Ostracism

What exclusion does, measured in a lab with a ball game so trivial it should not work — and it works every time.

Kipling D. Williams (2007). Annual Review of Psychology 58, 425–452. Read it.

Primary reading — read it before the lecture that sets it.

Cyberball is three players tossing a virtual ball. After a few throws, two of them stop passing to you. That is the whole manipulation, and it reliably damages mood and threatens four needs at once: belonging, self-esteem, control and meaningful existence. It works when participants know the other players are computers. It works when they are told they will be paid to be excluded.

Read it for the reflexive stage — the hurt that arrives before any appraisal of whether it should. Week 3 runs Cyberball on each other, and then asks the question that matters here: a third place is defined partly by who it does not let in, and Oldenburg’s eight rules are silent about that.