The effects of psychosocial resources on adaptation after social exclusion <Summaries of the Doctoral Theses>

The present paper proposes a model of the effect of psychosocial resources on the adaptation process that occurs after social exclusion. Although human beings have access to various psychosocial resources that are associated with better adaptation to social exclusion, each resource can have different impacts at different stages in a series of adaptation processes occurring after social exclusion. The present study investigated the hypothesis that resources reflecting past experience influence the impact estimation process, while resources that reflect a "future perspective" influence subsequent regulation attempts. Chapter 1 presents a review of the literature on the relationship between psychosocial resources and the experience of social pain during exclusion, and the neural mechanisms which are though to reflect this relationship. Chapter 2 demonstrates that trait self-esteem and general trust (trait-based psychosocial resources) buffer against maladaptive behavior subsequent to social exclusion from a gaming simulation (e.g., withdrawal from interpersonal relationships). Chapter 3 describes evidence that general trust and trait self-esteem probably have different impacts at different times over the course of a series of adaptive processes, all geared toward the modulation of social pain. Chapter 4 describes the finding that a temporal distance approach (i.e., imagining the distant future), a "state-based" psychosocial resource, acts to regulate the impact of social exclusion after the latter has occurred, but does not appear to influence the earlier process whereby individuals estimate the potential impact of social exclusion. Finally, on the basis of the findings described in each of the preceding chapters, the more general effects of various psychosocial resources on the process of adaptation after social exclusion are discussed in chapter 5.