Jumping on the ‘bad’wagon? How group membership influences responses to the social exclusion of others

In four studies, we addressed whether group membership influences behavioral and neural responses to the social exclusion of others. Participants played a modified three-player Cyberball game (Studies 1–3) or a team-selection task (Study 4) in the absence or presence of a minimal group setting. In the absence of a minimal group, when one player excluded another player, participants actively included the excluded target. When the excluder was from the in-group and the excluded player from the out-group, participants were less likely to intervene (Studies 1–3) and also more often went along with the exclusion (Study 4). Functional magnetic resonance imaging results (Study 3) showed that greater exclusion in the minimal group setting concurred with increased activation in the dorsolateral pre-frontal cortex, a region associated with overriding cognitive conflict. Self-reports from Study 4 supported these results by showing that participants’ responses to the target’s exclusion were motivated by group membership as well as participants’ general aversion to exclude others. Together, the findings suggest that when people witness social exclusion, group membership triggers a motivational conflict between favoring the in-group and including the out-group target. This underscores the importance of group composition for understanding the dynamics of social exclusion.