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Brainstorming as a paradigm for studying
ostracism Experiments with brainstorming and
cyberball paradigms Yasemin Abayhan, Hayal
Yavuz, Savas Ceylan, Alp Giray Kaya , Deniz
Sahin(PhD), Orhan Aydin (PhD) Hacettepe
University, Faculty of Letters, Department of
Psychology Izmir Economy University, Faculty
of Letters, Department of Psychology




INTRODUCTION
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
Results
Manipulation Check
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).
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, plt.001).  
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, Wilks Lambda.113, F(2,
31) 121.586, plt.0001, ?2 .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 (M2.24, 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.
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.  
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
1Not at all, 7Very much).
Dependent Variables dfs F ?2
Positive Emotions 1 8,67 .21
Negative Emotions 1 3.12 .09
Results
Effects of Ostracism on Dependent Variables
DISCUSSION
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, Wilks Lambda.048, F(2,
37) 369.368, plt.0001, ?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 (M4.02, 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
(M2.12, SD .22) than the control condition (M
1.30, SD .22).  
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.
LITERATURE CITED
Dependent Variables dfs F ?2
Positive Emotions 1 4.96 .12
Negative Emotions 1 7.06 .16
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,
896-903. DeWall, C. N., Twenge, J. M., Gitter, S.
A., Baumeister, R. F. (2009). Its thought that
counts The role of hostile cognition in shaping
agressive responses to social exclusion. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 96,
45-59. Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D.,
Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An
fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302,
290-292. 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,
278-291. 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. 201-212). 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,
56-66. Williams, K. D. (2001). Ostracism The
Power of Silence. New York Guilford. Williams,
K. D. (2007). Ostracism. Annual Review of
Psychology, 58, 425-452. 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, 174-180.
STUDY 1
plt.05 plt.01
Participants
STUDY 2
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.  
Participants
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.      
Materials
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.  
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 gameCyberball (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.
Procedure
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
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.
Dont 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.
Address for Correspondence Yasemin Abayhan,
Hacettepe University Department of Psychology,
06800, Beytepe, Ankara, TURKEY E-mail
yasemina_at_hacettepe.edu.tr