55.000 if you think of a narcissist a narcissist sociometer is calibrated too high they think that they're

00:20:00.440 wonderful and other people ought to accept them all the time and only rarely do they become aware 0.92

00:20:06.240 of the fact well no these people think i'm an idiot so again another point i think for a listener in

00:20:11.920 terms of thinking about this is how accurate is your sociometer if we tested it against the actual

00:20:17.860 amount of acceptance and rejection you're experiencing and as it moves up and down as you move through

00:20:22.720 life uh how accurate is it and there's no way to know for sure but i think it's useful to think

00:20:27.260 about the fact that your particular sociometer is not always spot-on accurate okay so people can have

00:20:33.820 a more sensitive or less sensitive sociometer it sounds like it's a lot of just based on your

00:20:39.220 experience growing up this reminds me of a book i read a while back ago a culture of honor by richard

00:20:46.940 nesbitt nesbitt it's a sociologist he was trying to explore yeah social psychologist yeah social

00:20:51.920 psychologist he was exploring like why is there more violence in the american south than there is

00:20:56.280 in you know north the new england area and his thesis was that well in the american south there

00:21:01.940 is this culture of honor where you know from childhood you are basically inculcated to be very

00:21:08.200 sensitive to your status amongst other people and if you ever see a slight to your status then like

00:21:14.700 the way you respond is through violence like hey you talking to me you know you can either duel or

00:21:19.760 you punch you're going to fight but in the northern states that culture didn't exist and so

00:21:23.700 they've done studies where you know they go to universities and insult a college student in the

00:21:28.360 american south or a student from the north and the young men from the south are more inclined to feel

00:21:33.400 aggressive and want to fight yeah yeah yeah yeah that's a well-known set of studies in social

00:21:38.800 psychology it's very interesting and it has a lot to do uh he traces it historically to the fact that in

00:21:44.620 the south you had people living by themselves i mean like in rural areas where you didn't have law

00:21:50.200 enforcement that if in fact someone was presenting a threat and seeming to disrespect you you were

00:21:55.980 going to have to handle it yourself and shut it down on the spot if you were living in philadelphia

00:21:59.880 and somebody was disrespecting you yeah you didn't have to worry too much because there was a probably

00:22:03.680 a constable up on the policeman up on the corner somewhere who would take care of things so it was

00:22:08.400 protective at one time it made a certain amount of sense not to tolerate any disrespect because that

00:22:12.800 might inflame into somebody attacking me makes a lot less sense now yeah another theory is that the

00:22:19.060 south was settled by a lot of scotch irish and they're the genetic and cultural descendants of the

00:22:25.940 warrior pastoral celts and that's still influencing men today so i mean i think that's an interesting

00:22:32.540 theory what about differences between men and women are there differences in the sociometers between the

00:22:39.340 sexes generally no there's differences in what they respond to as indications of low relational

00:22:46.140 value that men and women are concerned about different things in terms of how they want to

00:22:51.080 be perceived by other people but men and women are sociometers are are equally responsive to certain

00:22:56.760 kinds of social threats and they kind of fire off in pretty much the same way their behavioral reactions

00:23:02.080 differ somewhat because we're socialized to behave differently as men and women and the brain systems are

00:23:07.660 even different and male testosterone increases the chances you're going to get an aggressive response

00:23:12.500 but the sociometers themselves seem to work pretty comparably we're going to take a quick break for

00:23:17.300 your word from our sponsors and now back to the show so you mentioned earlier some of the responses we

00:23:24.900 can have to interpersonal rejection or that feeling that our relationship with someone's not being valued as

00:23:31.000 much as we want it to be valued we can you know kind of sulk and just feel bad and just sort of retreat

00:23:36.560 socially or someone could try to get back into to the good graces of someone what are some strategies

00:23:42.280 that we typically try to use with that approach they can be anything you would normally do to get

00:23:48.200 someone else to like you you could be doing favors for them complimenting them just kind of being nice

00:23:54.040 in a passing fashion until they warm up to you again it's exactly the same things you would do with

00:23:59.480 a stranger if you were trying to get them to like you you just crank that up a notch and that shows up in

00:24:04.820 real relationships and it shows up in laboratory experiments where people feel rejected by people

00:24:09.860 they don't even know in a laboratory setting and then you look and see how they interact with that

00:24:14.040 person when they have to talk to them again and if they're trying to get back in their good graces

00:24:17.880 they're just more positive and they're agreeing more and they're nodding their head more and they're

00:24:22.580 showing more eye contact and they're smiling all the things you do to try to get other people to like

00:24:27.080 you and is it the same thing if we're trying to avoid social rejection let's say we have a

00:24:31.660 relationship with somebody and we want to maintain it are there things we do to do that if if it's

00:24:39.340 somebody that we know well we're trying to maintain it obviously we do things to make sure that we keep

00:24:43.740 the relationship strong by being positive and supportive and happy and pleasant and complimenting

00:24:48.440 and not making them mad very often and we kind of do that automatically with our friends and romantic

00:24:53.520 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 0.98

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 0.95

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

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00:39:46.980 you

The Art of Manliness - October 28, 2024

Ouch! That Stings! Why Rejection Hurts So Much (And How to Deal With It)

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