Feeling excluded? Welcome to social pain.

"I was at a park with my dog and suddenly a frisbee roiled up and hit me in the back. I looked around and there were two guys playing, so I threw it back to them thinking that I'd go back to my dog - but they threw it back to me. So I threw it to them and they threw it to me, so I sort of joined their group and we were throwing it around for a couple of minutes and then all of a sudden they stopped throwing it to me and they just threw it to each other... I was amazed at how bad I felt... And finally I just sort of slithered back to my dog."- Kip Williams, Social Psychologist from a 2004 interview with ABC News.

This is a great quote that captures the feeling of being excluded. I remember when I was a kid back in the schoolyard when teams were being picked. I tended to be the last or sometimes not picked at all. I felt gutted. At some point, most people have experienced being excluded.

You may be at a party or a business mixer and you notice four people having a lively conversation. You approach the small group and they shift ever so slightly, perhaps even at an unconscious level, so there is no natural space to join in on the conversation. You'd have to literally shoulder your way to make a space, which most people would never think of doing. Just like that you feel like the fifth wheel. You feel excluded.

What we actually feel is a type of social pain. From earlier research with animals, social pain is registered in the same structues of the brain that register physical pain.

So what's the fallout of feeling excluded?

A person can feel undervalued and not appreciated. He can feel invisible and feel his efforts go unrecognized. He will lose motivation and drive. He will begin to have self talk along the lines of, " What's the point? My efforts don't count anyways. Screw it!"

I work with teams to help them communicate better and to have better cohesion. One of the most comment grudges I hear is the feeling of being excluded. This happens quite often, but usually team leaders are not aware of it. That is, it was not a conscious action to exclude individuals.

Perhaps the leader was not aware of all the contributing factors that went into the success of a project. She only gave praise to the most obvious contributers. It's important that time is invested to learn about all those individuals that had an input and to give feedback when possible.

Social pain is just as real as physical pain. You may not have physically hit someone, but if you excluded someone it is a psychological hit that is registered in the same area of the brain as physical pain.









- On the road with my iPhone