Ostracizing Group Members Who Can (or Cannot) Control Being Burdensome

Ostracism–excluding and ignoring someone–occurs cross-culturally in humans. Previous research suggests that groups often use ostracism to punish burdensome members in order to 1) motivate the members to change undesirable behavior and 2) ultimately protect the group from these members. We present data from two studies that manipulate the presence of a burdensome member during an online group interaction and attributional information about the member’s controllability over the burden. Participants played an online game in which one of their group members either played slowly (burdensome) or similarly to the other members (non-burdensome). We manipulated this group member’s perceived Internet connection status (good vs. poor). A slow player with a good connection could presumably control their behavior but one with a poor connection could not. Participants ostracized a slow-playing group member regardless of connection status, but status did have some influence on participants’ self-reported motives for ostracism.