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Definition
Humans evolved strategies to avoid being ignored, left out, or ostracized. By avoiding ostracism, our evolutionary ancestors were better suited to their environment. Such adaptations helped ensure our survival and reproduction.
Introduction
The need to belong is a basic feature of human psychology and characterizes us as a species (MacDonald and Leary 2005). Ostracism threatens this need. To help our ancestors achieve their survival and reproductive goals, people evolved adaptations to prevent ostracism. Below, examples of adaptations to avoid ostracism are listed.
Social Pain
Physical pain evolved to alert us to environmental threats and to serve as a preventative force against physical injuries (Bolles and Fanselow 1980). Social pain, the aversive experience associated with ostracism, arose from an evolutionary push to co-opt the physical pain system to respond to social injuries (e.g., ostracism; Chester et al. 2012). Much like...
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References
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Chester, D.S., Dewall, N. (2017). Adaptations to Avoid Ostracism. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1474-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1474-1
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