Changes in Eye Contact and Attraction Scores Relative to Ostracism and Dissent

Abstract

Ostracism casts a number of harms on group members who are targets, yet little is known about the behaviors which can lead group members to become ostracism targets. Here, we investigated whether dissent—an important and beneficial behavior for group decision making—led the group to ostracize the members who voiced dissent. This study examined ostracism and two types of dissent—disagreement with the group’s decision-making process and disagreement with specific ideas. Confederates who dissented with ideas were ostracized, as evidenced by lower attraction scores when compared to confederates in control groups. By contrast, process dissenters were not ostracized. Rather, eye contact with process dissenters was significantly higher than eye contact with confederates in control groups. These results suggest that questioning a group’s decision-making process may be one way to draw the attention of the group without being ostracized whereas challenging the prevailing decision itself may subject the dissenter to social exclusion.