Trait rejection sensitivity is associated with vigilance and defensive response rather than detection of social rejection cues

Abstract

Prior studies suggest that psychological difficulties arise from higher trait Rejection Sensitivity (RS)-heightened vigilance and differential detection of social rejection cues and defensive response to. On the other hand, from an evolutionary perspective, rapid and efficient detection of social rejection cues can be considered beneficial. We conducted a survey and an electrophysiological experiment to reconcile this seeming contradiction. We compared the effects of RS and Rejection Detection Capability (RDC) on perceived interpersonal experiences (Study 1) and on neurocognitive processes in response to cues of social rejection (disgusted faces; Study 2). We found that RS and RDC were not significantly related, although RS was positively related to perceived social rejection experiences and RDC was positively related to perceived social inclusion experiences. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) revealed that higher RS was related to cognitive avoidance (i.e., P1) and heightened motivated attention (i.e., late positive potential: LPP), but not to facial expression encoding (i.e., N170) toward disgusted faces. On the other hand, higher RDC was related to heightened N170 amplitude, but not to P1 and LPP amplitudes. These findings imply that sensitivity to rejection is apparently distinct from the ability to detect social rejection cues and instead reflects intense vigilance and defensive response to those cues. We discussed an alternative explanation of the relationship between RS and RDC from a signal detection perspective.

Keywords: N170; P1; event-related brain potentials; evolutionary perspective; late positive potential; rejection sensitivity; social inclusion; social rejection.

FIGURE 1

Results of Study 2. (A) P1 event-related brain potential (ERP) results. Average grand mean waveforms (O1 and O2) for facial expressions (left). Correlations between P1 amplitude in response to disgusted faces and RS (middle), RDC (right). (B) N170 ERP results. Average grand mean waveforms (T5 and T6) for facial expressions (left). Correlations between N170 amplitude in response to disgusted faces and RS (middle), RDC (right). (C) LPP ERP results. Grand mean waveforms for facial expressions at Pz (left). Correlations between LPP amplitude in response to disgusted faces and RS (middle), RDC (right).

FIGURE 2

Correlations between LPP amplitude in response to smiling faces and RS (left), RDC (right).