Ostracism refers to being ignored, excluded and/or rejected by other individuals or groups independent of offering a justification or being a target of negative reactions (Williams, 2007). Being rejected, ignored or excluded is considered recently as a crucial issue in social psychology because of the important implications in every aspect of human life. Researches have been shown that ostracism evokes a variety of negative emotions such as sadness, anger and hostility as well as the experience of social pain which shares the physiological arousal of physical pain (Chow, Tiedens & Govan,2008; DeWall et al., 2009; Eisenberger, Lieberman & Willams, 2003; Mendes et al., 2008; Twenge et al., 2007). According to Williams (2001, 2007) decrements of fundamental needs, such as, self-esteem, belongingness, perceived control and meaningful existence are also the consequences of ostracism. Individuals then act to fortify or replenish their thwarted needs by antisocial behaviors such as aggression, bullying, counter productive actions and violent acts or prosocial behaviors like cooperation, helping and organizational citizenship (Twenge, 2005; Williams, 2001, 2007). Researches of ostracism have been used several paradigms and manipulations such as Ball Tossing, Life Alone, Cyberball and Get Acquainted (see. Williams, 2007). All of these paradigms aim to reject, ignore or exclude the participants in different ways. Cyberball Paradigm is one of the most efficient ways of ostracism manipulation (Williams, 2007). Cyberball Paradigm contains a computer game which the participants are told that they are required to play in order to exercise their mental visualization skills as a task of experiment. Researches which were held with Cyberball Paradigm showed that ostracized people react more aggressively (Williams & Jarvis, 2006). The purpose of the current study is to adapt one of the effective idea generation paradigms (Brainstorming Paradigm) to ostracism researches and compare the effects of the Brainstorming Paradigm (Study 1) and Cyberball Paradigm (Study 2). Thank you very much for joining the experiment. We are planning to conduct two experiments in this semester about brainstorming. This will be the first one. You will write your ideas on slips of paper and share these with one another. You will use a different color pen to write down one idea on the slip of paper and pass it to the person on your immediate right. You will then receive the slip of paper from the person on your left. Read the idea(s) on the slip of paper, add your own idea, and pass it on. If you finish before receiving your next slip, you may use a blank slip until it is passed to you. When everybody wrote on a slip, you should put that slip in the center of the table. This procedure will continue until the session is over. You do not need to make complete sentences when representing the ideas. Just use simple phrases. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar. The session will be seven minutes long. When the time is up, I will come and collect the slips of paper. I will calculate the number of ideas generated by you and the group at all. We will use this numbers to compare different groups’ performance. The four brainstorming rules that you should follow are: (a) criticism is ruled out, (b) freewheeling is welcome, (c) quantity is wanted more than quality, and (d) improvement and combination of ideas are sought. Brainstorming as a paradigm for studying ostracism: Experiments with brainstorming and cyberball paradigms Yasemin Abayhan*, Hayal Yavuz, Savaş Ceylan*, Alp Giray Kaya**, Deniz Şahin*(PhD), Orhan Aydın* (PhD) *Hacettepe University, Faculty of Letters, Department of Psychology ** İzmir Economy University, Faculty of Letters, Department of Psychology INTRODUCTION Forty-one students from introductory psychology classes participated to fulfill a course requirement. They were randomly assigned to experiment or control conditions. Participants were accompanied by three confederates. Appropriate training was given to confederates and their skills were assessed during role-playing sessions. STUDY 1 Confederates in the control group followed the brainstorming rules and passed the slips of papers to the participant. In the ostracism condition, the confederates followed the rules for the first three rounds, but then they started to behave as if there was only three participants, they ostracized the participant. They neither get slips of paper from the participant nor they gave slips of paper to the participant. They were instructed not to talk with the participant, answer questions of the participant, or make an eye contact with the participant. After the seven-minutes brainstorming session, the experimenter entered the room and collected the slips of paper to calculate the scores of each participant and the group at all and left the room. After two minutes, experimenter entered the room and gives instructions for the after-experiment survey. The instruction included the following: Thank you very much for participating. As I said before, we are planning to conduct two experiments in this semester. We usually determine the group of participants for the second experiment by ourselves. But for these experiments we would like to get your opinions of the group and the process. Please fill the questionnaire in this closed envelope and then you can leave. After collecting the questionnaires, immediate feedback was given to the participants, and informed consents were taken from the participant. Results The positive and negative emotions of participants are the dependent variables of the current study. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed the predicted main effect of ostracism, Wilk’s Lambda=.048, F(2, 37)= , p<.0001, η 2 =.95. The main effect of ostracism is significant on the questionnaire items which were composed of positive emotions of participants. The F values are presented in Table 1. As expected, participants in the ostracism condition reported significantly lower on positive affect measure (M=4.02, SD=.35) than the participants in the control condition (M = 5.12, SD=.35). The main effect of ostracism is also significant on the negative affect measure. The F values are presented in Table 1. Participants in the ostracism condition described themselves significantly more negative way (M=2.12, SD=.22) than the control condition (M = 1.30, SD=.22). Dependent Variables dfsFη2η2 Positive Emotions14.96*.12 Negative Emotions17.06**.16 Thirty two students from introductory psychology classes participated to fulfill a course requirement. They were randomly assigned to experiment or control conditions. Participants were accompanied by three confederates. Appropriate training was given to confederates and their skills were assessed during role-playing sessions. The participants were asked the percentage of receiving the ball as a manipulation check item. Ostracized participants reported low percentage of receiving the ball (M = 14.10, SD = 22.16) where as participants of control condition reported high percentage of receiving the ball (M = 35.20, SD = 16.74), demonstrating that the ostracism manipulation was successful (F(1, 34)= 9.35, p<.001). Dependent Variables dfsFη2η2 Positive Emotions18,67**.21 Negative Emotions Aim of the current study was testing Brainstorming Paradigm as a new paradigm for studying ostracism. Results indicated the main effect of ostracism via Cyberball Paradigm is significant only on the questionnaire items which were composed of positive emotions of participants. However, the main effect of ostracism via Brainstorming Paradigm is significant on both positive and negative emotions of participants. Being able to get a significant difference on negative emotions while studying ostracism is an important implication because of the social nature of Brainstorming Paradigm. Although these results showed that Brainstorming Paradigm will be a new effective way of ostracism manipulation, the research on standardization of Brainstorming Paradigm in ostracism is still going on. Chow, R. M., Tiedens, C. Z., & Govan, C. L. (2008). Excluded emotions: The role of anger antisocial responses to ostracism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, DeWall, C. N., Twenge, J. M., Gitter, S. A., & Baumeister, R. F. (2009). It’s thought that counts: The role of hostile cognition in shaping agressive responses to social exclusion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302, Mendes, W. B., Major, B., McCoy, S., & Blascovich, J. (2008). How attributional ambiguity shapes physiological and emotional responses to social rejection and acceptance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, Twenge, J. M. (2005). When does social rejection lead to aggression? The influences of situations, narssism, emotion, and replenishing social connections. In K. D. Williams, J. P. Forgas, and W. Von Hippel (Eds.), The social outcast: Ostracism, social exclusion, rejection, and bullying (pp ). New York: Psychology Press. Twenge, J. M., Baumeister, R. F., DeWall, C. N., Ciarocco, N. J., & Bartles, J. M. (2007). Social exclusion decreases prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, Williams, K. D. (2001). Ostracism: The Power of Silence. New York: Guilford. Williams, K. D. (2007). Ostracism. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, Williams, K. D., & Jarvis, B. (2006). Cyberball: A program for use in research on ostracism and interpersonal acceptance. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 38, Participants Materials Procedure Each participant used a different-color pen (black, red, blue, or green). Every participant was given a reasonable number of papers to generate ideas about “positive or negative aspects of campus life”. When students arrived for the experiment, the experimenter first asked the departments of all participants. The confederates were instructed to tell that they are from different departments of the Faculty of Letters, except Psychology and the department of the subject. After that, the experimenter explained the four brainstorming rules and brainstorming procedures. The instructions about procedures included the following: Dependent Variables The questionnaire included positive (happy, pleasant) and negative (angry, upset) affective items. Participants were asked to answer the questions according to how they felt ‘while playing the game’ (rated on a 7-point scale, with 1=Not at all, 7=Very much). Effects of Ostracism on Dependent Variables *p<.05 ** p<.01 STUDY 2 Participants Procedure When participants arrived at the hall of the laboratory, the experimenter first asked the departments of all participants. The confederates were instructed to tell that they are from different departments of the Faculty of Letters, except Psychology and the department of the subject. After that, the experimenter explained that the study was designed to examine the effects of mental visualization. Participants were informed that to practice their visualization skills, they would be playing an Internet game— “Cyberball” (Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000). The participant was told to mentally visualize (as vividly as possible) throughout the game, and that after finishing the game, they will be given a questionnaire about how did they visualized the situation and some other measure. They were said that they will enter seperate cubicles and the computers are connected to eack other via wireless connection. After participants entered the cubicles and said that they are ready, the experimenter closed the doors of the cubicles and experiment started. Results Manipulation Check Effects of Ostracism on Dependent Variables The positive and negative emotions of participants are the dependent variables of the current study. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed the predicted main effect of ostracism, Wilk’s Lambda=.113, F(2, 31)= , p<.0001, η2=.89. The main effect of ostracism is significant on the questionnaire items which were composed of positive emotions of participants. The F values of each questionnaire items are presented in Table 2. As expected, participants in the ostracism condition reported significantly lower on positive affect measure (M=2.24, SD= 1.80) than the participants in the control condition (M = 4.07, SD= 1.80). The main effect of ostracism is not significant on the questionnaire items which were composed of participants’ negative emotions such as upset and pleasant. DISCUSSION LITERATURE CITED Address for Correspondence: Yasemin Abayhan, Hacettepe University Department of Psychology, 06800, Beytepe, Ankara, TURKEY