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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1411697

The Effect of Ostracism on Social Withdrawal Behavior: The Mediating Role of Self-esteem and the Moderating Role of Rejection Sensitivity

Provisionally accepted
Yuju Lei Yuju Lei *Mingyue Li Mingyue Li Chen Lin Chen Lin Zhen Yu Zhen Yu
  • School of Education, Hubei University of Arts and Science, Xiangyang, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Extant studies have empirically tested the main two behavior responses following ostracism: prosocial or antisocial. Few studies have investigated the relationship between ostracism and social withdrawal.According to the temporal need-threat model and the self-verification theory, the present study aimed to examine the influence mechanism of ostracism on social withdrawal, especially the mediating role of self-esteem and the moderating role of rejection sensitivity. A total of 1315 Chinese high school students (52.6% female) completed a written questionnaire. Results showed that ostracism was positively correlated with social withdrawal. Ostracism not only directly predicted social withdrawal, but also indirectly affected social withdrawal by threatening adolescents' self-esteem. High rejection sensitivity may help aggravate adolescents' self-esteem threaten perceive from ostracism. Adolescents with high rejection sensitivity felt a greater threat to self-esteem when ostracized. Findings suggest a new direction for understanding individuals' responses to ostracism.

    Keywords: ostracism, Social withdrawal, self-verification, self-esteem, Rejection sensitivity

    Received: 03 Apr 2024; Accepted: 08 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Lei, Li, Lin and Yu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Yuju Lei, School of Education, Hubei University of Arts and Science, Xiangyang, China

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