How attributional ambiguity shapes physiological and emotional responses to social rejection and acceptance

Abstract

The authors examined White and Black participants' emotional, physiological, and behavioral responses to same-race or different-race evaluators, following rejecting social feedback or accepting social feedback. As expected, in ingroup interactions, the authors observed deleterious responses to social rejection and benign responses to social acceptance. Deleterious responses included cardiovascular (CV) reactivity consistent with threat states and poorer performance, whereas benign responses included CV reactivity consistent with challenge states and better performance. In intergroup interactions, however, a more complex pattern of responses emerged. Social rejection from different-race evaluators engendered more anger and activational responses, regardless of participants' race. In contrast, social acceptance produced an asymmetrical race pattern--White participants responded more positively than did Black participants. The latter appeared vigilant and exhibited threat responses. Discussion centers on implications for attributional ambiguity theory and potential pathways from discrimination to health outcomes.

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Figures

Figure 1

The up arrows refer to increases, the down arrows refer to decreases, and the side-to-side arrow refers to no change. The less than symbols indicate that the adjacent measures are relatively different from each other. CV = cardiovascular; CO = cardiac output; VC = ventricular contractility; TPR = total peripheral resistance; HR = heart rate.

Figure 2

Cardiovascular reactivity from the first minute of the cooperative task following rejection, by participant’s race and evaluator’s race. The error bars indicate the standard error of the means.

Figure 3

Cardiovascular reactivity from the first minute of the cooperative task following social acceptance, by participant’s race and evaluator’s race. The error bars indicate the standard error of the means.