Social Exclusion, Rumination, and Women's Ability to Self-Regulate

Previous research indicates women who have heightened body-image sensitivity are more likely to perceive any type of rejection as appearance-based. We are interested in examining the effects on women’s self-regulation (food consumption) after they are excluded from a social game, especially when the exclusion is ambiguous and might be attributed to their body weight. Additionally, we speculate whether rumination (reflecting on the exclusion) influences this effect. Participants (n = 140) will complete an online, pretest measure of body-image sensitivity. They will then come to the lab to play Cyberball (computer ball toss game) against other women (really computer-simulated players). Participants will be randomly assigned to a blatant rejection condition (receives 1/30 throws) or an ambiguous rejection condition (receives 6/30 throws). Afterwards, participants will complete a separate taste-testing study rating different kinds of cookies and allowed to sample as many cookies as they want. During the tastetesting, half the participants will be allowed to ruminate about their Cyberball experience; the other half will receive a distractor task to prevent rumination. We will conduct a 2(ambiguous versus blatant exclusion) x 2(rumination versus no rumination) ANOVA to examine condition differences on grams of cookies consumed. We expect body image sensitivity will be associated with decreased self-regulation (as measured by cookie consumption) but only among women in the ambiguously excluded condition and rumination condition. If we find our expected results, then rumination might provide some insight as to why women who experienced ambiguous rejection demonstrated the greatest decrease in self-regulation in our previous research.