More than a toy: Holding a teddy bear can ease the negative effects of social exclusion

Touching a teddy bear mitigates negative effects of social exclusion to increase prosocial behavior

From Social Psychological and Personality Science

From a social standpoint, social exclusion increases aggressive behavior, impairs self-regulation and decreases prosocial behavior. Given the negative consequences of exclusion, there is surprisingly little research on ways to mitigate its deleterious effects. This study examined how touching an inanimate object—a teddy bear—might impact the effect of social exclusion on prosocial behavior. Across two studies, researchers found that socially excluded individuals who touched a teddy bear acted more prosocially. It highlighted the overlap between the physical and social pain systems. This suggests that it may be possible to use touch, a physical intervention, to alleviate the pain of exclusion. Future research needs to establish the class of objects and their definitive properties that lead people to use these objects to alleviate the pain of exclusion.

Abstract

There is little empirical research to date that looks at how the deleterious effects of social exclusion can be mitigated. We examined how touching an inanimate object—a teddy bear—might impact the effect of social exclusion on prosocial behavior. Across two studies, we found that socially excluded individuals who touched a teddy bear acted more prosocially as compared to socially excluded individuals who just viewed the teddy bear from a distance. This effect was only observed for socially excluded participants and not for socially included (or control) participants. Overall, the findings suggest that touching a teddy bear mitigates the negative effects of social exclusion to increase prosocial behavior. In Study 2, positive emotion was found to mediate the relationship between touch and prosocial behavior. These results suggest a possible means to attenuate the unpleasant effects of social exclusion.

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Article details
Tai, K., Zheng, X., & Narayanan, J. (2011). Touching a Teddy Bear Mitigates Negative Effects of Social Exclusion to Increase Prosocial Behavior Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2 (6), 618-626 DOI: 10.1177/1948550611404707

Tags: dictator game, prosocial behavior, social exclusion, touch