Martijn van Teffelen

Chapter 3 54 to what degree she would like to get to know the speaker (one = ``not at all`` to seven = ``very much``). This rating was then projected as bogus feedback on the participant’s computer screen with seven colored squares. Squares lit up red or green (i.e., deeper red for lower ratings and brighter green for higher ratings) when the evaluator provided a rating. To induce social exclusion, participants were presented with five ratings, one rating per minute in the sequence: seven-five-three-three-two. Thus, by the end of the task the participants were under the impression that the confederate did not want to get to know them. This procedure lasted six minutes and is similar to other studies that were designed to elicit social exclusion (Buckley et al., 2004). This procedure has been shown to increase negative affect with a standardized effect size of Z = .60 (as reported in Blackhart et al., 2009). Table 1 Sample characteristics Condition Statistical group difference Social exclusion ( n = 42) Insult ( n = 44) Age in years, mean ( SD ) 26.21 (11.31) 29.68 (13.00) Z = 1.34, p = .182 Nationality, n (%) Χ 2 = 11.34, p = .331 Dutch 25 (29) 25 (29) German 10 (12) 16 (19) Other European 4 (5) 2 (2) Non-European 3 (3) 1 (1) Education, n (%) Χ 2 = 2.56, p = .465 Low 0 (0) 0 (0) Middle 27 (31) 29 (34) High 10 (12) 11 (13) Work situation, n (%) Χ 2 = 4.83, p = .437 Employed 5 (6) 10 (12) Student 31 (36) 29 (34) Unemployed 6 (7) 5 (6) Insult: Negative Intelligence Feedback In this condition, participants were asked to freely estimate their IQ prior to engaging in a frustrating “Trivial Pursuit” task, where participants were asked to answer forced choice questions of general knowledge (Lobbestael et al., 2008). The participants were informed that research shows that these general knowledge questions form an estimation of the participants’ IQ. The task took about 20 minutes and at four predefined time-points a