How Does Rejection Feel? Explaining Victims’ Reactions to Social Rejection From the Perspective of Self-Conscious Emotions

Research has characterized the emotional response to social rejection as a generalized negative affect, overlooking the diverse reactions of rejected individuals. We explored how humiliation and related emotions (anger, shame, and guilt) are linked to post-rejection behavior, and how two key appraisals (unfairness and internalization of devaluation) evoke specific emotions. In two studies—an experimental Cyberball study ( N = 186) and a large-scale correlational study ( N = 1,200)—we found that humiliation was associated with both unfairness and internalization, anger only with unfairness, shame with internalization, and guilt with internalization and negatively with unfairness. Humiliation was correlated with aggressive confrontation and avoidance, anger with aggressive and non-aggressive confrontation, shame with avoidance and negatively with non-aggressive confrontation, and guilt with reparation and non-aggressive confrontation. We discuss the relevance of these emotional pathways for understanding social rejection and informing targeted interventions to mitigate harmful responses.