The experience of being ignored in the presence of others, commonly known as ostracism, is a phenomenon that occurs throughout our lives in various contexts and at different ages. It has a negative impact on fundamental psychological needs and induces physiological and behavioral changes in adults.
A new study titled "You can't play with us: First-person ostracism affects infants' behavioral reactivity," conducted at the Bicocca Child&Baby Lab at the University of Milano-Bicocca, and recently published in the international scientific journal Child Development, has revealed that even infants as young as 13 months old are sensitive to ostracism and react differently when included or excluded in social situations.
Over the past twenty years, several studies have focused on understanding the underlying dynamics of ostracism. It is now known that starting from school age, being excluded from social situations can influence basic psychological needs such as the need for belongingness and self-esteem, leading to physiological changes such as an accelerated heart rate. Moreover, ostracism can also modify our behaviors, enabling us to adopt prosocial or antisocial attitudes depending on the situation.
But how and when does this early sensitivity to social exclusion emerge? To try to answer this question, the research conducted at the Bicocca Child&Baby Lab by a group of researchers led by Ermanno Quadrelli, a professor of developmental psychology and educational psychology, within the framework of a funding from the European Commission through the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (MOTION Project), examined the effects of ostracism on the behavior of 13-14-month-old children.
The children were engaged in a game with a ball together with two experimenters. During the game, they could either be included, receiving and passing the ball equitably with the experimenters, or ostracized, being ignored by the experimenters and excluded from the game after the first two passes. The children's behavior was recorded to allow for a detailed evaluation of their facial, vocal, and postural expressions during different phases of the experiment.
The results obtained showed that ostracized children exhibited fewer positive valence behaviors such as smiles and laughter, while displaying a higher frequency of negative emotional expressions such as crying and anger compared to the included children. Furthermore, excluded children paid much more attention to the game, observing the ball and/or the players for longer periods, and sought the attention of other players, presumably in an attempt to be re-included in the social interaction.
These findings reveal, for the first time, that children as young as 13 months old are sensitive to ostracism, exhibiting behavioral responses consistent with what has been observed in older children and adults. Overall, the collected data also provide new insights into the development of social interaction skills in early childhood and highlight how sensitivity to social exclusion in adults has its roots in the first months of life.
The available research data to date indicates that being persistently ignored by peers starting from preschool can lead to feelings of dissatisfaction in the classroom, ultimately compromising academic performance.
"Adopting an evolutionary perspective and studying the effects of ostracism from early infancy," argues Ermanno Quadrelli, "not only expands our knowledge of social development in the early years of life but also highlights the need to intervene early to counteract ostracism and promote an inclusive environment from the early years. In this regard, the creation of educational and intervention programs aimed at fostering social integration and developing socio-emotional adaptation skills could help mitigate the negative effects of ostracism on children and improve their prospects for academic success and social well-being."