Four studies (total valid N = 643) examined whether ostracism increases people’s political conspiracy beliefs through heightened vulnerability and whether self-affirmation intervention counteracts the effect of ostracism on conspiracy beliefs. Compared with their nonostracized counterparts, ostracized participants were more likely to endorse conspiracy beliefs related to different political issues (Studies 1–3). Moreover, heightened vulnerability mediated the link between ostracism and conspiracy beliefs (Studies 1–3). Offering ostracized participants an opportunity to reaffirm values important to them could reduce their political conspiracy beliefs (Study 4). Taken together, our findings highlight the crucial role of vulnerability in understanding when and why ostracism increases conspiracy beliefs and how to ameliorate this relationship. Our findings also provide novel insights into how daily interpersonal interactions influence people’s political beliefs and involvement.

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Previous studies have focused almost exclusively on identifying the antecedents of aggression and violence; as such, there are virtually no experimental data about the psychological consequences of fantasizing aggressive and violent actions. The present experiment aimed to fill this significant informational void in the literature by testing whether aggressive fantasy would influence people’s rumination tendency and subjective well-being. We hypothesized that aggressive fantasy would make people more likely to ruminate, which would thereby lower their subjective well-being. To test this prediction, we recruited a sample of participants, who were adults in the United States (overall valid N = 113; 39 men; mean age = 36.27, SD = 11.27), and they were randomly assigned to either the aggressive fantasy condition or the control condition. At the beginning of the experiment, participants were asked to think of a person they despised and describe the characteristics of the despised person. Next, participants in the aggressive fantasy condition fantasized aggressive and violent actions toward the despised target, while participants in the control condition fantasized a control experience. Finally, their state rumination and subjective well-being were assessed. The results showed that, relative to participants who did not fantasize aggression, those who engaged in aggressive fantasy reported higher levels of rumination and lower levels of subjective well-being. Further analysis showed that enhanced rumination significantly mediated the effect of aggressive fantasy on subjective well-being. The present findings contribute to the literature by providing new insights into the psychological consequences of aggressive and violent responses and the underlying mechanism.