Social cues establish expectations of rejection and affect the response to being rejected

Violating one’s expectations of inclusion may influence the pain of rejection. This is supported by neurological evidence on expectation violation processing (Somerville, Heatherton, & Kelley, 2006). We asked: Can an expectation of a specific social outcome affect how it feels to be rejected or included? We tested the premise that expectations for the outcome of an interaction are derived from social information. Participants were either...