The impact of social exclusion on social and non-social working memory

Humans rely on social-cognitive processes, such as social working memory, to maintain and manipulate information about social relationships. While social and self-relevant information is often prioritised over non-social information, it remains unclear whether these processes are sensitive to social exclusion. Therefore, this preregistered study investigated whether social exclusion influences working memory for social and non-social information. A total of 125 participants (age: M = 37.4 years, SD = 13.8; 49.6% female) first completed Cyberball, an online task inducing feelings of social inclusion or exclusion, followed by the Network Memory Task assessing memory for social (e.g., friendship) and non-social (e.g., flight paths) networks.Consistent with previous findings, we found that social, relative to non-social information was processed faster in working memory. We also replicated a self-reference effect, whereby self-relevant information was remembered more accurately and processed more quickly than non-self-relevant social and non-social information. Contrary to our hypotheses, social exclusion did not directly impact working memory performance. However, exploratory analyses showed that higher rejection sensitivity was associated with slower reaction times across all conditions, following exclusion. Overall, our results suggest that the direct effects of social exclusion on working are limited and potentially dependent on individual difference in rejection sensitivity.