If I Can't Feel Your Pain, Then I Inflict Pain on You

The current investigation sought to investigate whether emotional insensitivity (as opposed to emotional distress) mediates the relationship between social exclusion and aggressive behavior. Results from Experiments 1 and 2 showed that social exclusion caused decrements in emotional responsiveness, as indicated by reduced empathic concern toward another person's suffering. In both experiments, the reduction in emotional responsiveness mediated the link between social exclusion and aggressive behavior. Experiment 3 provided no evidence that the lack of emotional responsiveness toward one person following social exclusion had implications for aggression toward another person. These findings extend prior evidence that rejection causes the emotion system to cease functioning normally as a means of protecting the rejected person from a negative emotional experience. Being buffered from a negative emotional reaction can have negative consequences, however, in terms of weakening inhibitions that normally reduce aggression. Without a functioning emotion system, rejected participants were unable to feel empathic concern toward the victim of aggression and hence behaved aggressively.