No Likes – no control? Examining the role of coping deprivation and social anxiety in social media ostracism

ABSTRACT

Feeling ostracised, that is, feeling ignored and excluded, in a social media environment causes negative affect and threatens fundamental human needs. Socially anxious people are especially fearful of social exclusion and may—if they feel ostracised—suffer even more when they do not have low-risk coping options such as using the Like button. Using the Online Ostracism tool, in a 2 (Ostracism vs. Inclusion) × 2 (Coping Deprivation vs. Control) experimental design, individuals with various social anxiety levels (N = 131) engaged in an online group task. Coping deprivation was operationalised via a disabled Like button. Compared to included participants, those who were ostracised reported significantly more threatened needs and worse mood. Needs were mostly threatened when ostracised ones encountered a disabled Like button. Social anxiety did not moderate this Ostracism × Coping interaction effect. However, the more socially anxious ostracised individuals were, the more they used the Like button.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• Ostracism Online
• social anxiety
• need threats
• mood
• Like button
• coping

Author note

Britta Zwillich, MA student at the University of Mannheim, passed away on February 16, 2017. This article is based on a study that she conducted as part of her unpublished bachelor thesis and is dedicated to her memory.

Data availability

Anonymized data is available upon request from the corresponding author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Software information

All data analysis has been conducted with SPSS 26.

Notes

1 In this paper, we use the terms ostracism and social exclusion synonymously. Eck and Riva (2016) suggest that social exclusion is a useful umbrella term for experiences such as rejection (negative attention) as well as ostracism (a lack of attention).

2 Data is available upon request. We have no permission from the participants to share the data publicly.

3 We have tested H1, H3, and H4 with the reduced sample size for reference and make it available in the supplemental materials to this article.

4 Please note that due to our coding and the computation of the mood difference score, the positive regression weight means that included participants had 1.03 units more positive mood change than those who were ostracised. Positive mood change values indicate a better mood after the treatment than before. Conversely, ostracised participants experienced a decrease in mood.