Membership status, social exclusion, and regulatory focus

Previous work suggests that being socially excluded can influence people's regulatory focus motivations (i.e., promotion and prevention). In the current work, we extend past findings and further explore whether different social exclusion experiences (ignore vs. explicit exclusion) activate regulatory focus motivations differentially as a function of an individual's initial membership status (i.e., member vs.non-member) within an excluding group. We expect that when people are ignored or explicitly excluded from a group in which they were never initially included (i.e.,non-member), social exclusion should activate a promotion focus. Across two studies, we found partial support for the membership status perspective. Implications for regulatory focus and social exclusion literatures are discussed.