Interpersonal Rejection

Interpersonal rejection ranks among the most potent and distressing events that people experience. Romantic rejection ostracism stigmatization job termination and other kinds of rejections have the power to compromise the quality of people''s lives. As a result people are highly motivated to avoid social rejection and indeed much of human behavior appears to be designed to avoid such experiences. Yet despite the widespread effects of real anticipated and even imagined rejections psychologists have devoted only passing attention to the topic and the research on rejection has been scattered throughout a number of psychological subspecialties (e.g. social clinical developmental personality). In the past few years however we have seen a surge of interest in the effects of interpersonal rejection on behavior and emotion. The goal of this book is to pull together the contributions of several scholars whose work is on the cutting edge of rejection research providing a scholarly yet readable overview of recent advances in the area. In doing so it not only provides a look at the current state of the area but also helps to establish the topic of rejection as an identifiable area for future research. Topics covered in the book include: ostracism unrequited love betrayal stigmatization rejection sensitivity rejection and self-esteem peer rejection in childhood emotional responses to rejection and personality moderators of reactions to rejection.