Social exclusion in the lab

We propose a laboratory experiment to understand how social exclusion affects the participants of this antisocial interaction in terms of performance and reported emotions. We adopt a widely used ostracism manipulation from psychology and take it to an experimental economics laboratory. We find that social exclusion events only affect lightly excluded participants and that this effect is explained by the emotions generated after exclusion. In addition, the victims of exclusion report reductions in the valence dimension of emotions, as do those who have the option to exclude but decide not to. The possibility of bystanders punishing potential offenders, the generalized disapproval of exclusion, and an extended approval of inclusion reduce the incidence of exclusion. This reduction comes at the cost of negative changes in the reported emotions of most participant types, but it does not translate into changes in performance in a task. Last, we find that previous exclusion increases the decision of former victims to obstracize.