How Did Participants Respond After Reading a Letter Describing Romantic Rejection?
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We know that rejection actually hurts, merely it can also inflict damage to our psychological well-being that goes beyond emotional hurting. Hither are 10 lesser-known facts that describe the effects rejection has on our emotions, thinking, and behavior.
Why rejection hurts every bit much as it does
1. Rejection piggybacks on concrete pain pathways in the brain. fMRI studies show that the aforementioned areas of the brain get activated when we experience rejection equally when we experience physical hurting. This is why rejection hurts then much (neurologically speaking). In fact our brains respond so similarly to rejection and physical hurting that…
2. Tylenol reduces the emotional hurting rejection elicits. In a study testing the hypothesis that rejection mimics physical pain, researchers gave some participants acetaminophen (Tylenol) before asking them to recall a painful rejection experience. The people who received Tylenol reported significantly less emotional pain than subjects who took a sugar pill. Psychologists assume that the reason for the strong link between rejection and physical hurting is that…
iii. Rejection served a vital function in our evolutionary past. In our hunter/gatherer past, being ostracized from our tribes was akin to a death penalty, as we were unlikely to survive for long alone. Evolutionary psychologists assume the brain developed an early warning arrangement to alarm us when we were at chance for ostracism. Because it was so important to get our attention, those who experienced rejection as more than painful (i.e., because rejection mimicked physical pain in their brain) gained an evolutionary advantage—they were more likely to correct their beliefs and consequently, more likely to remain in the tribe. This probably also explains why…
four. We can relive and re-experience social hurting more vividly than nosotros can physical hurting. Try recalling an experience in which you felt significant physical pain and your brain pathways volition respond, "Meh." In other words, that memory alone won't elicit concrete hurting. Only attempt reliving a painful rejection (actually, don't—just take my word for it), and you will be flooded with many of the same feelings you had at the time (and your brain volition respond much as information technology did at the time, likewise). Our brain prioritizes rejection experiences considering we are social animals who alive in "tribes." This leads to an aspect of rejection nosotros often overlook…
5. Rejection destabilizes our "need to belong." We all have a fundamental need to belong to a group. When we go rejected, this demand becomes destabilized and the disconnection we experience adds to our emotional pain. Reconnecting with those who love u.s.a., or reaching out to members of groups to which nosotros experience strong affinity and who value and accept u.s.a., has been found to soothe emotional hurting after a rejection. Feeling alone and disconnected after a rejection, notwithstanding, has an often overlooked impact on our behavior…
6. Rejection creates surges of anger and aggression. In 2001, the Surgeon General of the U.S. issued a written report stating that rejection was a greater risk for adolescent violence than drugs, poverty, or gang membership. Countless studies have demonstrated that even mild rejections lead people to take out their assailment on innocent bystanders. School shootings, violence against women, and fired workers going "postal" are other examples of the potent link betwixt rejection and assailment. However, much of that aggression elicited past rejection is too turned inward…
seven. Rejections send us on a mission to seek and destroy our self-esteem. We oft answer to romantic rejections past finding fault in ourselves, bemoaning all our inadequacies, kicking ourselves when we're already down, and smacking our cocky-esteem into a pulp. Well-nigh romantic rejections are a affair of poor fit and a lack of chemistry, incompatible lifestyles, wanting different things at dissimilar times, or other such problems of mutual dynamics. Blaming ourselves and attacking our cocky-worth only deepens the emotional pain we feel and makes information technology harder for usa to recover emotionally. But earlier y'all blitz to blame yourself for...blaming yourself, keep in mind the fact that…
viii. Rejection temporarily lowers our IQ. Being asked to think a recent rejection experience and relive the experience was enough to crusade people to score significantly lower on subsequent IQ tests, tests of brusk-term retentiveness, and tests of controlling. Indeed, when we are reeling from a painful rejection, thinking conspicuously is just non that like shooting fish in a barrel. This explains why…
9. Rejection does not respond to reason. Participants were put through an experiment in which they were rejected by strangers. The experiment was rigged—the "strangers" were confederates of the researchers. Surprisingly, though, even beingness told that the "strangers" who had "rejected" them did non really reject them did little to ease the emotional pain participants felt. Fifty-fifty beingness told that the strangers belonged to a group they despised such equally the KKK did fiddling to soothe people'due south hurt feelings. Nevertheless, the news is not all bad, because…
ten. There are ways to treat the psychological wounds rejection inflicts. It is possible to treat the emotional pain rejection elicits and to prevent the psychological, emotional, cognitive, and relationship fallouts that occur in its backwash. To do and then finer we must address each of our psychological wounds (i.e., soothe our emotional pain, reduce our acrimony and aggression, protect our self-esteem, and stabilize our need to vest).
Encounter too:
- "10 Surprising Facts About Self-Esteem"
- "Ten Signs You Might Have a Fearfulness of Failure"
Copyright 2013 Guy Winch
Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201307/10-surprising-facts-about-rejection
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