Children draw more affiliative pictures following priming with third-party ostracism.

Abstract

Humans have a strong need to belong. Thus, when signs of ostracism are detected, adults often feel motivated to affiliate with others in order to reestablish their social connections. This study investigated the importance of affiliation to young children following priming with ostracism. Four-and 5-year-old children were primed with either ostracism or control videos and their understanding of, and responses to, the videos were measured. Results showed that children were able to report that there was exclusion in the ostracism videos, and that they recognized that the ostracized individual felt sad. Most interestingly, when subsequently asked to draw a picture of themselves and their friend, children primed with ostracism depicted relationships that were significantly more affiliative. Children drew themselves and their friend standing significantly closer together and adults rated their drawings as more affiliative overall. These findings introduce drawing as a useful new method for measuring social motivations and processes following an experimental manipulation, and demonstrate that affiliation is particularly important to children following even a vicarious experience of social exclusion.

The origins of belonging: social motivation in infants and young children

“…This result has recently been replicated and extended by Watson-Jones and colleagues who have shown that children imitate more closely on a number of tasks following videos depicting exclusion than following videos depicting inclusion [102]. Further research using this basic paradigm has shown that children also draw pictures that depict more affiliative relationships following priming with exclusion [103].…”

Attachment and maternal sensitivity are related to infants’ monitoring of animated social interactions

“…A further possible future direction is motivated by Song et al. 's () study in which they showed that children's drawings became more affiliative when they were primed with observed third‐party ostracism videos. In our study, the order of the assessment for eye‐tracking and SSP was fixed and we think it is unlikely that the prior viewing of animations could have had a major impact on the classification of the infants as secure or insecure.…”

Learning to cope with everyday instances of social exclusion: A review of emotional and cognitive strategies for children and adolescents

“…One well‐known behavioral response to exclusion is pro‐sociality and conformism. Various studies have shown that also children as young as 4 years of age engage in affiliative and imitative behavior after being primed with vicarious exclusion (i.e., Song, Over, & Carpenter, ; Watson‐Jones, Legare, Whitehouse, & Clegg, ). In effect, the primary function of exclusion is social control.…”