Simple social interactions among peers and neighbours can ease oneself from social anxiety and thus can mitigate the effects of social exclusion. Current researchers have found that face-to-face conversations as well as anticipation of future interactions encourage individuals to overcome their social anxiety and help them by making them more secure.
Thus small and timeless commutative interactions with a friend can lessen the unwanted feelings and thoughts that often come to our mind by being socially excluded. Numerous study from Cornell University thereby suggests some imperative effectiveness of social interactions reducing the chances of social vulnerability via some mere social activeness.
“Maybe someone didn’t grin at you today, or maybe someone close to you didn’t add you to an email chain.”
So, the study is particularly based on how a small bit of social negligence from close ones can buffer the whole mood of a person.
This works on the minor day-to-day interactions where you can build a meaningful outcome. Chatting with a real close one face to face before or after being excluded can diminish the effect of the social situation faced. Furthermore, even a reminder of a forthcoming meeting with a friend sped up the recovery process.
Lee the author of “Mitigating the Affective and Cognitive Consequences of Social Exclusion” published a whole article based on social exclusion and how it affects our mental well-being.
“This works focuses on encouraging one to get out of their comfort zone and work on their social life. We sometimes gravitate towards engaging ourselves to our smartphones and try to get bit more a work done, but having a soulful conversation with good friends and peers of ours makes a huge difference leaving us feel relaxed.” As Zayas said.
The researchers worked on 664 participants they gave them the task of playing a virtual ball-tossing game where they either felt left out or included, which ultimately led them to feel low and experience low self-esteem even. After playing such a game participants were asked to review their respective moods, feelings of belongingness, comfort and a sense of control. Thus researchers summed up that face-to-face conversations with a stranger or an unknown peer less promoted recovery from the sting of social exclusion.
After all the research and study the overall conclusion to overcome and balance out social exclusion among individuals is by implementing frequent, positive and structured interactions among them reducing social vulnerabilities. These implications can cause a downward spiral of negative emotions and the feeling of withdrawal with potential impacts of loneliness and isolation.
References +
- Neuroscience News. (2024, May 11). Friendly chats mitigate social exclusion effects. https://neurosciencenews.com/communication-social-exclusion-26087/
- Lee, R. T., Surenkok, G., & Zayas, V. (2024). Mitigating the affective and cognitive consequences of social exclusion: an integrative data analysis of seven social disconnection interventions. BMC Public Health, 24(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-18365-5