The potential balm of religion and spirituality for recovering from ostracism

Abstract

Ostracism – being ignored and excluded – is a common and painful experience with negative psychological consequences. We present a social psychological conceptualization of ostracism, and review the extensive research conducted on this phenomenon during the past fifteen years. We discuss this research within a stage model that examines the effects of ostracism over time. This model argues that immediate reactions to ostracism are ubiquitous and largely uniform, but various coping procedures become more important after individuals have had time to reflect upon their experiences. We suggest that individuals who are coping with ostracism may find their spiritual beliefs useful in their recovery. However, spiritual coping may be exploited by opportunistic proselytizers for cults or other dubious groups. We suggest that workplace spirituality may be another method of recovery that can be encouraged by organizations that wish to remain secular and respect those employees who do not have spiritual affiliations.

Keywords:

• ostracism
• religion and spirituality
• workplace spirituality
• cult recruitment

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Adrienne Carter‐Sowell, Stefanie Plemmons, Paolo Riva, Laura VanderDrift, and Amanda Wesselmann for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

1. The literature is unclear on the specific differences between social exclusion, rejection, and ostracism; often times these three terms are used interchangeably. We acknowledge there are debates about how each of these phenomena relate, but for the sake of simplicity we will use the term ostracism throughout this manuscript (c.f. Williams 2007a; also Leary et al. 2006).