Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. A great deal of human emotion arises in response to real, anticipated, remembered, or imagined rejection by other people.
Because acceptance by other people improved evolutionary fitness, human beings developed biopsychological mechanisms to apprise them of threats to acceptance and belonging, along with emotional systems to deal with threats to acceptance. This article examines seven emotions that often arise when people perceive that their relational value to other people is low or in potential jeopardy, including hurt feelings, jealousy, loneliness, shame, guilt, social anxiety, and embarrassment.
Other emotions, such as sadness and anger, may occur during rejection episodes, but are reactions to features of the situation other than low relational value. The article discusses the evolutionary functions of rejection-related emotions, neuroscience evidence regarding the brain regions that mediate reactions to rejection, and behavioral research from social, developmental, and clinical psychology regarding psychological and behavioral concomitants of interpersonal rejection.
Keywords: anger , emotion , guilt , hurt feelings , interpersonal rejection , jealousy , loneliness , shame , social anxiety. Interpersonal rejections constitute some of the most distressing and consequential events in people's lives. Whether one considers a romantic rejection, the dissolution of a friendship, ostracism by a group, estrangement from family members, or merely being ignored or excluded in casual encounters, rejections have myriad emotional, psychological, and interpersonal consequences.
People not only react strongly when they perceive that others have rejected them, but a great deal of human behavior is influenced by the desire to avoid rejection. This article begins with a brief primer on the adaptive significance of emotions and discusses the interpersonal functions of rejection-related emotions in particular. It then examines specific emotions that are involved in the management of social acceptance and rejectionβincluding hurt feelings, jealousy, loneliness, shame, guilt, social anxiety, and embarrassmentβas well as others that often arise during rejection episodes, but that are not specific to rejection.
