The detection of social exclusion: Evolution and beyond

This article analyzes how humans detect threats to social inclusion. The authors begin by noting the likely evolutionary roots of (a) the human sensitivity to threats of both interpersonal and group exclusion and (b) the nature of the primitive system that humans developed for detecting such threats. The authors then propose seven generic classes of signals (hurting, avoiding, exploiting, deregulating, disengaging, differentiating, and slandering) that modern humans use in detecting exclusion and compare our taxonomy to prior empirical attempts to identify rejection cues. Finally, the authors offer a preliminary model of how the modern sociometer operates, emphasizing the importance of behavioral expectations and attribution processes, and discuss open questions suggested by our analysis.